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http://www.siliconlight.com/htmlpgs/homeset/homefr ameset.html

See the white papers here:
http://www.siliconlight.com/htmlpgs/glvtechframes/ glvmainframeset.html

I know, this is more like the TI DPL, but the DPL is an array device, and this and the Silicon Light projectors are one device per line. The potential manufacturing difference between arrays and line scanners are huge.

See the white papers here:
http://www.siliconlight.com/htmlpgs/glvtechframes/ glvmainframeset.html

I know, this is more like the TI DPL, but the DPL is an array device, and this and the Silicon Light projectors are one device per line. The potential manufacturing difference between arrays and line scanners are huge.

Note that Sony isn't on the LCoS bandwagon. They're skipping the microdisplay technology and going right to grating light valve (GLV) tech. MEMS and lasers. Promises to be a bit more effective than LCD reflection.

Sony is in a joint venture with this company, Silicon Light Machines:

http://www.siliconlight.com

...just not mass produced or affordable.

I'm really hoping there is a push to market for these things. Sony has exclusive rights to the technology, developed by Silicon Light Machines. I've read anecdotal accounts from people who've seen the technology demoed that the images were amazingly crisp and vivid.

This link for a little blurb & small picture

This link for an abstract & link to a semi-technical pdf

Kodak just introduced a similar, competing system, as you can read here. Maybe that will drive the pricepoint down...if the demand exists.

I know I want one.

The GLV itself isn't tough to build so I'm curious what the hang up was in getting GLV displays to market. Do lasers die young or did Sony just buy it to kill a competing technology?

The GLV itself isn't tough to build so I'm curious what the hang up was in getting GLV displays to market. Do lasers die young or did Sony just buy it to kill a competing technology?

Boeing dropped out of the large airframe race leaving the field to Airbus. Silicon Light had a really interesting technology which they sold to Sony who are just sitting on it.

It's not just that we just don't make things the way we used to - it's getting to where we just don't make things.

I've been following OLED's progress for years and I'm glad they're finally getting somewhat competitive. It's a cool technology.

For a television, however, there's another really cool technology I'm waiting for to become commercially available (to the consumer: Grating Light Valve based projection TVs.

Red, Green, and Blue diode lasers (RGB) + a Microelectromechanical (MEM) diffraction ribbon = very bright, detailed, lifelike image. I've heard anecdotally about people who became disoriented because the image looked 'too lifelike.'

Informaion about GLV display technology.

It's already been done, but no products have hit the market yet.

Theft is a bigger issue which may be why the studios are trying to get to a level where you have to have the hardware to get an image that blows away whatever a pirate would use to show the movie. Several years ago, Silicon Light developed a display technique that appeared quite promising. It was a high speed optical switch that appeared to be easily scaleable from the 1080 lines they originally demonstrated. Even at 1080 lines, the contrast ratio was 3000:1. Unfortunately, Silicon Light sold the display technology to Sony who has done zip with it in the intervening 3 years.

Yes, that's right. 1280x1024. On a movie-sized screen. That's why it looks bad.

Would people be so hip on digital cinema if they knew it had less resolution than an average conference room LCD projector? If they knew they could go to an electronics store and buy an HDTV monitor for a couple of thousand dollars that has more resolution (1920x1080) than the much-hyped digital cinema?

TI did their first theatrical demos of DLP more than five years ago. It was 1280x1024 then, and it's 1280x1024 now. They've had half a decade -- a lifetime in the electronics business -- to increase the resolution, and they have not done it. Will they ever? Who knows?

Further more, who cares? There are two competing technologies that are up and coming and will soon overtake it.

The first is D-ILA from JVC, a reflective technology that has better coverage and more contrast (and no moving parts, unlike DLP). Kodak is using D-ILA in their attempt to build a digital projection system. It's already up to 2K resolution and should hit 4K by the end of this year. Secondly, there is laser projection, which is difficult to find details about online, but promises to also deliver far better resolution than DLP.

So I'd say that resolution most certainly is a problem, and one that hopefully will be solved before too long, thanks to some good old fashioned competition. Take that, TI!

Well said. But there are other advantages coming in the future. For example, on can conceivably do away with the screen altogether. One could have private booths set up with digital viewing goggles. 3-D anyone?

Heck, who needs the theater at all? Digital movies can be piped to homes, restaurants, etc..., without any loss in quality. Just a thought. And the resolution argument against DP is just stalling tactics. As DP technology improves, its resolution will eventually surpass that of film. Besides there is nothing like a little competition to spur things in the right direction. There are currently two competing DLP technologies that I know of:

Silicon Light

Digital Light Projection

In my opinion, Silicon light has an advantage because their projector is cheaper and potentially better. Check both of them out.

I wrote:

There are now two major competing DLP technologies, one from Texas Instruments (Digital Micromirror Devices, DMD) and another from Digital Solutions (Grating Light Valves, GLV).

Replace 'Digital Solutions' above with Silicon Light Machines.

Looks a lot like GLV technology, which I think was covered on slashdot this month.

http://www.siliconlight.com/htmlpgs/glvtechframes/ glvmainframeset.html

http://www.e-town.com/news/article.jhtml?articleID =3772

One of the hot topics on the various projectionists and film collectors forums is digital projection -- and how much resolution is enough.

There are at least two limiting factors.

The first is the size of the film grain. Once you reach a certain resolution, any further increase in resolution goes towards clarifying the individual film grains instead of contributing more picture information. This starts to happen at around a 4K vertical resolution.

The second is the resolution of the human vision system. Again, there isn't much point in having higher resolution than the resolution of the cones in your eye. Again, your visual resolution is approximately reached at 4K resolution over a 60 degree field.

Another advantages of these digital micro-mirror based interference systems is that they can handle tremendous amounts of light, much more than can be passed through motion picture film without melting it.

I'm not surprised that display technology has tended to stagnate -- in order to effectively utilize high resolution (6Kx4K or so) technology, you need to be able to move data fast enough to keep the video pipeline full. I'll bet that in five years, tube monitors and televisions will go the way of tube radios.

The moving-mirror MEMS devices are inherently more
difficult to implement. You have to have some
beefy control systems to aim the things at your
fibre.

A better way to do it is a Grating Light Valve,
where the MEMS device is a configurable
diffraction grating. This way when you actuate
the GLV, at full deflection you know exactly where
that light beam is going to be. Sony is using
this stuff in all their new theatre projectors.

Silicon Light Machines

They're the GLV people, recently acquired by
Cypress Semiconductor.

• For a start, this GLV technology basically produces one long thin column (Personally I'm surprised they chose to implement a column rather than a row, but whatever...) of light, and then a moving mirror effectively drags this column back and forth across your screen. Any speckle that you DID have is thus blurred by being dragged horizontally across your screen. Try spotting speckle in your laser pointer when you're swinging it really fast left and right. (or try spotting speckle in a laser light-show, for that matter).
• Secondly, they don't have to use completely coherent light. They can merge multiple lasers of similar but not identical wavelength. This is a bit like overlaying multiple different speckle patterns on top of each other, again blurring the effect.
• Thirdly, they can use non-polarised light, and I'll admit I haven't got the foggiest idea what they're saying there, but apparently they can thus use "novel speckle reduction means", whatever that might mean! Even if this is bull$#!+, points 1 and 2 sound pretty convincing to me.

What I find particularly amusing...

The first ever John Logie Baird televisions used a big circular disk with holes or lenses appropriately placed to scan a spot of light as the disk was spun. Each hole or lens scanned a single column of the screen, then dropped off the bottom just as the next hole/lens was about to appear at the top of the next column.

The second generation of TVs (this is still before CRT took off) used all kinds of moving mirror magic to basically do the same thing - optically scan a spot of light across the screen. Some used a mirror drum with about 30 or 40 carefully angled mirrors, each of which would scan one column of the screen, again each mirror's reflected spot of light dropping off the bottom of one column of the screen just as the next mirror was about to take over at the top of the next column. Others used 2 synchronised drums - one spinning fast, and turning a spot into a vertical column of light, which was then reflected off the next (slower, but still quite fast) mirror drum which swept this column left-to-right.

This brand new GLV technology is doing almost exactly the same thing, except it's using a clever microchip with thousands of tiny moving reflective ribons to produce the initial "column" of light, which is then swept across the screen by a horizontally-scanning mirror.

Isn't it funny how history repeats itself? :-)

Why did we bother with all that expensive, heavy, dangerous CRT stuff in between, eh? All that mucking about with thick glass, phosphorescent chemicals, and stupendously high voltages? :-)

1. Go to Silicon Light's website (these are the people that invented this technology)
2. Click on "Client Access"
3. Type in "test" (no quotes) as the password.
Makes them look like one hell of a professional operation, don't you think?

I get the idea, but would that ever be fast enough for long term use (how does the array "move;" does it use mirrors and refraction to paint the picture?), and would our eyes accept something so radically different than what we're used to (horizontal scanning)?

I have more questions than answers at this point, but this technology looks to be great. I can't wait until I can see an actual production system using it.

This is good for more detailed technical data, etc. There are some white papers, etc. All the usual good stuff.