$160,000 Samsung Plasma Revealed

Samsung Electronics’ has introduced a new 80-inch PDP Plasma. The price a staggering $163,000. This is the highest price ever for a TV.

Samsung is planning to sell the gigantic television which comes with a specially designed home theater system to rich Americans and Europeans and if you want a home theatre kit with that the price tag goes up even higher to $180,000.

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The price is similar to that of an apartment or a top-of-the-line Mercedes but Samsung believes that the 80-inch model is worth every penny.

We have conducted marketing activities for premium brands of our goods in the United States and in Europe, especially for high-end digital televisions,'' said Shin Sang-heung, an executive in Samsung's display department.We will continue to make high quality products for them.”

The 80-inch TV is the largest PDP television on the market, though both Samsung and LG Electronics are displaying prototypes of 102-inch models at the ongoing Korea Electronics Show. It is also the first time for a television set to be priced at more than 100 million won, or 1 ok'' in the Korean numbering unit. </P><P>LG has been selling a 71-inch-big PDP model in stores at 80 million won since November, and the company is estimated to have sold 500 units so far, including 30 in Korea. The smaller 61-inch models are being sold for around 12 million won, and the price dramatically drops to 4 million won for models with 40-inch screens, which are the mainstream products in the current market. The size of television sets refers to the diagonal lengths of their screens, meaning that the screen of an 80-inch set is four times larger than a 40-inch one. </P><P>Despite the high prices of gigantic televisions, distributors are confident that a market exists for the high-end products, </P><P>We haven’t sold any of the 71-inch televisions in our shop, but we sold some 60 inches. I am quite sure that there is a demand for such expensive televisions,” said Choi Jang-woo, manager of LG’s retail shop near Yangjae station in southern Seoul.

So if size does matter, how about quality?

Samsung says that its new model has superior video quality than its competitors at the 70-inch level. The company claims that the monstrous television is capable of showing 549 billion different colors on its display, which is around 60 times more than other models of similar size.

It also has a contrast ratio of 2000 to 1, which means the brightest spot on the screen is 2000 times brighter than the darkest part of it. In addition to all those features, the customer’s signature will be engraved on the hand-coated television set.