Intel Cancels LCOS Development

kfstark writes "It looks like the sub $2000 42" flat panel TV has been pushed back for a while. Intel has announced they are cancelling their Liquid Crystal on Silicon development. Guess I'll have to pick out a different gift for for the umm... kids." Earlier we reported their plans to delay their launch of the LCOS chips. Sadly, now it would seem they've been scrapped altogether.

Comments

Re:Why a TV?

[colins]

I call Bullshit.

Typical home theatre projectors have a 2000 to 3000 hour bulb life these days. If we use the low end, 2000 hours, you would have to run it five and a half hours a day to burn out a bulb in a year.

A quick check on froogle shows a replacement bulb for the popular Infocus 4805 is $395 USD.

So your cost estimate is double what it should be, and your life estimate is probably half what it should be at best.

A $400 bulb every two years or so is more realistic, and for that you get a 100"+ screen to watch in the comfoprt of your own home. Sounds like a good deal to me compared to the alternatives.

See the forums at http://www.avsforum.com/ for all the info your could ever want on this topic.

Couldn't make it work well

[Namarrgon]

RTFA:

the company had decided to improve picture quality before introducing the product.

Re:Plenty of options. LCOS not missed.

[smartalix]

LCoS is actually a superior technology in many ways, but it seems that nobody can make it cheap and plentiful. When I saw the Intel demos of the product at CES (private suite), I was very impressed with the image quality. There are other companies like Brillian and Spacialight currently selling 720p and 1080p LCoS chips, but in relatively small quantities for high-end and private-label applications.

The primary advantages of LCoS involve its construction. In an LCD, since the light has to pass through the display, there is a limit on the size of the pixel since the transistors in it are opaque. This means that the pixels can only be shrunk to a certain size before light transmission is compromised, forcing high-resolution projection LCDs to increase in size to accommodate more pixels.

A similar problem also exists in DLP chips, but due to mechanical considerations of the mirrors and clearances needed. An LCoS chip has its transistors behind immobile pixels, and therefore does not share either shortcoming.

Yet another advantage to having the transistors behind the pixel is that you can then add more than control transistors to each pixel. This allows you to add features like video memory and logic on-chip.

Frankly, I think it is shortsighted of Intel to pull the plug on LCoS, and has increased the pessimism in the industry of whether any company can field these devices in quantity.