Samsung: We had questions, they had answers

A roundtable panel on Thursday afternoon at CES was one of the show's briefer events so far, but we picked up some interesting tidbits from the forthright Samsung executives present. We have highlights of the stuff we would have loved to have heard during yesterday's big event, but better late than never:

- Ding, dong, the DLP is... Samsung is one of the last two companies to offer DLP televisions. (The other is Mitsubishi.) The Digital Light Processing technology was quite clever, using microscopic mirrors rapidly repositioning to create the image, but that battle was won by LCDs. But after hanging in there for years, Samsung is out, according to Senior Vice President SangHeung Shin, who told reporters that "We've already internally made the decision to drop the [DLP] line." Sets will most likely continue to be available for some time.

- 3D is nice, but a standard for 3D is even nicer. Samsung VP KyungShik Lee says that Samsung, like Sony, has a 3D proposal, and he hopes that the industry can create some synergies. Does that mean a standard? Lee answered, simply, "yes."

- Blu-ray has nothing to fear from flash media... for now. In the future it's possible that Samsung will offer more flash memory options, according to Senior Vice President DongHo Shin, but rumors of the imminent dominace of flash (thanks, SanDisk!) are much too early. "I think," he says, "that Blu-ray disk players will be around for a long time."

- Nothing for Blu-ray to fear from the Chinese, either. China has been notoriously not open to the Blu-ray push, and there has been talk that the government was sponsoring work on a competing standard. DongHo Shin said that's correct, but it's probably less a plot for world domination and more of an effort to avoid painful royalty fees; some Chinese manufacturers would hesitate to pay in. He said that the Chinese Blu-ray competitor sells "a little," but that his "personal guess is that in China the Blu-ray format will eventually be the de facto standard."

- Samsung isn't restricting itself to home-theater Blu-ray. SangHeung Shin confirmed Panasonic's not the only firm thinking about branching out past home theaters, saying that there was no plan yet and nothing to announce, internal Samsung research was "preparing some combination products."

- No, really, OLED isn't ready for prime time yet. Sony may have the ultra-flexible screens to show off, but Lee is hanging back in the area reserved for angels who fear to tread. "We need more time to do OLED; we need to offer a lower price. And every time we announce 'next year, next year'... we never get good results." Research and development continues, but the problems lie closer to the wallet area. "Sony's 14" OLED is $2000. Think of what [LCDs] you could buy for that," said Lee. 'But we keep going with the development."