That’s not to say the company was making false claims in order to boost their ASX listing… Laser TV did become a reality in early 2008, when Mitsubishi showed off their Laservue TVs at CES.

Laser TVs are essentially just rear projection TVs that use lasers to provide the backlight. Using the Arasor chip, the laser-powered TVs are able to reproduce twice the colour range that LCD and plasma can, while using less power and being thinner than traditional rear projection screens.To date, only the Mitsubishi Laservue TVs have launched with the technology, and sadly they’re not available in many global markets, including Australia.

It seems unlikely that we’ll ever see laser TVs in Australia. But we can always hope that the technology might be enhanced in future TV sets so that one day, all TVs have freakin’ lasers in them.

History of TV is Giz AU’s month-long look back at the development of the world-changing medium and its influence on our daily lives.

Rear projection TV were increasingly popular back in the 90s and early this decade thanks to their large screen sizes and relatively affordable price tags – especially when compared to the early asking price of LCD and plasma displays. They use three main technologies to project the image from inside the body to the screen: CRT, LCD and DLP.

But unfortunately, the technology was held back by its shortcomings and the dropping price of LCDs and plasmas. Because they projected an image, they were deep, needing the space inside the body to be able to throw the image from the projector to the screen. That meant they couldn’t be wall mounted, and tended to take up a lot of space.

Nowadays, there’s nary a rear projection TV to be found in the shops. Most of the major TV players have stuck their flags in the plasma or LCD camps (or both) and left rear projection behind. The noted exception is Mitsubishi, who have further developed the technology with the introduction of lasers, which both improves picture quality and lessens the necessary depth of the TV – their LaserVue sets are actually wall mountable. Still, that doesn’t mean that the technology hasn’t been superceded – despite having a great few years when most big TVs sold were big and bulky, these days you’re safer to go a flat panel TV.

History of TV is Giz AU’s month-long look back at the development of the world-changing medium and its influence on our daily lives.

The foggy “sometime this year” release date has narrowed to Q3, so sometime late summer, though that’s about all Mitsubishi is spilling aside from the fact the line’s official name is LaserVue. Price and exact D-Day are coming in June, giving you a couple of months to scrounge some pennies together in anticipation. We’re already drooling to do our own best TV ever side-by-side with this thing, ’cause whoever loses, we win. [HD Guru]