14 June 2010 – Panasonic unveiled the largest commercial plasma screen HD 3D TV sets at InfoCon in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA last week. While the 103-inch and 85-inch 3D screens are attractive and sport all the latest features a person could want – albeit with a hefty price tag – the 152-inch telly is the talk of the town.

Simply stating it has a 152-inch diagonal measurement does not give a true sense of scale to the average bloke. Imagine a 50-inch plasma telly. That's easy enough. Now image a wall of 50-inch tellies three high and three across. That is the size of the 152-inch display.

Needless to say, it is huge and not intended for the usual casual home user. With an anticipated price in the £85,000 range, it could be pressed into home use by the fabulously wealthy with unlimited disposable income. It is, however, primarily targeted for commercial use. For example, as a video conferencing aid in the corporate headquarters, or used in hospital or university applications where detail and 3D rendering of diagnostic or CAD engineering is a critical aid to the physician or designer.

Remember 720i and 1080p – those cryptic numbers that define the horizontal resolution? You may want to sit down before reading this. The Panasonic TH-152UX1 has a horizontal resolution of 4096. That is quadruple the amount of detail that can be shown on the next-lower Panasonic 103-inch HC 3D TV set.

In order to accommodate the massive amount of video required to be delivered to the telly, standard HDMI – even version V1.3 – isn't ready to cope with passing the data efficiently. Instead the HD-SDI (High Definition – Serial Digital Interface) professional digital video transported by coaxial cable or fibre optics is used. It has a significantly lower overhead in traffic handling and carries the entirety of the HD signal. In most HDTV sets, HDMI cables can be problematic in restrictive and often baffling ways. However, Panasonic does have provisions for Slot 2 interface cards that can be used to connect to HDMI, if needed.

This set is scheduled to be available to the public later this year. If England brings home the World Cup, it's a good bet some of the more profitable and up-scale Sports Pubs will be looking at the 152-inch telly as an investment opportunity in the near future especially with Sky HD moving further into the 3DTV market ing 2010/2011 football season. Prices should drop rapidly from the early first releases to production models as more are ordered and sold.

First distributions of the telly are slated for Japan, then the US with the UK and the EU shortly following. It may be the beginning of 2011 before the set hits the shops in the UK.