The two-thirds gain in "life to half brightness" appears in the company's current 2007 model lineup, already available in stores, a spokesman said. If a household watches six hours of TV per day, it would take almost 46 years for the display to dim to half it original brightness.
Announced specifications for competing brands cite typical 60,000-hour half lives, although one company's lab data shows 100,000, said William Schindler, electrical engineering VP for Panasonic Display Laboratory of America.
Panasonic is also studying other improvements to future consumer-market 1080p plasmas, including the ability to accept a native 24Hz video signal from high-definition disc players. Panasonic's current consumer plasma displays accept 60Hz signals after a high-def disc player converts the 24Hz content to 60Hz in a process called 3:2 pulldown.
