Today I was at the popular Mediamarkt electronics store in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where I saw the “largest TV in the world”; a Panasonic 103 inch plasma display. That’s well over 2.5 meters diagonal for us metric-centric people. It’s got 1920×1080 spatial resolution with 12-bit per color channel resolution. The price tag was also quite hefty at 79,999 Euros ($120,000 dollars). For such an amount you can buy 200 22″ flat screen TVs instead. If my math serves me right, that makes for a 580 inch (14.4 meter) diagonal TV. Quite a bit bigger and with a much higher spatial resolution.

I was surprised that the display didn’t look more grainy though, even when standing relatively close by. In displays the Megapixel race doesn’t follow the same pace as in the image sensor world. Still, with such large screen sizes, will we soon need to capture, store and transmit video with bigger than 1920×1080 resolutions?