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MicroDisplay Claims Progress Toward Elusive LCoS
zajaco0 writes "USA Today posted an article that talks about the LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) technology that is being researched for the next thin, big-screen TVs. Big companies invest millions of dollars researching this technology and none of them seem to be making any headway. The companies who have this project on their failed list include Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Intel, and Philips. MicroDisplay seems to be making some progress though, says the company's CEO: 'After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works.'"
The more they dump into R&D, the more they can justify selling the damn things for. I'm not going to hold my breath until one of these finds its way into my living room.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Hopefully, this will spur competition and drive the prices down on expensive plasma TV's as well as high end computer screens.
50 million doesn't really sound like that much money considering the big names in that list. I mean phd's usually get compensated well right?
_+_+__+_+_+_+_+_+_+++
when i moo u moo - just like that
Doesn't one of the big TV makers have a production-model TV out based on this technology? Unless I'm mistaken (and I might be) I don't see how this is still an experimental technology.
-Arthur
Cave ne ante ullas catapultas ambules
320 men year of highly qualified researchers for 50 million, that works out pretty cheap. 150 000 dollars for a year of research? Where can you get that?
Im glad theyre getting somewhere.....But lower the prices on these damn things
TFA talks about getting these to replace bulky tube tvs but they arent going to do it they way they charge for them. Most of the unwashed masses will not spend that much for a tv. Hell, who can afford some of them?
First company to make these with great picture, decent size and priced at or comprable to the tube-based televisions will be worth millions.....billions even.....
-thewldisntenuff
My MythTV HowTo
USA today. The mouthpiece of marketing droids everywhere. Call me cynical, but I'll believe it when I see one down at Best Buy.
50 million total out of X billion per year ?
Steal This Sig
'After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works.'
One would hope.
-Teiresias
- "After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works."
How many tries did it take Edison to invent the light bulb? Thousands. This is a little more tricky than building a light bulb that can last for 1000 hours.Edison himself said, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."
I've been following the story about the joint venture between Toshiba and Canon on SED TV's for some time. Apparently it has become somewhat more real, as shown in this article.
Apparently things are going well enough with the new factory that Toshiba is stopping plasma-panel production, and staking its future on SED TV's.
SEDs are like CRTs, in that they use electron guns to shoot electrons across a vacuum at a phosphor scren to generate light. The difference is that SEDs have a semiconductor-based electron emitter at each pixel. This allows the screen to be flat, shallow (a few centimeters) and relatively lightweight, while preserving the fast response, brightness, and wide viewing-angle of regular CRTs. Also, somewhat surprisingly, SEDs are significantly less power-hungry than plasma panels or even big LED screens.
Toshiba and Canon have built a factory to start building these TVs, and apparently they are going to be trickling into the market toward the end of 2005. I can't wait!
Thad Beier
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
I thought the future for displays was a black screen that only reflected red, green, and blue, and multiple projectors around the edges projecting on it. Seems easier to scale and less likely to have missing pixels.
Philips actually had a finished LCos TV set ready for production. I saw it at a compliance testing lab that they use last January. I am not sure what kept them from marketing the set but I know that the lab tech said that it had problems with its RF emissions.
(This sig intentionally left blank)
The article is a little misleading.
While there have been failures with LCOS, there have also been some good successes.
JVC's D-ILA (LCoS) is doing very well, and JVC has been doing LCoS for a long time successfully in front projectors.
Sony's SXRD is LCoS and is going to be available in probably the best RPTV money can buy next month (supposedly). I assume it will also trickle down to their less high-end equipment late 2005 or early 2006.
The reason Intel dropped out was a failure to differentiate - who wanted Yet Another 720P television technology? They should have gone for 1080p from the start.
DLP is the dead technology, if you ask me. Who wants raindbows and headaches (or even the chance of them)? 3-chip DLP is prohibitively expensive and the only way they can hit 1080p is with "wobbulation" hacks.
Shareholders.and ROI Like at&t's cable buy a couple of years ago
wanted: one clever sig,apply within
Also, I'm curious on lifetime. I know plasma screens are 30,000 hours plus for a decent set therefore they don't need to be replaced for more than a decade for a user who watches 5 hrs. a day.
The tech really does sound promising, the picture quality of a high end CRT with the footprint of a plasma.
But what of price? It does me no good if they list at 10,000+.
Where are these roll-up OLED TV's that we will hang on our walls and just toss and replace when they wear out, because they're so cheap?
Footprint or not, if HDTV is to take off, someone needs to get a 27" or larger HDTV set out there for less than 500 bucks.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
'After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works.'
This is how we got Pamela Anderson.
The lower power consumption is not much of a surprise as it is not necessary to use field coils to aim the electron guns, or in fact to aim them at all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Coming right up: 1 HDTV at 27" less than 500$ (full retail price even) ... yeah, I know it would be the suck, but it does fit your list of requirements
I don't get this... I own a LCoS HDtv. Its rather beautiful when displaying hidef, with the exception of a noticble banding in dark images... the black levels are not as good as I'd like. I have 55" screen, and it's fairly thin for a projection TV.... and light too. :)
-- David
David Whatley
please let them make a badass heads up display with this
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1745870 ,00.asp
Ok... Help me out here. I recognize every word in your post but, strung together the way they are, they make no sense to me.
See this review and this press release for more info.
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
... then it mysteriously vanished without comment from their lineup.
Now it's all 720p, which is fine for gaming and sporting events, but for movie fans 1080 would be better.
Then again, when the first wave of 1080p breaks, the other monitors will get cheaper, and I spend more time in Halo2 than watching Merchant Ivory upconversions anyway...
Quit wasting your money... I want my damn OLED TV! :P
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
It still looks as good as it did then. No, it's not the super-badass picture in the $3,000 TVs in the stores today. But it's not getting any worse.
I've looked around and talked to people that own these fancy TVS as well as people that sell them. AFAICT, my options today are.
1. Buy a CRT tv (but I already have one!)
Maybe it'll last.
Cost: Hundreds to a thousand.
2. Buy a plasma TV.
It'll last a year if you're lucky.
Failure mode is "dead spots"
Not repairable; throw it away.
Cost: Starts at around a thousand for a crappy one.
3. Buy an LCD TV.
Same as plasma above, except failure mode is pixels stuck on or less frequently off.
4. Buy a DLP projector.
It'll probably last.
But the bulb dies after 2-4k hours.
Cost: Starts at around 500 for a crappy one.
Plus about $150-$600/year for bulbs, depending on how much TV you watch--and my wife likes to have the TV on while she's home by herself.
5. 'Course, if you're going to buy the "crappy one", you might as well keep that 10-year old RCA and save your money!
I just don't see paying $1500 to $5,000 a year to watch TV. For a 3,000 hour year, that's $0.50 to $1.67 an hour cut in salary.
To watch TV.
I like cool gadgets as much as the next guy. But I already have a TV. If I'm going to drop that kinda cash EVERY YEAR, it's not going to be on a POS TV that craps out after a year or two.
And, yes, my computer is almost 10 years old, too. It's amazing what you can get out of old hardware if you have the right distro.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Now for the actuall facts.
Those $3000 TVs are usually purchased with an extended warranty. Cost: $200 year. It is a full replacement warranty that covers everything including cleaning and bulb replacement. Normal life of TV: at least 5 years. More typically 7 years.
Cost for a 60" HDTV: more like $600 - $800 per year. For a family with a $100,000 year income that is less than 1%.
And, yes, my computer is almost 10 years old, too. It's amazing what you can get out of old hardware if you have the right distro.
Almost as amazing as what you can get out of current hardware.
I've heard of cheap, but you can easily build a box that's 7-8 years more up-to-date for well under the price of a 27" TV.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
"After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works," he said.
Guess Mythical Man Hour has been trumped by a new law....
Normal life of TV: at least 5 years. More typically 7 years.
Hooray technological progress!
We have a ~20 year old TV that worked perfectly fine until about 2 months ago when it blew one of the capacitors in the color system. Still works fine, but any green on the screen "glows" now.
We bought a new TV and fully expect this piece of junk to work for 5 years. You can't even pay for the kind of quality you got 2 decades ago, it seems.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
CEO Sandeep Gupta? I don't know how common the name is, but is not Sandeep Gupta also the name of the Vice-Precident of Engineering at SCO? The same Sandeep Gupta who is testifying on SCO's behalf as to the "substantial similarities" of Linux and UNIX code? If this is the same person, how much weight should we give to his words? After IBM's lawyers are through with him, he certainly doesn't seem to have that much credibility in the tech industry any longer...
JVC sells a LCoS TV. They call it D-ILA
You can find them all over. What's so difficult?
This is only a test. Had this been an actual post
This is a great example of why we need a patent system, though not necessarily the one we have. Industrious people pour thousands of hours of into getting something to work, and I think it is important that society protect their investment for a limited amount of time.
In Soviet America the banks rob you!
Actually I just bought a 55" model of one of these for a friend through their employee partner store. The set is pristine as near as we can tell, and Halo 2 looks gorgeous on it. avsforum.com has a few rather long threads about it, by the way.
;-)
The first two generations had trouble with quality control. Our 3rd Generation set (A Philips Cineos 55PL9524/37) looks great, and hasn't had any trouble in the month or so that we've had it.
You can find the 55" sets as either a Philips Cineos 55PL9524/37 or Philips Cineos 55PL9774/37. The difference between the two is that the "97" model has an extra piece of DSP hardware for even better SD -> HD pullup than the one we got.
The 62" sets are 62PL9524/37 and 62PL9774/37.
Go google
Michael C. Hollinger
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
Posting Anon because I am too lazy to log in.
I know people who have had plasmas for 3 years and they still work as well as when they bought them.
I bought one 18 months ago and it is still as good as new. I watch a lot of TV and play xbox for 8 hours straight sometimes too.
Where on earth does this myth come from that plasmas stop working after a year?
I worked my way through college at a pro audio/video dealer...high-end stuff and large systems for stadiums, etc. in the 80's. Always been a huge movie buff. Built a new house last spring and wanted to install a great home theatre system.
:o)
Did some research on plasma.
Some on LCD.
Some on DLP.
Some on LCOS.
Some on SXRD (Sony's newest trick).
Went and played with all of them except the SXRD...the front projector model was $24K...out of my price range.
Finally got a 61 inch Sony Wega LCD RPTV. Amazingly, it wasn't red-shifted like most Sony sets and only required a small amount of calibration to get it set-up correctly.
It's beautiful. We have "movie nights" for friends and family now and I have had ZERO buyer's remorse.
The replacement bulb is $299, NOT $5-600 and is rated for > 5000 hours. We have smaller CRT TVs for everyone in the house, so we do not leave it on for days or even hours at a time.
Sure, I wanted to at least see LCOS or SXRD that worked and was affordable, but geez, I'm 50 and may not have eyes left by the time that happens!
My advice: figure out what you and your family watch, have a local dealer set up the types of TVs you're shopping, take your DVDs with you, and buy the unit that does the best overall job for YOU.
If SED uses CRT style technology, it sounds like it will be closer to my 300 lb 32 inch Sony CRT than my 100 lb 50 inch plasma. Building flat screens with a vacuum requires a lot of glass, which blows the size and weight up and makes it unattractive for many applications. Try hanging a 300 lb TV on the wall, or even moving it for that matter.
Plasma may be pricey but it still has the size and weight advantage over anything to date, not to mention picture quality.
Up until a decade or so ago, my parents had a TV that had lasted them for about 20 years (and may actually have been second hand). It finally died (as all things must), and since then, they're on their second or third replacement.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
SED is much lighter than a monolithic CRT because it isn't one big vacuum tube that has to be supported from the sides. There are spacers every few scanlines, much as in a plasma screen, to hold the front glass up. So, the front glass can be much thinner than the glass on a big monolithic CRT. SEDs should weigh about as much as plasma screens. Of course, they're still vapor, so they're infinitely light :)
Previously mentioned power consumption is a little more interesting. When Sony made JumboTron stadium displays, they found that the CRT mechanism is an astonishingly efficient way of turning electricity into colored light with the characteristics they wanted. JumboTrons are huge arrays of tens- to hundreds-of-thousands of little CRTs. What makes normal CRTs such power hogs is that the electrons have to be accelerated agressively to fly the distance from the back of the tube to the phosphors, and 2/3 of the electrons hit the shadow mask, and so that energy is wasted.
Similarly, in LCD screens, in the best case 2/3 of the light of the backlight is wasted by the color filters (all the green and blue light is always blocked by the red pixels, for example) and typically at least 5/6th of the light is wasted (if the pixels are half-on).
For the SED, every electron generated lights up a bit of phosphor, and only those pixels that need to be lit have any power usage at all.
Again, it'll be great if they can actually be produced in quantity. Apparently they are planning to ink-jet print the electron-emitter array, so that shouldn't be too expensive. I'm sure that the first few years of production will be as expensive as plasma screens, but hopefully that price will come down. We'll see.
Thad
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
WTF?
Hooray technological progress!
I don't think technology has much to do with it. Economics - people want the best possible price, and it costs more to build something that lasts.
In the case of HDTV it's questionable to build something that will last 20 years because of the rate the technology is changing.
Well, if they made TVs that lasted 20 years, you wouldn't buy another TV for 20 years. What kind of business plan is that?
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
A less wasteful one. Earth's resources are limited.
If it's still a fixed resolution like an LCD or Plasma I (personally) will find it absoloutely of no use what-so-ever.
A _GOOD_ crt still beats LCD's in picture quality, be it television or computer information that's being displayed
A record of how freakin stupid you are.
"3. Buy an LCD TV.
Same as plasma above, except failure mode is pixels stuck on or less frequently off."
Not quite. Dead or stuck pixels are usually caused by manufacturing defects, not age. If it's perfect when you get it, it will probably be perfect in 10 years.
"Plus about $150-$600/year for bulbs, depending on how much TV you watch--and my wife likes to have the TV on while she's home by herself."
At 4000 hours a bulb (for a good projector), assuming it's on 24 hours a day, you'll go through 2-3 bulbs a year.
12 hours a day is a more realistic usage profile. That's more like 1 bulb a year.
Many projectors have a lower brightness mode that
". Buy a plasma TV.
It'll last a year if you're lucky."
That's bull. Plasmas do have documented lifetime issues, but we're talking about 10-20 years - not 1. Newer plasmas don't have problems at all.
Is that any different from what we have now (i.e., research scientists employed by corporations to develop new technologies and patentable discoveries)?
My other first post is car post.
Hell, for $900 or so you can get a very nice 30" widescreen HDTV by Panasonic or Sony. Just move your chair a little closer to the screen and you've got higher resolution than plasma screens and better brightness than LCD screens.
Of course, it weighs 250 pounds and is 2 feet deep, but you can't have everything.
My other first post is car post.
the list of people and companies involved in this effort reminded me of an old joke question: How many PhDs does it require to a) screw a light bulb in; b) to light a match; c) to lure a virgin in bed; etc
Philips apparently saw all it needed to see and gave up on this already as of sometime back in October, IIRC. I don't have a link but I seem to recall a news story mentioning immediate (?) discontinued production a $500 drop in prices across the board for all such sets.
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
A _GOOD_ crt still beats LCD's in picture quality, be it television or computer information that's being displayed
However, CRT displays do have a couple of major downsides:
1. They tend to use a LOT of power--a 19" CRT display uses about 3-4 times the power of an LCD of similar diagonal size for viewing area.
2. There is considerable trial and error in fiddling with the monitor geometry controls to get the display to look just right. With LCD's, plasma, and soon SED's, such problems usually don't exist.
I meant $10,000 as a consumer display device. $10,000 would be cheap if we were talking about a digital projector for a movie theater.
My other first post is car post.
LCoS has he same problem as the DLP... ll uses a high intensity lamp... That goes ter about 1500 hours of use
"The companies who have this project on their failed list include Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Intel, and Philips."
Philips? Excuse me? Philips has the Cineos LCoS TV on sale. I had the privilege of seeing a prototype and quite frankly it was an impressive piece of technology. Philips's chip design fundamentally differed from TI's and I believe also Intel's. The unit I saw had a 55 inch screen, was 18 inches deep, and weighed less than 80 pounds. The picture was the clearest and sharpest I had ever seen (studio HDTV feed - slightly better than HDTV broadcast quality, but not by that much). Quite an impressive piece of equipment, but as failures go, I guess it is, well, for lack of a better word, a failure.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
...you end up with a design that works.
...only on paper, though.
:(
Inject.
Judging by the job openings on their website, it would seem that the staff is composed of two very busy secretaries, and two PhDs. ;).
Ten years research...? Maybe the 320 (person) years includes the failed attempts by the other companies, and the secretaries
Mangee: Father to Lliam
Native resolution of even a lowly 23" Apple HD Display can do your 1080i with room to spare. Step up to a 30", and talk with the guys over at eCinema Systems. Why wait for TV to get there. Pipe straight into the broadcasters feed :/
Mangee: Father to Lliam
True... Not to mention the fact that the HD display is "widescreen' so a 4:3 broadcast misses out on a lot of screen real estate. I tend to watch tv in a little corner of the monitor anyways, while gettign real work done. Not really a purist. Half the time in your typical "1080" TV you are using scaling from the 720 broadcasts.. and TVs are crap. :) Pity the 2560 x 1600 pixels of the 30" HD display aren't a nice factor of 1080 either :)
Mangee: Father to Lliam