MicroDisplay Corporation (San Pablo, CA) (www.microdisplay.com) has been working on a reference design to showcase the operation of its LCOS panel in a single-panel projection engine. In a paper presented at the IDMC conference in Taiwan recently, author Mary Lou Jepsen showed the results of an extensive modeling effort that evaluated single-panel engine designs with different drive schemes, lamp and illumination systems.

Jepsen modeled several different parameters to try to figure out the best architecture for a single-panel LCOS engine. Parameters evaluated included etendue, polarization recapture, scrolling illumination, color balance, panel reflectance and panel duty cycle. The result of this study was a determination that for the company's 0.82-inch single LCOS panel, a scrolling system that produces two colors on the panel at the same time with a polarization recovery system yielded light output of 429 lumens (150W lamp), 343 lumens (120W lamp), or 286 lumens (100W lamp).

If a small white segment is added to the color wheel, light output increases nearly 45% to 624 lumens (150W lamp), 500 lumens (120W lamp), or 416 lumens (100W lamp). If such a system were coupled to a 50-inch RPTV with a 2.5 gain screen, the on-screen brightness would be 492 nits, which many would judge as bright enough.

The company says it has verified these results in prototype systems and have achieved on-screen contrast of 800:1, although we have not seen this demo yet.

Microdisplay Corp., Mary Lou Jepsen, 510-243-9515, mlj@microdisplay.com

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Insight Media, Annmarie Gabisch, 203-831-8464, Annmarie@insightmedia.info