Kuro was the brand name that
Pioneer Corporation
commonly referred to as Pioneer, is a Japanese multinational corporation based in Tokyo, that specializes in digital entertainment products. The company was founded by Nozomu Matsumoto in January 1, 1938 in Tokyo as a radio and speaker repair ...
used for its line of
high-definition plasma televisions. "Kuro" means black in Japanese.
History
At the
2008 Consumer Electronics Show, Pioneer unveiled its "Ultimate Black" Kuro. The Kuro's plasma technology reduces light emissions from black areas of the screen to such a degree that at its maximum brightness, the contrast ratio was considered “almost infinite”. Hard-core home theater enthusiasts and home cinema aficionados stated that the Kuro was the only HDTV to achieve the "true black". Reviewers said that the Kuro represented the best-in-class technology, as its images were the most vibrant and colorful of any HDTV at the time, whether LCD, LED-LCD, or plasma.
[Pioneer’s Kuro Killing: A Tipping Point in the Plasma Era — Online Video News]
/ref> Sony
, commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professional ...
had unveiled the XEL-1 OLED
An organic light-emitting diode (OLED or organic LED), also known as organic electroluminescent (organic EL) diode, is a light-emitting diode (LED) in which the emissive electroluminescent layer is a film of organic compound that emits light i ...
display which has even better contrast than the Kuro including darker blacks; however at that stage OLED technology was still plagued by reliability and lifespan issues.
Despite being critically acclaimed, the Kuro was commercially unsuccessful. Plasma TVs had peaked in popularity from 2004 to 2006 and had been steadily losing ground to LCD TVs ever since. Pioneer was particularly hurt by this shift as the Kuro was positioned as a premium HDTV, being generally more expensive than the mass market Panasonic Viera plasma, while other plasma display manufacturers like Samsung and LG had demoted their plasmas to the low end. There were no Kuros to compete at the mainstream or low-end segments, which were dominated by LCDs.Panasonic
formerly between 1935 and 2008 and the first incarnation of between 2008 and 2022, is a major Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation, headquartered in Kadoma, Osaka. It was founded by Kōnosuke Matsushita in 1918 as a lightbulb ...
, the only other significant television manufacturer that concentrated on plasmas, and many of the latest Panasonic Viera plasma panels utilize the Kuro's technologies.
In October 2013, Panasonic announced that it would stop producing plasma display TVs, closing the plasma panel production factory in December 2013 and ending sales in March 2014. Plasma displays have been losing market share every year to LCDs, and Panasonic has been posting losses and cutting jobs in the last few years. Plasma TV technology was slow to make the transition from 720p to 1080p, and did not reach 4K when major manufacturers discontinued production.
Despite the discontinuation of production, used Kuro TVs have a cult following on the secondary market.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pioneer Kuro
High-definition television
Pioneer Corporation products
Japanese inventions