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Displays Media Television Science Technology

MicroDisplay Claims Progress Toward Elusive LCoS 127

Posted by timothy from the jaguar-shark dept.
zajaco0 writes "USA Today posted an article that talks about the LCoS (liquid crystal on silicon) technology that is being researched for the next thin, big-screen TVs. Big companies invest millions of dollars researching this technology and none of them seem to be making any headway. The companies who have this project on their failed list include Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Intel, and Philips. MicroDisplay seems to be making some progress though, says the company's CEO: 'After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works.'"
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MicroDisplay Claims Progress Toward Elusive LCoS More

MicroDisplay Claims Progress Toward Elusive LCoS

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  • Great... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by goldspider ( 445116 )
    The more they dump into R&D, the more they can justify selling the damn things for. I'm not going to hold my breath until one of these finds its way into my living room.
    • The more they dump into R&D, the more they can justify selling the damn things for. I'm not going to hold my breath until one of these finds its way into my living room.

      But if the new LCoS units are really expensive and thus become the "must have" for wealthy techno-geeks, then the sales of televsions from the current technologies should suffer as a result, which in turn should lower their prices.

      Or so the theory goes...:)

      • Re:Great... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by stratjakt ( 596332 )
        I was promised by our corporate masters that by now an LCD computer monitor would be less than a CRT.

        To hell with all of 'em. A team of PhD's working around the clock to invent a more expensive replacement to current tech.

        Bah
        • ...and they delivered... you can buy a LCD monitor now for less then you could have bought a similarly sized CRT just a few years ago. It was not tool long ago that a 17" CRT was a luxury going for more than $500, and that is non-adjusted dollars.

  • Cheap (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Manan Shah ( 808049 )
    Hopefully, this will spur competition and drive the prices down on expensive plasma TV's as well as high end computer screens.

  • 50 million (Score:1, Interesting)

    by poison_reverse ( 647609 )
    50 million doesn't really sound like that much money considering the big names in that list. I mean phd's usually get compensated well right?

    • Re:50 million (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Manan Shah ( 808049 )
      By well, if you mean 'not so well', then yes. Compared to management, a lot of phD's don't make all that much in research. Most people go into research (any type of research) because they are intrested in the field and subject.
    • I hope so, or I'll be broke until I die when I get out of school.
      • You'll be broke until you die when you get out of school. Unless, of course, your research is in a field that people are willing to pay a lot of money for, and you can get your hands on some of those grants. Most University-dwelling PhD's make very little money, and the tenured professor is a rapidly disappearing breed as more schools fill up more faculty spots with adjunct professors.
    • It's not starvation, [ohio-state.edu] but not as good as a law degree by far.

    • Re:50 million (Score:3, Informative)

      by Politburo ( 640618 )
      Take the $50 million across the quoted 320 man-years and you get $156,250 per man-year. That doesn't seem like much when you consider overhead.
  • Doesn't one of the big TV makers have a production-model TV out based on this technology? Unless I'm mistaken (and I might be) I don't see how this is still an experimental technology.

  • 50 million, that is quite cheap (Score:4, Interesting)

    by DOsinga ( 134115 ) <douwe DOT webfeedback AT gmail DOT com> on Wednesday December 29, 2004 @03:49PM (#11212761) Homepage Journal
    320 men year of highly qualified researchers for 50 million, that works out pretty cheap. 150 000 dollars for a year of research? Where can you get that?

  • Price! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by thewldisntenuff ( 778302 )
    Im glad theyre getting somewhere.....But lower the prices on these damn things

    TFA talks about getting these to replace bulky tube tvs but they arent going to do it they way they charge for them. Most of the unwashed masses will not spend that much for a tv. Hell, who can afford some of them?

    First company to make these with great picture, decent size and priced at or comprable to the tube-based televisions will be worth millions.....billions even.....

    -thewldisntenuff

    • Re:Price! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 )
      I've said it before, even in this thread..

      But the first to market with a 27" or higher HDTV for under 500 bucks will own the market. Whether it's flat or boxy, it doesn't matter.

      I say 27" arbitrarily, that seems like a common minimum size for the set in most families' living rooms.

      Why can't they just make a cheap high res CRT? A 15" VGA monitor can display HDTV resolutions, so just make one thats 27", and eliminate all the multi-syncing crap, 30fps is all it needs.

      Seriously, what's the barrier in jus

  • Consider the source (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    USA today. The mouthpiece of marketing droids everywhere. Call me cynical, but I'll believe it when I see one down at Best Buy.
  • 50 million total out of X billion per year ?

  • A Deisgn that works (Score:5, Funny)

    by teiresias ( 101481 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2004 @03:52PM (#11212801)
    'After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works.'

    One would hope.

  • If and first you don't succeed? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jacobcaz ( 91509 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2004 @03:54PM (#11212825) Homepage
    • "After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works."
    How many tries did it take Edison to invent the light bulb? Thousands. This is a little more tricky than building a light bulb that can last for 1000 hours.

    Edison himself said, "Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

    • Re:If and first you don't succeed? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "How many tries did it take Edison to invent the light bulb?" I don't know, why don't you ask the people he pushed and then took the credit?
    • Luckily for us, they've already found 21 ways not to make a LCoS TV, so we don't have to!
    • light bulbs could last "forever", but where does the market go? House For Sale By Owner, light bulbs NOT included, i'm taking them with me, dammit.
    • Edison was stupid. He just tried to dumb luck into the right solution. If he had had ANY brains in his head he could have reasoned what he was looking for:

      A metal with the some of the following properties: high tensile strength, high melting point and a low evaporation rate.

      He then would have talked to a few chemists, who surely by 1900 would have had lists of the properties of chemicals, elements and alloys. He would have selected a few that looked promising, tested them, and hopefully tungsten woul

  • On a related note, Toshiba's SED making progress (Score:5, Informative)

    by Thagg ( 9904 ) <thadbeier@gmail.com> on Wednesday December 29, 2004 @03:57PM (#11212845) Journal
    I've been following the story about the joint venture between Toshiba and Canon on SED TV's for some time. Apparently it has become somewhat more real, as shown in this article [newsfactor.com].

    Apparently things are going well enough with the new factory that Toshiba is stopping plasma-panel production, and staking its future on SED TV's.

    SEDs are like CRTs, in that they use electron guns to shoot electrons across a vacuum at a phosphor scren to generate light. The difference is that SEDs have a semiconductor-based electron emitter at each pixel. This allows the screen to be flat, shallow (a few centimeters) and relatively lightweight, while preserving the fast response, brightness, and wide viewing-angle of regular CRTs. Also, somewhat surprisingly, SEDs are significantly less power-hungry than plasma panels or even big LED screens.

    Toshiba and Canon have built a factory to start building these TVs, and apparently they are going to be trickling into the market toward the end of 2005. I can't wait!

    Thad Beier
    • Any idea on cost of these? I'm assuming that picture quality will be comparable as that is probably one of the biggest concerns of any display. Next to that though would probably be cost.

      Also, I'm curious on lifetime. I know plasma screens are 30,000 hours plus for a decent set therefore they don't need to be replaced for more than a decade for a user who watches 5 hrs. a day.

    • The tech really does sound promising, the picture quality of a high end CRT with the footprint of a plasma.

      But what of price? It does me no good if they list at 10,000+.

      Where are these roll-up OLED TV's that we will hang on our walls and just toss and replace when they wear out, because they're so cheap?

      Footprint or not, if HDTV is to take off, someone needs to get a 27" or larger HDTV set out there for less than 500 bucks.
    • The lower power consumption is not much of a surprise as it is not necessary to use field coils to aim the electron guns, or in fact to aim them at all.
    • If it's still a fixed resolution like an LCD or Plasma I (personally) will find it absoloutely of no use what-so-ever.

      A _GOOD_ crt still beats LCD's in picture quality, be it television or computer information that's being displayed
      • A _GOOD_ crt still beats LCD's in picture quality, be it television or computer information that's being displayed

        However, CRT displays do have a couple of major downsides:

        1. They tend to use a LOT of power--a 19" CRT display uses about 3-4 times the power of an LCD of similar diagonal size for viewing area.

        2. There is considerable trial and error in fiddling with the monitor geometry controls to get the display to look just right. With LCD's, plasma, and soon SED's, such problems usually don't exist.

  • Philips Attempt (Score:4, Informative)

    by cosmicpossum ( 554246 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2004 @04:02PM (#11212895)
    Philips actually had a finished LCos TV set ready for production. I saw it at a compliance testing lab that they use last January. I am not sure what kept them from marketing the set but I know that the lab tech said that it had problems with its RF emissions.
    • "Philips actually had a finished LCos TV set ready for production. I saw it at a compliance testing lab that they use last January. I am not sure what kept them from marketing the set but I know that the lab tech said that it had problems with its RF emissions."

      Maybe it was sending a distress signal [slashdot.org].
    • Actually I just bought a 55" model of one of these for a friend through their employee partner store. The set is pristine as near as we can tell, and Halo 2 looks gorgeous on it. avsforum.com has a few rather long threads about it, by the way.

      The first two generations had trouble with quality control. Our 3rd Generation set (A Philips Cineos 55PL9524/37) looks great, and hasn't had any trouble in the month or so that we've had it.

      You can find the 55" sets as either a Philips Cineos 55PL9524/37 or Philips
    • Philips apparently saw all it needed to see and gave up on this already as of sometime back in October, IIRC. I don't have a link but I seem to recall a news story mentioning immediate (?) discontinued production a $500 drop in prices across the board for all such sets.
  • The article is a little misleading.

    While there have been failures with LCOS, there have also been some good successes.

    JVC's D-ILA (LCoS) is doing very well, and JVC has been doing LCoS for a long time successfully in front projectors.

    Sony's SXRD is LCoS and is going to be available in probably the best RPTV money can buy next month (supposedly). I assume it will also trickle down to their less high-end equipment late 2005 or early 2006.

    The reason Intel dropped out was a failure to differentiate - who w
    • I've been looking at DLPs (the only HDTV sets I can reasonably afford), and the 720p is an issue for me. Sure, it's a step up from NTSC, but not enough of one to justify the price. But a big point in favor of DLP is the light weight of the sets -- who wants to haul a 400 pound monster up the stairs?

      So, Texas Instruments, if you're lurking, please get to work on a 1080p version of your HD3 DLP chip.

      Chip H.

      • Re:A little grandstanding.. (Score:4, Interesting)

        by ePhil_One ( 634771 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2004 @04:48PM (#11213338) Journal
        So, Texas Instruments, if you're lurking, please get to work on a 1080p version of your HD3 DLP chip.

        Bah!

        1080p chips will need to interpolate 720p broadcasts, and they will look crappy. You have three standards that matter in HDTV (there are more, but only three are actively being used):

        EDTV, 480p: Most stuff produced pre-HDTV get shown as this, and the TV networks are trying to convince us this is "HDTV" so they can create multiple chennels on each slice of the spectrum. Bad networks!

        720p: Most sports are broadcast like this, because the progressive image handles rapid movements far better. Sports are what is really driving HDTV's, because nobody has step up to offer HDTV porn, and do you really want them to?

        1080i: Those gorgeous landscapes PBS etc broadcast are likely done in this, since there is about 1/3 more vertical data. But fast movement gets motion blur as the odd lines out show the old location, and the new lines show the new locale. Icky.

        So let me know when they introduce a 2160p panel. Light three pixels for 720p, two for 1080i, (or better yet, line double the resolution up). The tech exists, and the panels aren't that big a part of the expense...

        • Native resolution of even a lowly 23" Apple HD Display can do your 1080i with room to spare. Step up to a 30", and talk with the guys over at eCinema Systems [ecinemasys.com]. Why wait for TV to get there. Pipe straight into the broadcasters feed :/
          • Native resolution of even a lowly 23" Apple HD Display can do your 1080i with room to spare.

            That's the problem. Native resolution on the Cinema HD is 1200 veritical pixels, 120 too many. So you can either sacrafice 10% of the screen and run it natively, or you can interpolate those 1080 pixels onto those 1200, so about half the native pixels are actually showing two "blended" pixels. The quality of the resulting image can vary considerably. You would think the result might be better with 720p, where every

            • True... Not to mention the fact that the HD display is "widescreen' so a 4:3 broadcast misses out on a lot of screen real estate. I tend to watch tv in a little corner of the monitor anyways, while gettign real work done. Not really a purist. Half the time in your typical "1080" TV you are using scaling from the 720 broadcasts.. and TVs are crap. :) Pity the 2560 x 1600 pixels of the 30" HD display [apple.com] aren't a nice factor of 1080 either :)

  • It's True! (Score:5, Funny)

    by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <hiland.gmail@com> on Wednesday December 29, 2004 @04:12PM (#11212990)
    'After 22 designs, 320 man-years, a 50% staff of Ph.Ds, and $50 million, you end up with a design that works.'

    This is how we got Pamela Anderson.

  • Ummm... I own one... (Score:4, Informative)

    by nsxdavid ( 254126 ) * <{ten.yalp} {ta} {wd}> on Wednesday December 29, 2004 @04:18PM (#11213049) Homepage
    I don't get this... I own a LCoS HDtv. Its rather beautiful when displaying hidef, with the exception of a noticble banding in dark images... the black levels are not as good as I'd like. I have 55" screen, and it's fairly thin for a projection TV.... and light too. :)

    -- David
  • please let them make a badass heads up display with this
  • http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1745870 ,00.asp
  • See this review [extremetech.com] and this press release [syntaxgroups.com] for more info.
  • ... then it mysteriously vanished without comment from their lineup.

    Now it's all 720p, which is fine for gaming and sporting events, but for movie fans 1080 would be better.

    Then again, when the first wave of 1080p breaks, the other monitors will get cheaper, and I spend more time in Halo2 than watching Merchant Ivory upconversions anyway...
  • Quit wasting your money... I want my damn OLED TV! :P
    • hear hear!

      I have a nice 55" Philips rear-projection HDTV powered by 3 CRT tubes. The picture is awesome, the contrast is great, and there is no annoying color-shift or contrast change when not viewing dead-on. I would consider an LCD rear-projection to be a step down, and I won't buy plasma with the burnout problems.
      Now OLED is a different story; I would jump on that in a minute if I could get 60 inches of it for under 3 G's.
      Full-size high-contrast active-matrix flatpanel LCD with EL backlight might be o

  • I'll buy one when they build one that'll last... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by karlandtanya ( 601084 ) on Wednesday December 29, 2004 @04:41PM (#11213269)
    I paid under $300 for a 26" RCA CRT tv 10 years ago.
    It still looks as good as it did then. No, it's not the super-badass picture in the $3,000 TVs in the stores today. But it's not getting any worse.

    I've looked around and talked to people that own these fancy TVS as well as people that sell them. AFAICT, my options today are.


    1. Buy a CRT tv (but I already have one!)

    Maybe it'll last.

    Cost: Hundreds to a thousand.


    2. Buy a plasma TV.

    It'll last a year if you're lucky.

    Failure mode is "dead spots"

    Not repairable; throw it away.

    Cost: Starts at around a thousand for a crappy one.


    3. Buy an LCD TV.

    Same as plasma above, except failure mode is pixels stuck on or less frequently off.


    4. Buy a DLP projector.

    It'll probably last.

    But the bulb dies after 2-4k hours.

    Cost: Starts at around 500 for a crappy one.

    Plus about $150-$600/year for bulbs, depending on how much TV you watch--and my wife likes to have the TV on while she's home by herself.


    5. 'Course, if you're going to buy the "crappy one", you might as well keep that 10-year old RCA and save your money!


    I just don't see paying $1500 to $5,000 a year to watch TV. For a 3,000 hour year, that's $0.50 to $1.67 an hour cut in salary.

    To watch TV.

    I like cool gadgets as much as the next guy. But I already have a TV. If I'm going to drop that kinda cash EVERY YEAR, it's not going to be on a POS TV that craps out after a year or two.

    And, yes, my computer is almost 10 years old, too. It's amazing what you can get out of old hardware if you have the right distro.

    • Now for the actuall facts.

      Those $3000 TVs are usually purchased with an extended warranty. Cost: $200 year. It is a full replacement warranty that covers everything including cleaning and bulb replacement. Normal life of TV: at least 5 years. More typically 7 years.

      Cost for a 60" HDTV: more like $600 - $800 per year. For a family with a $100,000 year income that is less than 1%.

    • And, yes, my computer is almost 10 years old, too. It's amazing what you can get out of old hardware if you have the right distro.

      Almost as amazing as what you can get out of current hardware.

      I've heard of cheap, but you can easily build a box that's 7-8 years more up-to-date for well under the price of a 27" TV.
    • And, yes, my computer is almost 10 years old, too. It's amazing what you can get out of old hardware if you have the right distro.
      --
      [...] If you're not conservative by 40, you have no brain
      I guess you're over 40, then.
    • "3. Buy an LCD TV.

      Same as plasma above, except failure mode is pixels stuck on or less frequently off."

      Not quite. Dead or stuck pixels are usually caused by manufacturing defects, not age. If it's perfect when you get it, it will probably be perfect in 10 years.

      "Plus about $150-$600/year for bulbs, depending on how much TV you watch--and my wife likes to have the TV on while she's home by herself."

      At 4000 hours a bulb (for a good projector), assuming it's on 24 hours a day, you'll go through 2-3 bulbs a
  • CEO Sandeep Gupta? I don't know how common the name is, but is not Sandeep Gupta also the name of the Vice-Precident of Engineering at SCO? The same Sandeep Gupta who is testifying on SCO's behalf as to the "substantial similarities" of Linux and UNIX code? If this is the same person, how much weight should we give to his words? After IBM's lawyers are through with him, he certainly doesn't seem to have that much credibility in the tech industry any longer...

    • Re:How many Sandeep Gupta's are there? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      How many are there? Hundreds, if not thousands. It's a relatively common name in India. A Google search gave over 11,000 results, quite a number of which were for people in computer science or related fields.
    • Well, it doesn't appear to be the same person. The Gupta who works for sco [sco.com] has been there since 1996, and spent a lot of his time over in the UK.

      The Gupta who works for Microdisplay is probably located at their headquarters in San Pablo, CA [microdisplay.com].
    • CEO Sandeep Gupta? I don't know how common the name is
      It's the Sandeep Gupta conspiracy. They're taking over the world, one company at a time. The next time you see a Sandeep Gupta, run before he makes you another Sandeep Gupta.
  • This is a great example of why we need a patent system, though not necessarily the one we have. Industrious people pour thousands of hours of into getting something to work, and I think it is important that society protect their investment for a limited amount of time.

  • LCoS is old tech. (Score:2, Informative)

    by mookoz ( 217805 )
    Note that Sony isn't on the LCoS bandwagon. They're skipping the microdisplay technology and going right to grating light valve (GLV) tech. MEMS and lasers. Promises to be a bit more effective than LCD reflection.

    Sony is in a joint venture with this company, Silicon Light Machines:

    http://www.siliconlight.com [siliconlight.com]

  • Philips Counts LCoS as a Failure? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Compulawyer ( 318018 ) on Thursday December 30, 2004 @07:51AM (#11217905)
    Sayeth the Poster:

    "The companies who have this project on their failed list include Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba, Intel, and Philips."

    Philips? Excuse me? Philips has the Cineos [philips.com] LCoS TV on sale. I had the privilege of seeing a prototype and quite frankly it was an impressive piece of technology. Philips's chip design fundamentally differed from TI's and I believe also Intel's. The unit I saw had a 55 inch screen, was 18 inches deep, and weighed less than 80 pounds. The picture was the clearest and sharpest I had ever seen (studio HDTV feed - slightly better than HDTV broadcast quality, but not by that much). Quite an impressive piece of equipment, but as failures go, I guess it is, well, for lack of a better word, a failure.

  • ...you end up with a design that works.

    ...only on paper, though.

    :(

    Inject.

  • Judging by the job openings on their website [microdisplay.com], it would seem that the staff is composed of two very busy secretaries, and two PhDs.
    Ten years research...? Maybe the 320 (person) years includes the failed attempts by the other companies, and the secretaries ;).

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