All the logical signs in the last few months have shown us that Plasma televisions are on their way out, but it looks like Bang & Olufsen hasn't gotten the message.
Now, the Danish company is releasing a massively expensive ($136,220) 103-inch plasma television that spits on the economic frugality of the day and probably no 
one but its own mother will be able to love.
The Bang & Olufsen BeoVision 4-103's most distinctive features are an admittedly beautiful aluminum frame design and the addition of its BeoSystem 3 and VisionClear tech that automatically adjusts colors and brightness. For the latter, it means that every 120 hours, the TV automatically re-calibrates itself, which is pretty cool and surely useful.
It also has a motorized floor stand that, with one button press, lifts the TV and turns and tilts it to specific position required. Apparently, it takes about 18 seconds to move completely, along with the lower speaker triangle. And using the sleek Beo5 remote, you can control all of your AV gear from the TV.
But there's still no real breakthrough here that will push forward the display quality of televisions in any way. In fact, the display used by B&O for this TV is actually from Panasonic's own 1920x1080 pixel 103-inch TV. So you're just paying for the B & O name.
Pretty lame, right? Considering that the Panasonic 103-inch TH-103PF9 panel costs 'only' $70,000, you could almost get two 103-inch TVs for theprice of one over-priced, premium TV.
But we're really not surprised by this thing. Bang & Olufsen's always maintains a high-end, high-class operation and since the company keeps bringing out these uber-gadgets, someone must be buying them.
Recently, B & O released an impressive $6,000 music system with Pandora-like analysis, but we easily imagined a competing system that used most of the same features for much less than that.
The BeoVision 4-103 will be available in July 2009.
