Displaying the Future

With escalating costs to produce the chips, LCD glass, and other integral parts that go into today''s electronics, selling to the consumer – and not the pro audience – is a given for today''s manufacturers.

So that''s why it''s always important to track what''s going down at January''s CES International Consumer Electronics Show, far and away the largest consumer electronics convention going. Heck, with over 150,000 attendees, it''s also the largest convention held in Las Vegas. With complaints rife from CES attendees about the city''s increasingly inefficient road system and jammed monorail, attendees at the upcoming NAB convention should consider themselves lucky at the relative calm of that April exhibition.

With the once mighty Comdex computer show on permanent hiatus, CES 2006 also garnered much more attention by Intel, Microsoft, and a host of other computer companies. This helped to push corporate booth buying to an all time high, according to CES reports.

So here''s a quick look at just some of the new and intriguing display technologies and trends you could find walking the aisles of the busiest CES show yet. There''s too much news to cover here, so be sure to catch upcoming issues of Display Digest, as we track the latest in projector and monitor technologies.

One theme you couldn''t miss – product convergence. The buzz of the trade show, convergence came, for example, in any number of hand-held devices, with the result that every cell phone seemed to shoot and play video while portable ‘media centers'' played out MP3s as well as last night''s prime time shows transferred from a Tivo.

New display technologies had their day. A number of companies presented both tech demos and products that included OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens. OLEDs deliver great color fidelity, can be viewed from just about any angle, and draw about 1/10th the power of traditional LCD displays. There are still hurdles to overcome though; the organic material, for example isn''t all that stable and so has a tendency to fade too quickly.

Meanwhile, Canon and Toshiba''s way cool SED (surface-conduction electron-emitting) display drew crowds wowed by its high brightness, faithful color reproduction, very high contrast ratio, fast video-response performance, and low power consumption. Delivery is expected by Q3 of this year.

LEDs are taking off as the latest light source for LCDs and projectors; they promise a wider NTSC color gamut that makes even standard TV images pop.

Samsung''s SyncMaster 244ex, a 24-inch, 1920 x 1200 wide-screen display, features an LED backlight system that turns on instantly while requiring no warm-up time to reach its color temperature or maximum luminance.

Unlike fluorescent backlights, the LEDs have a 2 million-hour life cycle, so you'll get the most for your monitor money. The 244ex supports HDTV with composite S-Video and HD-component video inputs, as well as analog and digital inputs for the PC.

Texas Instruments announced a new DLP HDTV chipset that supports LED light sources, as well as new HDTV chipsets with BrilliantColor color processing technology.

TI''s two new HDTV chipsets (.45-in. 720p DLP chip and a .65-in. 1080p DLP chip) both feature BrilliantColor, a technique to extend DLP color processing from 3 colors up to 6 colors, which greatly increases the number of producible color shades and provides an increase of up to 50-percent of total screen brightness compared to previous generation DLP chips.

Samsung says it will be the one to ship the first commercially available DLP HDTV with an LED light engine this year.

Since LED light sources do away with the spinning color wheel needed when using a single light source, the color refresh rate can be boosted to 48x the standard TV frame rate, making it ideal for sports and other high motion playback, says Samsung.

LCD speeds—as measured by gray-to-gray response time—are increasing. BenQ says that its new FP93GX is the world's fastest 19-inch LCD monitor with a 2-millisecond timing. That''s ideal for playing back motion without the blur.

BenQ also debuted what it described as “the world's smallest and lightest projector”. The new CP120 micro-portable digital projector weighs only 2.9-lbs. and offers wireless connectivity compatible with the three most common 802.11 wireless standards, 802.11a, b, and g.

Dell keeps pushing into the display market, most recently with the debut of its 30-in. wide-screen UltraSharp 3007WFP. Features include a 2560 x 1600 native resolution and a relatively snappy response time of 11 milliseconds (gray to gray). Prices are very competitive.

The “mine is bigger” plasma screen race continues. Samsung, LG, and Panasonic each displayed such huge screens that you figure this may be more about bragging rights than practicality.

Panasonic''s prototype 103-in., 1080p plasma panel (1920 x 1080) uses a new rib structure as well as newly developed phosphors to maintain stable discharge and high picture quality across the entire surface of the panel, says the company. Panasonics spots the billboard as a multipurpose display for business, educational, and medical applications as well as home theater use.

Like Panasonic, Pioneer''s newest 50-in. plasma display also doubles pixel density over an interlaced-style display by using a progressive 1080 architecture.

Sony deployed its SXRD (Silicon X-tal Reflective Display) liquid crystal display technology in a new 55-in. Grand WEGA projection model. It''s said to be almost 50-percent thinner than the current 50-in. version while still delivering 1920 x 1080 resolution. SXRD uses smaller pixels as well as reduced space between pixels to deliver an image perceived as crisper and higher res.

Also unveiled: an 82-in., 1920 x 1080 BRAVIA LCD prototype. It''s the company''s first display to use Sony Extended Video YCC (xvYCC) technology, said to expand the color data range and deliver more image detail when combined with Sony's Triluminous (a version of LED backlighting) system.

Known mainly for its monitors, ViewSonic moves into the projection market with a series of budget projectors ranging in price from $899 to $1,499.

Both the 4.9-lb. 2000-lumen PJ458D and the 7.9-lb. 2,500-lumen PJ766D feature XGA resolutions (1024 x 768), 2000:1 contrast ratios, and the ability to support HDTV signals.