Behind the scenes at Samsung's TV factory: Part II

Our lounge rooms are dominated by the chaebol, and most of our entertainment comes from the company, but have you ever wondered how a TV is made? In Part I, we looked at the design process, and how the bezel was made. This time, we toured the nearby LCD factory where the panels themselves are made.

While TVs of one type or another have been around for over 50 years, they have gone through several changes, with flat panels the latest iteration. LCD TVs have been mainstream products for about four years, but what makes them tick? This year, we were fortunate enough to have visited both the Samsung and LG plants in South Korea to get a better understanding of how an LCD TV is made, and what the future holds for the technology.

Samsung is one of the world's largest manufacturers of LCD panels, and it claims to produce one out of every four in the world. One of its largest facilities is in Tangjeong, 80km south of Seoul. Samsung has four different plants on this site, and this is where the joint Sony/Samsung S-LCD plant was first built--and still produces Sony panels to this day. We visited Tangjeong recently and got not only a look at the production lines, but also the opportunity to meet with the engineers and designers who helped make them possible. Samsung's two main facilities had dozens of 20-something year olds wandering around sculpted gardens with huge planters filled with purple flowers acting as road dividers. They felt more like universities than industrial think tanks.

(Credit: Ty Pendlebury/CNET Australia)