LG enters thin-TV race with Scarlet sets

by Martyn Williams

April 30, 2008 —

LG Electronics has officially
thrown its hat into the thin TV ring with the launch this week of its Scarlet
TV set. The TV, which was first unveiled at the International
Consumer Electronics Show in January in Las Vegas, is LG's thinnest flat-panel
TV yet.

LG said the Scarlet is just 45 millimeters thick, which isn't thin enough to
beat Sharp's X-series LCD TVs that recently went on sale in Japan. The Sharp
TVs are 34 millimeters at their thinnest point, and swell slightly to 38 millimeters
at the thickest point.

Thinness is likely to be a key battle ground in the flat-panel TV market this
year. After several years of competition on screen size, sets are at the point
where larger screens don't make much sense anymore, so companies are focusing
on slimming down the supposedly "flat" TVs. In addition to the TVs
from LG and Sharp prototypes
have also been shown at trade shows by JVC,
Panasonic and Hitachi.

The Scarlet sets will be sold in the U.S. under the LG60 brand name and in
Europe under the LG6000 name. A 47-inch model in the range is already on sale
in the U.K. and boasts a full high-definition (1,920 pixel by 1,080 pixel) screen
and 100Hz fast scanning to provide a smoother image when showing fast motion.
Other sets will go on sale soon in markets around the world.

So far LG has attracted more attention for its advertising campaign than for
the TV sets themselves. A cleverly done teaser commercial duped people into
believing Scarlet was a new TV series by David Nutter, a director/producer best
known for his work on pilot episodes of TV shows such as "Terminator: The
Sarah Connor Chronicles." The teasers hinted that "Scarlet, the hit
new TV series" was a Nutter project featuring actress Natassia Malthe.

A Hollywood premiere for Scarlet built the buzz, but those at the event soon
discovered that Scarlet was a series of TVs, not a TV series in the traditional
sense. The bold public relations gamble gained Scarlet widespread publicity,
including mentions in newspapers like The Wall Street Journal, where it might
have otherwise had a hard time getting space.

IDG News Service