Pioneer to stop in-house production of Kuro plasmas

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Pioneer, maker of incredible TVs like the PDP-LX508D plans to cease home-baking its plasmas. It will turn out its last batch this year, before passing production on to an external manufacturer.

We’re told the move is needed to maintain the cost competitiveness of its plasma panels.

Panasonic has been suggested as the favourite, but Pioneer will only say that is is “currently in discussions on the feasibility of procuring panel modules that may incorporate the Company’s proprietary technologies.” Not giving anything away there, then.

It will however be teaming up with Sharp to produce high-quality LCD TVs bearing Pioneer’s Kuro brand, as well as working on a variety of Blu-ray products, TV speaker units, and even in-car navigation systems.

We hope Pioneer knows what it’s doing – it would be a disaster if the Kuro range disappeared before we’d saved up enough money to buy one…

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Dan is Editor-in-chief of Stuff, working across the magazine and the Stuff.tv website. Our Editor-in-Chief is a regular at tech shows such as CES in Las Vegas, IFA in Berlin and Mobile World Congress in Barcelona as well as at other launches and events. He has been a CES Innovation Awards judge. Dan is completely platform agnostic and very at home using and writing about Windows, macOS, Android and iOS/iPadOS plus lots and lots of gadgets including audio and smart home gear, laptops and smartphones. He's also been interviewed and quoted in a wide variety of places including The Sun, BBC World Service, BBC News Online, BBC Radio 5Live, BBC Radio 4, Sky News Radio and BBC Local Radio.