Sales of LCD TVs have doubled over the past year and are expected to double again in the computing 12 months, the head of Sharp Europe said at Cebit today.

Hans Kleis told a press conference: 'Sales surprised even our competitors.' But he admitted that Sharp itself had been caught on the back foot and that there had been 'bottlenecks' in the delivery of systems and production capacity is being boosted to cope.

He predicted that the World Cup in Germany would help push sales worldwide to six million over the coming year, with the largest market being Europe.

Sharp is showing a 94cm (1,920 x 1,080 pixels) high-definition LCD TV with a response time of 6milliseconds and an enhanced viewing angle of 176 degrees to ensure that most people in a room can see it.

One feature of many of Sharp’s screens is automatic volume control, which reduces the sound level of commercial breaks to the lower level typical of programmes.

The show floor does not open until tomorrow but Sharp also promises to show a product using the split-screen technique which PCW highlighted last year.

The product is an in-car display, which would allow a driver to see an on-screen map while the front passenger views a TV programme.

The technology, which uses a grating to separate left and right images, would allow two people to view different programmes on the same TV.

Many of these screens can double as computer monitors, but LG Electronics is showing a TV specifically designed to do so.

LG also showed off its 42in Plasma TV packing an 80GB hard disk capable of time-shifting or storing up to 40 hours of standard programming.

Check our Test Bed blog where I’ll be posting pictures and details of more products at Cebit.