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Intel Delays TV Chip Launch
portscan writes "The Financial Times is reporting that Intel has dropped a planned technology that would have halved the price of big-screen televisions by year end. This is the latest mistep in Intel's consumer market strategy. Slashdot has reported on the technology, LCOS, before."
Somehow I like this little press twist on that - as if it was *illegal* for TI to take the market lead on something before intel could get the market for themselves...
Is this something that could also be done well with OLEDs?
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This is extremeley disappointing. After seeing the technology at this past CES, I've specifically held off buying an HDTV to wait until next spring to get one of these.
With Toshiba canceling their LCOS earlier this year, and now this, I'm starting to wonder exactly what is wrong with LCOS. I've heard rumors that the yield isn't high enough, but still.
From what I was told at CES, Intel was hoping to revolutionize TVs like they did computers. Their goal in creating a LCOS chipset was to basically create a motherboard for TVs. Want to build a 36" LCOS HDTV tv? Use this board plus this chip. Want a 50"? Same board with a slightly bigger socket to hold the chip / mirror.
It wasn't even the price reduction that got me excited - the quality of the picture was supposed to have been a step up from current DLP (and at half the price, I wasn't going to complain). Ah well, back to drooling over the Samsung or JVC DLPs.
Now that it can continue its hold on big-screen technology, Texas Instruments can implement its new plan to please geeks everywhere...the big screen graphing calculator! No more squinting to see how that integral came out with the TI-8900--no sir!
Live free or die
404 on the /. link
Maybe he meant this article.
michael greene
be sold very near the price of a similary sized rear projection
Rear projections have not been very successful in Europe. I guess it is cultural thing. We just don't have big enough rears to make it worthwhile projecting anything.
Does this new chip make the Internet go faster like other Intel chips?
For all intensive porpoises your a bunch of rediculous loosers
Perhaps this is a little off topic, but can someone explain to me why there is such a huge price discrepency between standard 4:3 televisions and standard widescreen televisions? For instance, here in Australia a 68cm 4:3 Sony TV costs around A$850-900. A 76cm widescreen costs about A$2000-2500.
Am I missing something obvious, or is this just blatant pimping of the market while demand for widescreens is high? I can't see why there would be much more tech involved in a widescreen vs. standard ratio screen.
As a secondary question (for extra credit), are people really so dumb that they don't realise that a large 4:3 TV is the same *width* as a marginally smaller 'widescreen' TV at a fraction of the price? If consumers are this dumb, what hope is there for market-driven 'evolution' of technology?
Read Pynchon.
We've got to work more on FPGA programming.
Depending more on the chip fab giants is going to start getting us nowhere.
If some guys didn't start making computers in their garages, but rather they were made in corporate labs first, they wouldn't have come with cases that open and expansion slots, most likely.
Now it's the chips that we have to make.
Build your own energy sources from scratch. http://otherpower.com/
LCOS has already been around for five or ten years. JVC and I think some others have been selling some LCOS RPTVs for a few years now.
It has the advantage of having the highest fill ratio, which means a very minimal gap between pixels. While the LCOS systems are more expensive, they are the most affordable digital display for high resolutions such as SXGA+, UXGA and even 1080p.
Currently TI holds the patent on micro mirror arrays. If you want DLP, it must use a TI chip. I'm not sure if home DLP has the huge manufacturer mark-up that you claim, but I've never seen any dealer vs. street price comparisons, anywhere.
For reference on the value of DLP systems, I had my 43" DLP TV serviced by a technician (under warranty of course) because of startup problems and he replaced the light engine. The light engine is basically all of the important parts of the TV (DLP chip, control circuitry and optics) which is built onto one large assembly.
Being an electrical engineer I of course asked what he was going to do with the old one, I mean it still worked 95% of the time. He told me that they get sent back to Samsung (probably to be reworked) and that they are an $1800 assembly. Basically this tells me that if you add on the rest of the components (outer case, projection surface, input jacks and circuitry) a price of about $2200-$2400 is not too unreasonable for what most would consider a luxury item.
It turns out that I didn't do too poorly when I bought it for about $2600 new after a crazy set of good deals that included a sale on large TVs, a $300 rebate sign that was left out on the floor past the rebate period (hooray for threats of false advertising!) and no sales tax =)
This unit normally sold for about $3500
For further reference, Samsung DLPs are awesome.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
Intel is stumbling over it's wireless initiative, and wondering if the last 5 years invested in that effort is being squandered. The original enthusiasm for seamless adoption of 'wireless computing' has left the building (cell phones, on the other hand, have taken off).
Seems too many big gambles are making Intel big-wigs think twice these days. The LCOS effort is just another example of too little...too late by a company that is too big and too slow.
Entry level DLP front projectors like the Benq PB6100 and InFocus X1 are now sub-$800, and will be less than that by XMAS.
These are now priced within range of the average consumer, and will kill sales of the overpriced flatscreen TV's.
There is a reason that Best Buy et al do not place these projectors anywhere near their TV department. They don't want the consumer to walk out of the store with an $800 (or less, by XMAS) purchase when they can suck them into to paying $2000 or more for plasma/LCD flatscreens or rear projectors.
Intel might have missed the boat on this one. It wouldn't be the first time.
-Rick
Intell seems to be delaying everything. Are there that many bugs, or did testing reveal that they were behind AMD and they are redesigning the entire lineup?
Professional Politicians are not the solution, they ARE the problem.
"double the profit on big-screen televisions"
No doubt they have "dropped" this technology until someone else threatens to do it. Why kill the market? There are plenty of suckers out there willing to pay $50/mo for the rest of their lives to own a giant tv. Especially with the holiday season upon us.
Don't foret the x8086 machines, at some point, were $3000.
kulakovich
Intel doesn't make a DLP competitor today, so it would add revenue for Intel. For TV manufacturers, likely you will find one or two who will choose to be first movers and take advantage of the price competition. The TV manufacturer would likely not pass the entire savings on to the consumer giving themselves a period where they are making a higher margin until competition forces them to reduce that margin. In the end the TV manufacturers who are first movers on the technology could make more revenue selling cheaper TVs than the more expensive TVs. Remember that the DLP engine is a $1500 to $2000 part alone in big screen TVs. It's by far the most expensive part. So the margins on DLP TVs is not very big.
In the past, the CRT RPTVs were the cheapest way to get a big screen, and well, they still are.
The DLP ones are very thin, sometimes half as deep (or less) as the CRTs. You should at least know what you are dissing.
I personally don't see a point in the displays that are thin, like plasma and LCD panels. I don't see a point in the display being thinner than the accompanying components are deep, because the components would protrude or you'd have a big air gap behind the display, if the display is flush with the DVD player, amp, etc. So I'd consider a 15" to 20" depth to be pretty comfortable.
I can't believe no-one pointed this out yet - LCOS in current implementations is critically flawed. Part of the chip used for image display deforms over time and cannot be 'undone'. No amount of screensavers or screenblanking will keep this from happening. I'm not sure what Philips is doing, but all the others pulled their sets because of this problem.
This article...7 864
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=1
mentions that Intel is scrapping their 1 megapixel implementaion (I'm assuming 1280x720) for a 2 megapixel (I assume 1920x1080). Seems like a smart move to me. I'd rather have a set upscaling 720p rather than downscaling 1080i. And if they do this right, they could support 1080p24. And if HD DVD movies are created properly, as 1080p24 with support for Telecining on the fly for older sets. Then you're talking something I'd like to buy.