It may not qualify as the next HD wonder of the modern world, but if size alone still counts in television (and according to flat-screen consumers, it counts more every year), the Chinese are about to make a big impression. According to the news agency Xinhuanet, the Konka Group has started building a massive light-emitting diode (LED) TV screen that reportedly will emit images that can be seen fairly clearly from about 5 miles away (depending on the weather, of course).
The size of the screen will be 13 x 23 meters--or "nearly three times the size of a badminton court," according to the Chinese news group. (That's about 75.5 feet wide.) It will have a resolution of 4.5 million pixels.
The huge screen will be built in Shenzhen (south of Guangdong Province), and initially will be used to feature commercials and special programming. Konka Group said it wants to dramatically demonstrate advanced LED technologies and that size (either very tiny or very large) usually warrants attention.
Sales of LED sets in China reportedly more than doubled year-to-year to 61,000 in 2005, and are projected to reach 110,000 units. However, that's hardly an impressive figure--in a nation of more than 1.3 billion viewers. HD services, on the other hand, are slowly starting to be introduced in China, with a major rollout planned in time for the 2008 summer Olympics in Beijing.
