Behold, Panasonic’s very first 3DTV. Most display makers have been reluctant to talk about price when it comes to their 3D sets, and for good reason. They’re damn expensive. Take this 54-inch model, for instance. Though the price has only been announced in Yen, a simple conversion puts it at $5,900 USD. Ouch.

You might be thinking, “hey, that’s not so bad – that’s what I payed for my plasma eight years ago.” That may be true, but look at prices now. A solid 40-inch LCD or better can be had for under a thousand bucks. Are you willing to pay six times that for a technology that won’t see a decent amount of media for several years? I thought not.

Obviously prices will come down, and Panasonic already has plans to release 3D sets as small as 50 inches this year. It’s going to be some time, though, before home-theater-quality set breaks the $2500 barrier.

Source: Gizmodo

If you’ve been sitting on your next TV purchase for that glut of OLED TVs to flood the market, you shouldn’t. LG’s VP of OLED sales and marketing, Won Kim, says prices won’t come down to LCD levels until 2016. Seven years is a long way off, and so much can change that Kim might be wrong, but in any case, OLEDs won’t be reasonable anytime soon.

Kim’s statements came shortly after LG announced a 15-inch OLED TV for its Korean market at the end of this year. No announcement for the US market, and that’s sort of been the standard so far. Only Sony sells an OLED stateside, and it’s just 11-inches. So it’s not just market prices we’re waiting on – the whole system has to mature enough to even be able to deliver the product.

Kim did say we would see 40-inch OLEDs by something like 2012, but you can bet they’ll be expensive. Of course by then who’s to say LCDs and Plasmas won’t be nearly as good as an OLED? The “absolute black” that makes the OLED so attractive (among some other features) is nearly attainable now with dimming LED TVs. In seven year this generation of technology could come a long way.