The Battle over Big TVs Shifts to Quality

I previously predicted the biggest TV at CES would hit 120 inches...and what we got was a measly 108 inches, all of 5 inches bigger than the biggest screen last year. What's going on? Well, if you ask me, the battle for "biggest" is on the wane. Now, vendors are shifting focus toward who's the best.

It's hard to tell from the photos, but indulge me for a moment. Here's the 108-inch LCD from Sharp (and any flaws the screen had yesterday really seem to have been fixed today). It looks great. But there was a tiny, unlabeled room behind this giant screen. I took a peek. Inside I found a 64-inch LCD from Sharp...operating at 4,000 x 2,000 pixels of resolution.

Whoa. The difference almost knocked me down. Even though the 108-inch screen was running at full HD resolution, jumping up to this monstrous 8.84-megapixel resolution LCD made a far bigger impact on me than the sheer size of the big display. Sure, Sharp was playing some tricks on us by putting the 64-incher in a darkened room away from the crowd, but still, I was amazingly impressed.

Everywhere you look on the show floor, vendors are downplaying size and upselling quality. You'd be hard-pressed to find a TV that didn't support 1080p. And vendors like Philips are touting technologies that make TVs look even better: Ambilight looks nice, but when the TV is floating, suspended in glass, with LED backlighting...well, it's a whole new ball game.

So what's more important to you? Big dimensions or big resolution?