By James Wells in BERLIN:

BERLIN, GERMANY: LG Electronics has launched what it believes is the most advanced full high definition flat panel television which can display content at 60 frames a second — twice as many as displayed when playing a Blu-ray Disc.

Demonstrating the television on its stand at the 2007 IFA exhibition in Berlin this week, LG claims the 1920 x 1080 60p full HD TVs offer sharper, smoother and more stable images, despite a current lack of content to broadcast on the panels.

“Many experts, including our own engineers, believed that 1080/60p content would provide far superior picture quality and would eventually become standard in many countries,” said the head of LG’s LCD TV Division, Havis Heewon Kwon.

“However, due to numerous technological obstacles, no company had been able to demonstrate the technology. LG, together with NHK, invested more than a year in research, development and production, eventually proving that LG’s full HD TVs are already capable of displaying 60p full HD content,” Kwon said.

LG argues that the technology behind 60p video content is a prerequisite for 3D display technology.

“The success of this project proves LG’s leadership in display technology, and also shows that LG is prepared to push the industry toward next generation technology,” said Kwon.

LG’s next generation full HD TVs can display 60 frames per second at a 1920 x 1080 resolution. The ‘p’ in 60p stands for progressive scan. These 60p TVs differ from 1920 x 1080/30p TVs that show only 30 frames per second and 1920 x 1080/60i or interlaced TVs that only refresh half the lines of resolution at a time. The 60p-capable TVs can display a larger amount of information per second than any other type of televisions.

Sixty-frame per second progressive scan technology dramatically reduces moiré effect and image noise, creating sharper images. The edges of round objects are clearer and free from jaggedness that has sometimes been evident with existing content. Moiré effect is an optical illusion that causes the appearance of lines across an image, degrading video quality and resolution.

“Testing the compatibility of our TVs with 60p content was impossible using current broadcast technology and programming,” said Kwon.

“But, working with NHK, LG succeeded in producing, editing, transmitting and displaying 60p content. The entire process required a very high level of technological expertise and innovation.

Currently full HD TVs are labeled 1920 x 1080p, meaning that the TVs have 1920 pixels by 1080 pixels and display 30 progressive scan frames per second.

“Until now, it has been acceptable to abbreviate 30p as ‘p’ following the resolution, because it was the only option. LG has changed things by proving that our TVs can display the next generation Full HD content,” said Mr. Kwan.

“Blu-ray discs are encoded at 1080/30p — the highest quality available at this time. However, we expect 60p full HD content to become very popular in the future with the proliferation of compatible storage media. We are proud to have proven that LG’s TVs can display 60p content, through these tests.

“This applies not only to the LF75 series TVs that were tested, but to all of our future full HD TVs as well,” said Kwon.