Pioneer Extreme Contrast: CES 2008

Pioneer Extreme Contrast: CES 2008

The Pioneer booth at CES 2008 hosted one of the most impressive demos that I had the pleasure of attending. Continuing with their ‘Project Kuro’ work, Pioneer held theater demonstrations of their new “Extreme Contrast” concept plasma TV.

So what is Extreme Contrast? It is absolute black. A TV that produces zero ambience with black. A TV that you can not even perceive as being turned on while it is displaying a black screen in a dark room. This thing is absolutely amazing. Video of objects placed on a black background seem to visually pop out to the audience. This absolute black achieves a much greater depth perception experience for the viewer, allowing high definition video to look even more real and more 3D than ever before.

The contrast ratio and black on current generation plasma TV’s looks like garbage compared to the Pioneer Extreme Contrast. Unfortunately, as this is a prototype, concept device, there is no estimated release date or pricing available for an Extreme Contrast product. That’s too bad, because I want one of these baby’s as soon as possible! Plasma TV’s will never be the same.

On a related note, another interesting tidbit that I picked up on the CES floor was that Panasonic actually canceled their high contrast TV press conference in light of the Pioneer Extreme Contrast demonstration. The full press release from Pioneer can be found on BusinessWire.