June Issue of Projection Monthly is Out

Dear Readers,

Whose idea was it to have SID, Projection Summit and InfoComm all with a couple of weeks of each other? We have had to burn the midnight oil to write up most of the news from SID over the last week and have crammed that and the rest of the industry news into the latest Projection Monthly edition. It's a whale at 117 pages, but nicely organized to help readers focus on the news they want to read. Now we have to do it all over again!

The highlights of the SID conference were summed up in our last email - the SID "Best Buzz" awards. We awarded top honors to Sony's "wavelength selective" front projection screen technology and Brillian for its demo of 1080p LCOS-RPTVs. For our crowd, both were the top items people were talking about at SID. We also recognized Kodak, Philips Research Labs, Philips LCOS Microdisplay Systems, iFire, JDSU, Cambridge University, Lumus, Samsung Electronics, Toppan, DNP and Jenmar Visual Systems.

We are in Atlanta to conduct the Projection Summit and attend InfoComm. The Projection Summit will offer a very strong slate of speakers this year covering the most important and timely subjects of interest to projection supply chain vendors, big-screen display product makers, system integrators, dealers and VARS. Looks like we have over 60 of the industry's top movers and shakers presenting at the conference with an exhibition area that will also showcase some interesting technology. This is a great opportunity to rub elbows with the real decision makers in the projection industry, come away with thousands of dollars worth of market intelligence - and maybe start or solidify a new business deal. http://www.insightmedia.info/PS04/ps04agenda.htm

In Projection Monthly, we report on JVC's 1280 x 720 resolution LCOS panel, that will power its line of RPTVs to roll this summer. JVC has high hopes for these sets and is ramping up for some serious sales. The panel features a digital backplane from Aurora Systems coupled to JVC's high-contrast VAN mode liquid crystal later. JVC was supposed to show these sets off to the press in May, but canceled the demo because the sets were damaged in shipment. They sure better figure out how to ship these sets without breaking them if they want to sell them.

One of the more exciting news stories we wrote up this month is about Kodak's new Grating ElectroMechanical System (GEMS) spatial light modulator. Similar in principle to the Grating Light Valve (GLV) developed by Silicon Light Machines and Sony, Kodak's GEM device is a linear array of modulators that can diffract a line of laser light to a scanning galvanometer to create a laser projection display system. The devices could see use in projection TVs, data visualization and simulation systems. I bet Sony is not too happy about this.

Speaking of Sony, they are set to debut a new 4K x 2K resolution SXRD (LCOS) projector at InfoComm that should be quite impressive, judging by the image quality of their other SXRD product, the Qualia 004 LCOS projector with 1920 x 1080 resolution. Reportedly, Sony will position the new 8K projector for digital cinema applications where it will offer 4 times as many pixels as a DLP Cinema platform for about half the price. I bet TI is not too happy about that.

And speaking of TI, we had a chance to see a very nice shootout of TI's new HD3 and xHD chip sets at the Home Entertainment show in New York City last month. Both feature a new scanning technology that uses about half the number of mirrors to create an on-screen image with twice as many pixels. The HD3 chips offer 1280 x 720 resolution in a size and cost-reduced 0.55-inch package while the xHD offer 1920 x 1080 in a 0.9-inch package. We took a hard look at the HD3 sets vs. LCOS and HTPS competitors and vs. Samsung's current HD2 sets. The bottom line is that the new scanning method works on the HD3 sets as the image quality is as good and even better than the competitors. The xHD chip set still needs some work as we saw some artifacts which gave us a good clue about how the new chip sets work, as TI has been mum on the subject so far. Samsung looks like it will be the only company to come to market in 2004 with HD3 sets, which should give it a nice competitive advantage.

In what has become an annual tradition at SID, Holger Moench, a research scientist at Philips Research Laboratories presented new data concerning Philips UHP lamps technology and operation. In his paper (#26.2), Moench revealed data for the first time that showed operation of the UHP lamp at higher frequencies (>200Hz) will actually reduce lamp lifetime, contrary to what many in the industry have believed. Projection Summit will have a whole session devoted to understanding the lamp issues including supply and demand - a significant factor in the potential market success of projection products for 2004 and 2005.

Development in screen technology is also heating up - and it is about time. Sony's wavelength selective screen technology, which adds a red, green and blue highly reflective layer on top of a black absorbing layer, created quite a stir at SID with it high-contrast and wide-viewing-angle images. In addition, DNP, Toppan and Jenmar Visual System have been busy with screen developments too. DNP is working to use cholesteric liquid crystals in a front projection screen to reduce contrast-degrading ambient light while Jenmar is use a polarizing film from Optiva to accomplish the same thing. Toppan is working on a crossed-lenticular RPTV screen design that will enable the expansion of the viewing cone in the vertical direction. Finally, a Finnish company called FogScreen has developed a novel walk-through screen/projection system that uses a finely controlled mist of water vapor to create the screen. Definitely cool.

There is also some nice progress underway in optical component technology. ColorLink for example, has proposed a new solid state color wheel design that adds some optics, but simplifies the retarder design to improve cost and performance. Wavien has proposed an all-lightpipe HTPS-LCD projection engine that offers savings in size and cost. Coresix and Unaxis are beefing up capacity to meet surging demand for components for microdisplay-based projection systems. And, 3M is working on lifetime tests for its Vikuiti optical core that provides color management in a three-panel LCOS engine. It has some new lead-free glass and new adhesives it hopes will achieve a 20K hour lifetime.

Speaking of 3M, this Vikuiti core was showcased in a 65-inch RPTV demonstrator using Brillian panels at SID and offered very high image quality. Brillian also showed a similar set using the UltreX-3 color management core with outstanding performance - hence the Best Buzz award. The 720p version of sets should roll by late summer through one of Brillian's unnamed customers and will be a bit pricey at $7 to $8K. But that will limit demand allowing Brillian and its partners to properly ramp up to support a rapid price reduction later.

Philips showed its 1080p demo at SID and is now starting a real roll out of its 720p models in 44-, 55- and 61-inch screen sizes. Mitsubishi is set to roll out its 2004 RPTV line with one LCOS and six DLP models. Samsung's 2004 line of HD3 and HD2+ RPTV is also due to start the roll out this summer.

Samsung is also planning on offering a five-color DLP-RPTV in 2005. This set will expand the RGB signal into five primaries and use a color wheel with red, green, blue, cyan and yellow segments. This not only expands the color space allowing better display of colors like gold and turquoise, but it can use the light normally rejected by the yellow notch filter, thus offering a brighter set. This will top the company's product line in 2005.

And, we have news about LCD-TVs, PDP-TVs, alternative big-screen displays, tiled/blended displays and 3D display systems in this issue. We have news from the Digital Cinema segment, the Visualization/Simulation market - not to mention Business and Strategic, Channel, Bottom Line, etc. Check the Table of Contents to see the news we covered in these other sections.

Until next time…

Chris Chinnock
203-831-8404
chris@insightmedia.info

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