Pioneer's new plasmas to reduce power usage.

Pioneer today announced three new plasma displays, 50" PDP-506HD, 43" PDP-436HD and PDP-436SX. The new generation of P.U.R.E. Black Panel plasmas sport 4000:1 contrast ratio while reducing power consumption by 20% on 50 inch and 30% on 43 inch models. All screens are 16:9 with resolution on 50" PDP-506HD is 1280x768 whereas on both 43 inchers it is 1024x786.
Pioneer announces removal of filter glass in favor of proprietary direct color filter technology which explains increase of the contrast ratio. This obviously raises the question of how UV and IR filters are implemented.
I am very excited and surprised to see double digit cut in power usage. I do consider power consumption of plasma displays as one of few shortcomings of PDP technology and Pioneer seems to have a leap forward in this area.

A bit more specs: displays marked with HD are packaged with an external processor that features digital terrestrial broadcast and VHF/UHF/CATV
tuners. Among video inputs are composite, S-Video, component, RGB, and HDMI. This unit has a PC Card slot, i.Link ( IEEE1394 ), 10/100Mbit LAN, and a phone modem. One thing is missing in this list [and I am convinced] that the box is running Linux.
As far as specs go this is all I could dig out from Pioneer's press release.
HD models will be available in early September and SX model will hit the stores in October and as you already guessed this isn't for US yet.

Source: AkihabaraNews.com and Engadget.com