New Big-Screen Display Technologies By Cliff Roff    October, 2003 Published: October 2003 in CustomRetailer DUNKIRK, MD. - The writing on the wall suggests TVs will be on the wall, in more homes than ever. Everybody wants these new flat screens, but even with prices dropping to the $3,000 ballpark for entry-level models, they're still a bit steep for most homes. The challenge now is the ability to produce flat screens cheaply - something most major manufacturers, and even some scrappy start-ups, are frantically working on achieving. LONG LIVE PLASMA? Plasma screens were at the cutting edge of big-screen display technology when the concept of the hang-on-the-wall TV first became reality about a decade ago (and especially after Philips started advertising it on TV). But unlike some consumer electronics products - like VCR, CD, DVD, and DBS - which saw prices drop to just a fraction of the introductory prices after mass production took off, plasma display panels (PDPs) have remained stubbornly expensive, with most models from major manufacturers still costing between $5,000 and $20,000. So the race is on to come up with alternative big-screen flat-panel technologies that cost less, such as the innovative SCRAMscreen rear projection TV, and the TDEL panel. Among non-CRT big-screen technologies, plasma displays are perhaps the most similar to traditional CRTs, because the screen is coated with phophors that light up red, green, or blue when exposed to electricity. The difference is that CRTs use an "electron gun" to create the electrical charge, whereas plasma screens use electrically charged plasma located immediately behind the phosphor-coated screen. One drawback of plasma technology that has always made manufacturers and retailers a bit nervous is the potential for image burn-in. Another issue that nobody's heard the last of is the life of the plasma screen - generally estimated at eight to ten years, after which the picture fades. Despite these problems, plasma technology remains the one to beat, at least in terms of market demand. At the high end of the current spectrum, there are already some impressive achievements. Mitsubishi's PD-6130 sports a 61-inch widescreen, though with a hefty $20,499 list price to match. Sony's newest $12,000 50-inch Japanese model, the KDE-P50HZ1, comes with an innovative color touch-screen remote control that doubles as a WebPad or second TV screen, and communicates with the TV wirelessly via 802.11a WiFi networking. But as far as PDPs are concerned, the real action is at the low end of the spectrum, where upstart companies are attempting to build new names for themselves in TV marketing by underselling the established brands. PC maker Gateway, which is strenuously targeting the larger consumer electronics market, started this trend with the breakthrough $2,999 GTW- P42M102 plasma display, featuring a 42-inch screen and 852 x 480 resolution . Last spring, a California-based company called V Inc. introduced the Vizio P4, a larger 46-inch PDP with a ground-breaking $3,999 price tag and similar 852 x 480 resolution. So far, the better-known PDP TV manufacturers haven't responded with lower prices, but rather with better quality. Pioneer's new 50-inch model, the PDP-5040HD, improves color depth to display up to one billion different colors (most digital displays are currently limited to 16.7 million colors). Hitachi's CMP412HDU has a hefty $7,995 price tag, but sports a more finely- detailed resolution courtesy of AliS technology. Runco has integrated much of the functionality of its external ViVX processor into its new 50-inch CW-50MC and dropped the price by nearly $3,000. While the economics of plasma technology continue to sort themselves out among manufacturers and consumers, a host of alternative big-screen technologies are poised to replace plasma's primacy if prices don't start dropping faster. LCD COMING UP BIG While LCD TV has already become a much-desired product in "portable" sizes, manufacturers still believe the technology is viable in larger sizes and are hard at work to make LCD screens bigger. Today, one of the biggest commercially-available LCD screens, which was just demonstrated this fall, is the Philips 52-inch widescreen (16:9) 52W TFT (thin film transistor) LCD, expected to go into mass production late this year. Besides being big, the 52W sports the unusually high resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels (2.07 million pixels). But its most attractive feature may not be size or resolution, but viewing angle. Using Philips' Super-In-Plane- Switching technology (S-IPS), the company says the 52W has a 176-degree viewing angle, with a minimum of color shift as the viewing angle changes. This viewing angle is essentially of color shift as the viewing angle changes. This viewing angle is essentially the same as traditional direct-view CRT televisions. The color shift problem, in which the colors on the screen appear to change as the viewing angle changes, has been one of the biggest drawbacks of LCD big-screen technology. Meanwhile, Samsung demonstrated an even bigger 54-inch TFT LCD screen last January, also with 1920 x1080 resolution and 16:9 aspect ratio. The Samsung LCD module weighs just 44 pounds and is only two inches thick, and is currently the worlds biggest. Sony hasn't announced anything nearly that big yet, but LCD TV sets do keep getting bigger more gradually. This fall Sony introduced its biggest LCD model yet - the 26-inch KLV-26HG2, a wide-screen model with 1280 x 768 resolution and a $3,300 price tag. Sharp's 37-inch LC-37HV4U continues to impress everyone with its speed, brightness and resolution, but at $7,499, it's difficult to sell next to larger plasmas that might cost almost half. TDEL Right now, all big-screen flat-panel TVs have one really major drawback: They cost too much. In an attempt to come up with a way to produce and market hang-on-the-wall TVs as inexpensively as CRT TVs, a relatively unknown Canadian company called iFire (a subsidiary of Westaim Corporation) has developed an innovative new technology called thick-film dielectric electro-luminescent displays, or TDEL for short. It is now teaming up with Sanyo and Dai Nippon Printing Co. of Japan to create low-priced flat panel displays in the mid 30-inch size category. The thick film manufacturing process makes these screens 30 to 40 percent less costly than other flat panel technologies, iFire says, with comparable performance. It is based on inorganic electro-luminescence, or EL, which is well-established technology previously seen in applications such as Timex Indiglo watches. EL is based on generating light by applying an alternating electrical field to inorganic light-emitting phosphors. The company has developed a way to harness the blue-light emitted EL, and convert it to the red, green, and blue colors needed for a color TV image. They call this process "Color-by-Blue." The blue phosphors essentially trigger another layer of red and green phosphors to produce the full color-TV spectrum. Why go to the trouble? Because generating a pixel of light using this technology is much simpler, and theoretically cheaper to manufacture, than plasma or LCD screens. The company has already demonstrated a 17-inch screen using TDEL technology, and it says it's gearing up with Sanyo to produce 34-inch and larger panels, commercially, for sale as HDTV sets by 2005 that will be price-competitive with traditional direct-view CRT television sets. REAR PROJECTION IS NEW AGAIN At first glance you'd probably think good-old rear projection TV's days are dated, as prices for flat-panel technology come down. For old-fashioned CRT-based models, that's probably true. But more modern technologies used in creating images, such as DLP and LCD, have reduced the depth of rear-screen TVs while eliminating the traditional alignment problems. Now, rear projection TV is poised to take another big leap forward with the introduction of a new technology called "SCRAM" that can make a rear projection set almost as thin as a flat panel model. The key is a system of light guides and optical compression based on technology developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Conventional rear projection systems expand the image from a small display (a DLP engine or LCD panel) like a pyramid, requiring lots of space behind the screen for the image to expand. With SCRAM, the screen itself consists of many layers of optical waveguides. "The core material of the layers has a particular index of refraction," explained SCRAM CEO Ray Kwong in a press release, "and the coating has a slightly lower index, so we achieve total internal reflection. Conventional projection systems expand the image like a pyramid. We compress the image in one plane, so what we're throwing around in our box is a ribbon of light." The SCRAMscreen, as it's called, is made from a series of clear polymer light guides, laminated together and surrounded by black polymer sheets that help improve contrast and absorb ambient light. Based in Dunkirk, Maryland, SCRAM most recently announced a collaboration with Samsung to produce two new 52-inch rear projection TV sets by early 2004, using Samsung DLP engines as the picture source. The depth of these RPTVs is expected to be only between seven and 12 inches. A 50-inch prototype that SCRAM has already demonstrated at trade shows is just nine inches deep, and Kwong says SCRAM could produce a wall- mountable 36-inch rear projection model that's just six inches deep. Front Projection TVs Front projection TV technology is boiling down to a battle between DLP micro-mirror technology and LCoS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon), both of which are described in more detail below. Each of these new image-producing technologies offers distinct advantages over plain- old LCD panels, which previously dominated the front projector market. The current state-of-the-art in front projection technology can be seen in Sony's new Qualia 004 projector, an LCoS model with 190 x 1080 resolution. Like most LCoS models to date, it uses separate panels for red, green and blue imaging, with some two million pixels on each panel. Sony's twist on the LCoS technology is called "SXRD," which Sony says creates a more vertically-aligned optical path, with reduced cell gaps (spacing between pixels), resulting in better contrast (3000:1) and less "screen door" effect. All this doesn't come cheap, however - the Qualia 004, intended for high-end home theater, carries a hefty $25,000 price tag. ORGANIC LED Organic LED (OLED) technology may be to this decade what "plastics" were to the 60s. They are poised to become the next big thing, but don't expect to see OLED big-screen TV sets anytime soon. Compared to competing LCD technology, OLED is cheaper to manufacture, lighter in weight, thinner, and requires no backlight. OLED screens can work by reflecting ambient light, making them terrific for daytime viewing. There are two forms of OLED displays, called small molecule OLED and polymer-based OLED, which is also known as LEP, for light-emitting polymer, and which claims to have a longer life. OLED will someday make possible pen-sized displays that literally roll out a paper-thin screen from within a pen-shaped cylinder. Their initial applications will all be small-sized screens, such as for use in cell-phones and PDAs, and as the picture source for rear-projection and front-projection TVs. But the real breakthrough for OLED - probably a decade or more away -- will be an extremely lightweight, extremely thin, hang-on-the-wall TV. DLP Who ever would have thought that a semi-mechanical system for bouncing light would be the hot ticket to making high-quality, inexpensive rear and front projection systems? Introduced in 1996, the Digital Light Processor (DLP), based on the Digital Micromirror Device (DMD), has been one of the most successful new technology stories in big-screen TVs. Simply put, the device consists of hundreds of thousands of tiny mirrors, mounted on a microchip, that can be controlled to tilt back and forth based on an electrical signal. Controlling that tilt controls the brightness of the light reflected off the mirror to the TV screen. While the best pro-grade DLP devices use three separate DLP chips for independent processing of red, green and blue light, most consumer TV sets use a one-chip approach. A color filter wheel spins very quickly in front of the DLP chip, providing first a fraction of a second of red light, then a fraction of a second of green, then blue, then red again, and so on. This all happens so quickly that to the eye, all the colors appear to be present at the same time. But the color wheel approach is inherently inefficient. When the white light is filtered to appear blue, for example, some two thirds of the light source's energy is being wasted, and is simply absorbed by the filter (creating heat). That's where Texas Instruments, the creator of DLP technology is setting its sights next: More efficient ways of creating one-chip DLP displays. Their solution, still in the lab at this point, is called SCR - sequential color recapture. The system uses a new spiral-patterned color filter wheel, combined with a high reflectance "light tunnel integrator." It's a complicated process, but it essentially means that the light generated by the DLP projector's light source will be used more efficiently, and you'll see less shimmer in the image (an artifact of the spinning color wheel). The SCR technology is particularly well suited for home theater applications, where energy efficiency and the lower-cost of one-chip projector design is paramount. In more expensive theatrical DLP applications, the three-chip approach is always used. LCOS Liquid Crystal on Silicon, or LCoS, is a rent variation on traditional liquid crystal display (LCD) design. LCoS is an improvement over traditional LCD because the pixels are closer together, almost eliminating the space between them and eliminating the "screen door" effect. LCoS panels generally reflect light, rather than transmit it: this allows LCoS-based TVs to be built in a smaller space too. So if LCoS is so much better than regular LCD screens, what's the catch? Cost. They're significantly more expensive than regular LCD, and so far, most LCoS designs use three separate panels for red, green and blue light, combining their images together with a prism before projecting it to a front or rear screen. JVC has managed to create a single-panel LCoS design, using proprietary technology called D-ILA, for digital image light amplification. The system uses three-dimensional holographic filtering to direct light to separate red, green, and blue pixels on the LCoS chip. Still, however, LCoS projection TVs cost more than traditional LCD models. WAITING IN THE WINGS Efforts to create the next big-screen experience continue, and scientists are buzzing with new ideas. A new technology being jointly developed by Toshiba and Canon is called SED, for surface conduction electron-emitter display. Like traditional CRTs and PDPs, the screen is coated with phosphors that emit red, green and blue light when activated by electricity. The twist here is the use of "electron emitters" just behind the phosphors to create the electrical charges. Toshiba says SED TVs will be the same size as plasma screens, have better performance, lower energy consumption, and will hit the market some time in 2004. Meanwhile, a group of university-based researchers in Orlando, Florida say they have developed an infrared laser-based screen technology that uses red, green and blue crystal coatings on the screen to convert the laser's infrared light to the desired colors. This project is still in the R&D phase. Perhaps the weirdest of all the new big-screen technologies uses a screen made out of fog. Developed in Finland, the system uses any projector (3000 ANSI lumens brightness recommended) and forms the image in what appears to be the middle of thin air - it's a layer of fog that is suspended below the device. It's unlikely to make it to many home theater applications, but you'll probably be seeing it at trade shows, airports and other public spaces. The developers say they are working on an interactive, fog-based "touch screen" for kiosk applications next. Fortunately, all the choices and potential confusion is not keeping customers away. A recent forecast by Insight Media and the McLaughlin Consulting Group predicts that by 2006, the market for rear-projection sets will grow to 6.5 million units, roughly double 2002 levels. Some two million plasma TVs will be sold in 2006, they predict, along with 3.1 million LCD TVs, and 1l9 million front projection sets. However, all of those numbers still pale in comparison with their predicted number of over-3-inch traditional direct-view CRT models, which is expected to reach 19 million units by 2006. So predictions of the imminent death of the CRT are still a bit premature. If you were hoping the dust would settle soon, and one or two of the new big-screen technologies would emerge as the victors, unfortunately the picture is not nearly that clear. For the next few years, at least, it looks like the choices in big-screen home theater TV screen technologies will expand, not contract. Which may mean more confusion for the consumer, but will also mean more reliance on the custom installer and home theater designer to help select the most appropriate technology for each installation and budget. About SCRAM Technologies, Inc. SCRAM Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1998 to develop, manufacture and market a revolutionary, passive display technology that provides high contrast, high brightness, interactivity, wide viewing angles, modularity and more. This technology, which the Company has designated as "SCRAMscreen® Technology" is a versatile, multifunctional, display technology. SCRAMscreens® can be used for everything from traditional rear projection displays to cutting edge HDTV/Digital flat panel displays; from seamless, tiled outdoor display applications to curved, interactive, high-contrast dashboards and instrumentation panels. Whether it is a curved viewing environment, or a simultaneous multi-imagery projection display, SCRAMscreen® technology provides a performance enhancing, cost effective, platform for innovation in display applications. SCRAM Technologies' corporate offices are located at 2827 Chesapeake Beach Rd., Dunkirk, MD 20754. Other information about SCRAM Technologies is available via the World Wide Web at http://www.scramtech.com.