As our industry prepares to face Black Friday -- the kick-off to the critical holiday shopping season -- those of us involved in the consumer electronics industry and especially the flat-panel television category have a small window of opportunity to help consumers recognize the value of making their purchase decisions based on product performance and technology advantages. 

Current sales rates and forecasts indicate this could be a record-setting sales period for flat panel televisions. The advantages of plasma are well-established – outstanding picture quality and color reproduction, very high contrast and deep black levels, wide viewing angles, and rapid response time resulting in the best display of motion scenes. 

This holiday season a key sales driver will be Full HD 1920 x 1080 plasma sets in screen sizes ranging from 42- to 71-inches. With more than two dozen new Full HD plasma HDTV models now on retail floors, consumers can now take full advantage of Blu-ray or HD DVD disc movies as well as blur-free fast-motion HDTV sports programs and specials.

Technology advances integrated in today’s plasma HDTV sets deliver the best possible home theater experience for consumers. These innovations from Plasma Display Coalition members   Hitachi, LG Electronics, Panasonic and Pioneer reveal the benefits of their respective commitments to cutting edge research and development resources into plasma display technologies and manufacturing processes. 

For example, Hitachi’s Reel60 feature uses powerful video processing and motion enhancement technology to ensure consumers’ home theater viewing experience matches the pure and precise on-screen motion the movie creators intended.

The “New "Extreme Contour Compensation" circuitry from LG Electronics minimizes color contouring to display more natural color transitions in images on the company's three new 1080p "Full HD" models. New Clear Filter Pro technology replaces the front glass filter with a thin film filter to reduce reflection and double imaging, providing a haze-free, crisp HDTV viewing experience.

By rating its 1080p Plasma HDTVs to play for 100,000 hours before reaching half brightness, Panasonic expects that its 1080p HDTV sets could on average take more than 42 years before they reach half of their original brightness level. (Based upon the U.S. average daily viewing time of six and a half hours.)

The new Kuro line from Pioneer features four new 1080p televisions that have been reengineered from the ground up, delivering deeper detailed blacks with enhanced contrast in bright environments and new video and scaling to ensure ultimate SD and HD performance. On-screen images are complemented by improved speaker technology with digital amplification for improved sound and clarity. processing

PDC members know that consumers have tough decisions to make on how to spend their discretionary dollars and a knowledgeable consumer is the best customer. To ensure that consumers learn of the benefits and advantages of plasma in the retail store, the PDC has undertaken a retail education campaign that include presenting cohesive messages about plasma technology in our members training programs and a Plasma Fact Card for retailers that summarizes the key benefits.

This holiday season, the Plasma Display Coalition encourages retailers to use these resources to help your customers make an informed television purchase decision. If you need more information on plasma, please visit www.plasmadisplaycoalition.org.