Pioneer Electronics (USA) has announced the addition of two new high-definition plasma televisions to its Pioneer PureVision product line. They are the PDP-5040HD (50-inch) and the PDP-4340HD (43-inch). Both the screens make future TV a reality today by offering best-of-breed technology that, for the first time, can display more than one billion colours for the ultimate on-screen display.

An official release informs that the new Pioneer high-definition plasmas offer complete television solutions including a high definition (ATSC) media receiver, side-mounted speakers and a tabletop stand that swivels. Pioneer has stated that as one of the early developers of plasma technology, it has leaped ahead of competitors in terms of image quality.

The release states that a lot of proprietary technology is used to create Pioneer's unbelievably crisp image quality. New advancements include:

- Pure Drive. This is a pure digital signal path from source to image. With Pioneer Pure Drive, an analog broadcast is converted once to digital and remains in the digital domain. Any digital signal has no analogue to digital conversion. By minimising or eliminating the A/D or D/A conversions, Pioneer claims to have reduced digital 'noise' and MPEG 'noise.' Pure Drive also offers more correction for accurate images and improved gray scale.

- Advanced PureCinema. The release states that this allows for faithful and accurate reproduction of film content. Pioneer claims to be the first company to introduce advanced film detection using 3:3 film to video conversion at 72Hz in a plasma display. This new technology enables film content to be reproduced with smooth and natural imagery like in a movie theater. Previously televisions only offered 3:2 film to video conversion at 60Hz resulting in on screen artifacts, such as uneven motion.

- The advanced continuous emission display technology II is another industry first. It eliminates false contours that can appear in close-ups of faces. This improved technology allows the television to display smooth transitions from dark to light areas without losing detail or compromising the image contrast. The improved technology works in conjunction with Pure Drive enabling the plasma panel to display more than a billion colours.