Panasonic ’09 Viera Lines Go Wireless, Portable & ‘Green’

Panasonic is moving into spring and summer with plasma, LCD and Blu-ray offerings that stress connectivity, picture quality, “eco-responsibility” and stylish design, its product managers said at the company’s press line show yesterday in New York.

Highlights included a technological flagship for the brand – the 54-inch 54Z1, a wireless one-inch-thick LCD TV due in May at $5,999 – and at the other end of the tech continuum, a novelty: a combination Blu-ray player-VHS cassette player that happens to be a world’s first (DMP-BD70V; April availability).

Panasonic also unveiled for early-May shipment what it said is the world’s first portable Blu-ray player with a built-in screen: the DMP-B15.

The B15 joins new Blu-ray models DMP-B60 and DMP-BD80, the company’s next-generation line, along with the BD70V. Improvements in the new machines include quicker disc loading time and jitter-free image quality. The BD80 adds a 7.1-channel analog output.

At the same time, the bread-and-butter SKUs among the new models, depending upon the range level, offer such appointments as THX certification, iPod dockability and charging, SD Card capability for either still- or full-motion-image display through AVCHD and, in those models outfitted with Panasonic’s VieraCast IPTV technology, content embellishment in the form of Amazon.com’s Video On Demand pay-for-play service, starting in May.

Panasonic’s “eco-responsibility,” said Kate Beck, senior product manager for displays, takes many forms, including the fact that the company’s plasma models are rated for 100,000 hours of life before reaching half-brightness. All 2009 models are also Energy Star 3.0-rated, meaning they are 30 percent more energy efficient than the preceding generation. The company, she said, is also employing environmentally aware manufacturing practices in its production facilities.