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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.'"
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.
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.
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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.
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
Take the $50 million across the quoted 320 man-years and you get $156,250 per man-year. That doesn't seem like much when you consider overhead.
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1745870 ,00.asp
How many are there? Hundreds, if not thousands. It's a relatively common name in India. A Google search gave over 11,000 results, quite a number of which were for people in computer science or related fields.
No entry found for hampster.
Did you mean hamster?
Believe it.
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