January, 1999

NEWS & ANALYSIS

Digital Reflection Describes HDTV Manufacturing Plan

Last October, Microdisplay Report noted how Digital Reflection, Inc. (DRI, Los Gatos, CA) planned to crack open the HDTV market by enabling a product at the provocative retail price point of $2,000. After a recent visit to the company, it is hard not to be impressed with their game plan.

Samsung Gains Daewoo’s MEMS Technology in "Big Deal"

It was fascinating to watch last month, as the art of the business deal unfolded - Korean style. Under the draft agreements signed December 15, 1998, the five biggest Chaebol, or family-run conglomerates, have agreed to accelerate corporate restructuring by introducing inter-group swaps of overlapping businesses. In what is being termed the "Big Deal", Samsung Electronics (Seoul, Korea) is swapping their automotive operation for Daewoo’s Electronics Company (Seoul, Korea) - which includes their TMA display operation.

2-D MEMS Scanners Get Attention

Three companies are now working on Micro-Electrical-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) devices to be used for 2-D laser scanning. Such devices are much smaller and less costly than conventional 1-D galvo-mirror and polygon-mirror scanning apparatus. With the latter, two orthogonal units are required to achieve a 2-D scan, thus increasing system bulk, weight and complexity. 2-D MEMS scanners, by contrast, are composed of a single bi-axial element made in a semiconductor fab.

New ASICs Support Kopin’s QVGA Display

Kopin Corporation (Taunton, MA) is on a roll. With the introduction of several new support ASICs from their strategic partners, and more promised very soon, the company’s, and their partner’s prospects are improving. The need for support ASICs to perform display control and data interface has emerged as a major stumbling block for acceptance and implementation of new microdisplay technologies, so their introduction bodes well for the entire industry. (Includes Data Table)

SpatiaLight Ships XGA Microdisplay

SpatiaLight (Novato, CA) has now formally thrown it’s hat into the microdisplay ring with an announcement recently that they have begun to ship an OEM developer’s kit. Included is the company’s XGA liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) display, a 3 x 5 inch circuit board containing the display drive electronics, and a power supply. The kit is $10K.

Siliscape Readies Displays for Wireless Mobile Market

Many in the microdisplay community cite cellphones, webphones and other wireless, but data hungry applications, as prime users of high-resolution miniature displays. Skeptics point out that wireless data transmission today is typically a paltry 9.6 Kbps, making access to graphical images a slow and tedious process. "That’s true," says Siliscape (Sunnyvale, CA) President & CEO, Joy Weiss, "but wireless bandwidths are improving rapidly."

S-Vision Shows Rear-Screen Monitor

S-Vision (Santa Clara, CA) has begun to publicly demonstrate their latest reference design. It is a 24-inch rear-projection monitor, in a 4:3 aspect ratio, that uses three of the company’s XGA MicroLCDs, which are based upon liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) technology.

Projection Displays Are Tougher to Make

The demands on liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) microdisplays used in projection products are much more stringent than those used in virtual display applications. So much so, that Bill Nicholson, National Semiconductor’s (Santa Clara, CA), Marketing Director says they are currently 2 to 2.5 times as expensive as a comparable virtual microdisplay.

MicroDisplay Tests Rapid Prototyping Tools

The MicroDisplay Corporation (San Pablo, CA) says they can now design a liquid-crystal-on-silicon (LCOS) microdisplay in 4 weeks and fabricate it in 6 weeks. To prove it, they are now putting this claim to the test.

APPLICATIONS

Head-Mounted Displays

Profile of activities at Microvision

Video Walls

New concepts from Sun Microsystems and QD Technologies

Front Projection

Wrap-up of new products from Epson, Hughes JVC, Panasonic, and In Focus Systems (with Data Table).

HDTV

Wrap-up of news from Hitachi, Samsung, Philips, Mitsubishi, Mausushita amd Sony. (Includes Data Table of many currently available HDTVs)

Wearable PCs

Wrap-up of news from Xybernaut and Irvine Sensors

MARKET INTELLIGENCE

Market news from EIJA, Techno Systems Research, Forrester Research, Datamonitor, Ovum, Strategis Group, Dataquest, and DisplaySearch

THE BOTTOM LINE

Financial news from Three-Five Systems and SpatiaLight