Last Friday morning I found myself being interviewed live on BBC radio on the ins and outs of the flatscreen TV market. Apparently as a tech.co.uk journalist I am qualified to tell the nation's radio listeners what's what, and so I was asked what the benefits were with both types of flatscreen technology.

Turns out that I had a little disagreement with the Panasonic representative who was also being interviewed on the show. Panasonic is investing millions of pounds in further developing its plasma TV range, while Sony has withdrawn from the market completely.

All Sony Bravia's are LCD, and it was my point that with LCD technology improving all the time, there might soon come a day when the expense of plasma televisions is no longer worth it on a consumer level.

Mr. Panasonic completely disagreed, citing his company's 103" plasma screen as an example of a super world leading screen. I've had the privilege of viewing one of those 103" monsters and I can testify to the fact that twinned with a Blu-ray player, it is simply breathtaking (I was going to say 'mindblowing' before I realised how much I hate that word).

But from CES comes the news that Sharp - of all people - is bringing out a 108" LCD panel.

If you had told an industry insider five years ago that in 2007 there would exist a 108" LCD TV he would have laughed you out of his office. It was once thought that the technology would not be able to go much beyond the 32" mark without significantly deteriorating in performance.

Clearly this is not the case, and so it seems that LCD is going to continue its dominance of the flatscreen TV market. That is, until SED technology is freely available, a point which Mr. Panasonic conveniently left out of his little speech on the radio.

Could that, per chance, have anything to do with the fact that Panasonic does not own the rights to that technology?

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