The company will idle its Kameyama plant in southwestern Mie prefecture and its Sakai plant in western Osaka until after the Golden Week holiday season in early May, the Nikkei newspaper said.

No Sharp spokesman was immediately available to confirm the report.

The report did not specify what kind of gases were involved, but disruptions across the supply chain have hit manufacturers all over Japan in the wake of last month's quake-tsunami.

The shutdown, which began earlier this month, is not expected to affect Sharp's LCD TV output because it has a month's worth of panel inventory, the paper reported, without citing sources.

The Kameyama plant has a monthly output capacity of LCD panels equivalent to 1.8 million 32-inch TVs, and the Sakai plant has a monthly capacity of 1.3 million 40-inch TVs, the Nikkei said.

Sharp expects to be able to secure supplies of industrial gas in about a month, it said.

Production at Sharp factories, which produce smaller LCD panels for smartphones and other devices, will continue, it said.

earlier related report
Viacom and Time Warner Cable duel over iPad
San Francisco (AFP) April 7, 2011 - US media colossus Viacom and cable television titan Time Warner Cable took their fight over a show-streaming iPad application to court on Thursday.

The battle centers on whether an existing contract between the companies allows Time Warner to stream Viacom content to hot new entertainment screens -- iPad tablet computers.

Viacom contends that Time Warner should pay more for the privilege, while the second-largest US cable company counters that a deal already in place allows it to let people watch shows using a software application tailored for iPads.

Time Warner asked a federal judge in Manhattan on Thursday for a declaratory judgment backing its position.

"We have steadfastly maintained that we have the rights to allow our customers to view this programming in their homes, over our cable systems, without artificial limits on the screens they can use to do so, and we are asking the court to confirm our view," Time Warner Cable general counsel Marc Lawrence-Apfelbaum said in a release.

Viacom responded with a lawsuit charging that streaming shows to iPads or other Internet-linked tablet computers was essentially unlicensed distribution of copyrighted material and that the cable company should pay.

Time Warner Cable is "asking the court to declare their brazen acts lawful" and refuses to discuss the matter, Viacom said in a release.

A TWCableTV application for viewing cable shows on iPads has been downloaded more than 360,000 times since it was released on March 15, according to the attorney.

The software makes 43 Time Warner channels viewable on iPads, with access determined by cable customers' subscriptions.

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