When will these be available Mike? Do u think they will be cheaper than $250 that u get a Cherry display for? I need a new display for my Gilligans Island, will wait for yours but depends how far away they are? Cheers Dean
These won't be ready until the end of the year AT THE EARLIEST. There are many many things to have done. Tooling for the plastic frame, actual manufacture of the 1.5MM LEDs (5 million pcs is the minimum order), final tweaking of the circuitry and then manufacture of the PCBs in one facility - then the surface mount parts populated by another factory - then off to the final factory for LED insertion and burn-in/testing.
Then there are the colour filters (all the primary colours at this stage as well as the original orange) - plus the mould I have to have made for the clips to hold the filter in place........
Not to mention the design and manufacture of the small add-on power supply to run it along with its associated wiring looms to be made - packaging to be designed, printed, die cut and assembled - too many other small details to list here.
This project will involve, as a bare minimum, three extended trips to China with at least three weeks each trip dedicated to this project alone and an investment (at this stage) of around AU$200K (and that will no doubt climb as it always seems to) as the setup and initial run costs NOT counting any of my time or the time of my staff. The minimum order runs are massive when you are looking at something like this.
I really have no idea of price at this early stage but naturally I have to meet the existing market which stands at US$259 retail. I am hoping to beat that by a long way but currently I have no idea.
I am doing my best to make this product high quality, repairable and as universal as possible rather than make it as cheap as possible. This takes a lot of time, bench work and leg work talking to many different engineers at many different factories.
The further time moves on - the harder to get and more expensive plasma displays will become as production of these by all three manufacturers, Vishay, Cherry & Babcock has now ceased. Vishay do make a LED replacement and it sells for (more than) US$500.
The other two manufacturers of LED replacements are around the $259 price mark (and higher) and people complain about them having 'lines' etc - this is because they both use industry standard LED blocks, probably because they don't have the right contacts to do anything else?
That's the long answer - the short answer is - if you can buy a plasma display now for $200~250, BUY IT!
It's the hundreds of small things that go unseen - just being able to converse with engineers in technical terms is a test sometimes - I'm hoping my new book will help there (nearly $200):
