Our Interview with Plasma Display Coalition Head Jim Palumbo

1080eye recently sat down with Jim Palumbo, the president of the Plasma Display Coalition, to talk about his new job, the organization he heads and his favorite technology.

Why was the Plasma Display Coalition formed, and who formed it?
The Coalition was formed by Hitachi, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Pioneer and Samsung because they felt that the plasma manufacturers needed a voice and that plasma's story needed to be told. Our objective is to educate, inform and dispel the myths about plasma technology.

What is your background?
I used to be the CEO of Aiwa as well as an executive at Sony and was also the chairman of the video board at CEA.

What kinds of strategies are you employing to tell the plasma story?
We have a Technical Advisory Group that has conducted a performance evaluation of 50-55 inch plasma displays to underscore the advantages of plasma technology as a display for the home. There's also a Marketing Committee that is working on dispelling some of the plasma myths and extolling plasma's advantages through brochures that will be distributed to retailers and the media.

What are some of the advantages of plasma?
Plasma offers an average 157.5 degree horizontal viewing angle with less than 50% brightness loss and no black level loss. The average vertical viewing angle is 22.5 degrees -- neither of these can be matched by any other display technology. Additionally, there are no brightness hotspots like with rear-projection TVs and plasma also offers a peak contrast ratio of 3000:1. Plasma provides color gamut performance equivalent to CRT and does a near-perfect job with motion. There's essentially no pixelization like with other technologies.

And the myths you're working to dispel?
First and foremost, the issue of image retention (burn-in). Of the five plasma displays we tested, there was zero image retention on three of them. One had slight ghosting and one did retain an image - but it self-corrected after 12 hours and there was no significant phosphor degradation or image sticking.

What about power consumption?
Plasma is the only display technology that offers variable power consumption and all five of the tested models are Energy Star compliant. The average 50-inch plasma consumes $4.20 to $7.27 a month worth of energy, which is less than two gallons of gas or a movie ticket.

Since most of your members also sell LCD TVs, how do you handle the LCD vs. Plasma debate?
Our objective is not to balance any debate between plasma and LCD. Our objective is simply to dispel plasma myths and tell the plasma story with accuracy.