It seems like half a forever ago (actually, last October) when we told you about those Hitachi Ultra-Thin LCD HDTVs that were only 1.5" thick. Now we're hearing a that not only is Hitachi following them up with a line of equally ultra-thin Plasma HDTVs, but there's a rumor that Pioneer will crown themselves the thinnest of them all with a 9mm Plasma HDTV - for reference, that's thinner than a deck of cards - they plan to debut at CES.
Hitachi's ultra-thins, however, are boasting a few surprises that sound awfully cool, but we're not sure the national bandwidth is there to support them quite yet. The first may be loosing something in translation: the Similarity Based Image Retrieval System gives you an image search function on your TV, like "a movie scene or image on a camcorder," though they also mention a few law enforcement applications. The other, Personal Video Sharing, lets you wirelessly share images off a digital camera and transmit them off your home server directly to someone else's Hitachi ultra-thin TV. If they have one. And if you have a home server.
But it's the dimensions that are really exciting at this stage. Given how Plasmas are historically big and unwieldy, this could be the start of grand things. Now that HD quality picture and sound has pretty much been sorted and television is all going digital by '09, the next big point of contention between television manufacturers is going to be who can put the best picture in the the thinnest package. Expect everyone to start present ultra-thin televisions in '08.
And of course, they'll all be eligible for a SquareTrade HDTV warranty at an appropriately thin price for an amazingly deep service.
Oh, and Hitachi's also planning to display a concept "super" ulta-thin LCD at CES that's 3/4" thick. We'll see how long that stays a "concept."
Ultra Thin HDTV televisions
