By Matthew Moskovciak, CNET.com
07/01/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/ces/08/0,3800010114,62036127,00.htm

Pioneer consistently makes some of the best plasmas on the market, and today it has announced new "Project Kuro" technology designed to give its plasmas even deeper blacks and incredibly thin screens. Pioneer claims the new "Project Kuro" technology greatly enhances contrast ratio, capable of producing an "absolute black with no measurable light emitting from the television." The other new advancements from "Project Kuro" are superthin plasma panels and Pioneer will be showing off a 9mm-thick 50-inch plasma panel at its booth. To put this in perspective, the current Pioneer PDP-5080HD is about 114mm thick, so this panel would be less than a tenth of the size. The weight of the new panel is also substantially less at 19kg, which is almost half the weight of the PDP-5080HD.

If these figures sound too good to be true, you're on the right track. Buried at the end of the press release is the most important line: "These fully operational concept televisions will not be commercially available in 2008." That means new Pioneer plasmas released in 2008 won't utilize the super black, super thin "Project Kuro" technology--you'll have to wait until at least 2009 for that.