Pioneer Corp, electronics manufacturer announced today that they will no longer manufacture their own Plasma TV panels, and they will start purchasing panels from outside suppliers.

I say it’s a sad day because I think Pioneer makes the best flat-panel available today (comparing all Plasma TVs and LCD TVs).  The Pioneer Plasma TVs, especially the Elite line is, in my opinion, has the best picture quality of any Plasma or LCD TV available today.  The only TV that I thought was close was the Fujitsu Plasma TV, which late last year announced they are out of the consumer Plasma TV market.

Their reason, as was the reason for Fujitsu, is that they’re losing too much money on Plasma production.  I’m not sure if they will be able to have their panels manufactured like they are currently manufacturing them, but I’m sure that they since they are purchasing them from other companies that they will be different. 

Their electronic processing is also a very important part of their performance, and other manufacturers are making very good panels, so hopefully they will still produce a great product.  Time will tell.

It seems that the LCD market is slowly killing Plasma TVs.  I’m still a big Plasma TV fan, but I have to say that LCD TVs are really catching up in their quality, and the newest LCD TVs have been very impressive.

The Consumer Electronics world changes so fast, that as LCD TVs catch up to Plasmas, new technologies such as OLED are coming out with an absolutely amazing picture.  I guess we’ll always be one step behind the game!