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Seiko-Epson Jumps Off the Rear-Projection TV Bandwagon

Yet another sign of the LCDs' and plasmas' dominance

Dec 7, 2007 12:26 GMT  ·  By
  

Although rear-projection TVs seemed to represent a very strong contender to plasma panels and LCDs at some point, it looks like their moment of glory has come and gone, since the most important manufacturers of such display solutions are slowly giving up on this technology. And the latest company announcing that it's leaving this market is Seiko-Epson, one of the most important players in the field.

Thus, according to a report by Kiyoshi Takenaka for Reuters, the Japanese giant will take a step back from manufacturing and retailing of rear-projection TVs, and will instead focus on front projectors. Of course, they claim that they won't be going out of the market for good and that they'll still keep up and running their rear-projection related research facilities, but this is really just a lot of PR talk (read bull-crap).

The move is quite obviously caused by the fact that, although RPTVs were, at some point, the best solution for an ultra-widescreen display, things have changed dramatically over the past 2 years or so. Plasma displays and even LCDs are getting larger, while their manufacturers keep cutting the price tags, thus making them a lot more competitive and pushing RPTVs towards extinction.

However, this is by no means an unexpected or surprising decision, especially since Seiko-Epson is not the first company to withdraw from this dying market. Thus, earlier this year, Hitachi also withdrew from the North American rear-projection TV market, while Sony Corp in October cut its rear-projection TV sales target for the year to March by 43 percent to 400,000 units. Another (critical) reason was that, apparently, the group hasn't even come close to its targeted sales figures, of around 11,000 units for the first year of operations.

Of course, RPTVs are not necessarily dead, but it really seems that they're heading there pretty fast, especially now, when the threat of OLED displays is looming on the horizon.

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