Yesterday, the first official day of CES, kicked off with a bunch of announcements from Panasonic President Toshihiro Sakamoto. Chief among them is the 150-inch plasma--which the company is calling the "Life Screen," probably because that sounds better than the "Life Savings Screen"--the largest plasma screen in the world. Although there was no official word from Panasonic, analysts have predicted the TV could go for as much as $100,000. For those of you keeping score at home (and actually know what this stuff means), the TV has 2,000-by-4,000 pixel resolution. It is 11 feet wide. Which is the size of nine 50-inch plasma TVs.
I finally got a look at it today. Here you go:
I included the guy standing in front of the TV in order to give you some perspective as to how freakishly large this thing is. He's 15 feet tall. That cocked thumb alone is the size of a VW Beetle. And yet he is dwarfed--dwarfed!--by the Monster TV. If, for some reason, the screen were to topple over it would kill everyone in Las Vegas. Let us pray that it does not.
As I mentioned in passing before, the only TV I own is a 30 year-old cathode ray dinosaur that runs on diesel fuel. It's sitting on the floor in my house, not even plugged in. I can't lift it up to put it on our coffee table. Years of not watching TV, I've concluded, have made me a better person than you. And yet. Looking at this plasma leviathan, I have only one thought: Daddy want.
