CES: Panasonic touts high-definition 3D

CES 2009

Panasonic continued its pursuit of a standard for 1080p 3D pictures on Wednesday at the CES conference in Las Vegas.

The company told a room full of reporters and industry insiders that it would propose a standard in Japan in the coming months for the system it debuted last year at Cebit.

"Panasonic does not think that 3D high-definition for the home is far away at all," said chief executive and chairman Yoshi Yamada. "We are at the start of another phase-change that will have an impact on Panasonic's business."

Central to that plan will be the development of a standard for both consumer and broadcast devices to encode and decode the picture. The company said that it had been working with studios and standards groups to develop the proposed format.

"3D in the home will never flower unless we have a national standard," said Bob Perry, executive vice president of Panasonic consumer electronics.

"But we are very excited because we believe that 3D changes the world from watching TV to an immersive experience."

As with other companies, Panasonic is devoting much of its time at the conference to its environmental programme. In addition to recycling and cleaner manufacturing initiatives, the company is planning to equip upcoming models with more efficient screens.

The neoPDP and neoLCD technologies will dramatically increase the efficiency of each of their respective screen formats. For plasma displays, the picture will require a third of the power used by Panasonic's 2007 models.

Panasonic's screens will also be thinner. The new Z1 model will be just 1in thick and will wirelessly stream all connections from a set-top box.