Despite all the attempts at promoting the technology, plasma has been snuffed out

Oct 31, 2013 12:34 GMT  ·  By

You'd think that a company with Panasonic's resources and at times bullish determination would be able to sell people on any invention, but the fate of Plasma TVs has just shown that there are feats even it cannot accomplish.

Basically, Panasonic has finally halted production of plasma TVs completely. This is a confirmation of an earlier report from Panasonic itself.

We, and many others, saw this coming for a while, although there were a few uncertain points, like when the company brought a nice and large lineup at CES 2013, back in January.

Basically, plasma is no longer viable from an economic standpoint, even though consumer demand seems to be as steady as ever.

Maybe that's the problem: demand is only steady and firm, not incredible or any variation or synonym of that epithet.

LCDs have well and truly monopolized the attention and interest of most everyone. Plasma just can't keep up.

So far, two of Panasonic's three plasma production facilities have been shut down. The last one will go out in about a month.

All in all, Plasma is well and truly dead due to price pressure from affordable LCDs and "rapid, drastic changes in the business environment."

There might still be minor brands with Plasma screens for sale of course, and the Panasonic models already in retail aren't going to just disappear.

So if you're a fan, you can hurry to your local retailer and, if you're lucky, you might be able to get a hold of one of the last ones. Maybe even one of Pioneer's models, although that company also closed the door on plasma a while back.

We're not sure what this all means for pricing though. On the one hand, price cuts might be implemented, to digest supply quickly, or it might go up (despite comparable LCD TV affordability) because of how "rare" plasma screens have just become.