Days after LG and Samsung rolled out new LCD TV's Panasonic a major sponsor of the Olympic games in Beijing is this week, set to roll out a new range of web enabled plasma TV's a new generation of home theatre kits and new blu ray players along with new camcorders.
The new range will be used to re position Panasonic from being a brand known by an older audience to a brand for everyone. Backed by an extensive marketing campaign primarily on the Seven Network Panasonic are using the Bejing Olympics as a spingboard to grow the Company up alongside the likes of Sony and Samsung.
It is expected that the Japanese Company who are the market leader in plasma TV sales in Australia will roll out a new version of their Viera HDTV range for 2008, including the 46-inch TH-46PZ80 plasma and the 37-inch TC-37LZ800. Across the whole range Panasonic is offering better contrast ratios, SD card slots, HDMI connections and a Game Mode feature that cuts time lag when playing console games.
Another interesting feature that could be announced in their top-end plasmas is IP-enabled TV, letting people watch YouTube videos and access other websites (e.g. photo-sharing site Picasa) directly from their TVs. Meanwhile, the LCD Viera range boasts a native contrast ratio of 1200:1.
While we have not offically been told the sizes that Panasonic will push running into the Olympics we suspect four models - the 46in TH-46PZ850, the 50in TH-50PZ850, the 58in TH-58PZ850 and a monstrous 65in TH-65PZ850.
