SPECIAL SECTION: SID 2005 Unveils Host of New Products.(Society For Information Display)

The Society For Information Display (SID, San Jose, CA) held their annual conference and product exhibition in Boston from May 24th to the 27th. SID, with 6000 members, represents the international display community. As usual, the event was packed with new ideas and better adaptations of existing technologies. I call it the future of displays since the products represent the direction of the industry. Following are some of the highlights of this annual get together.

82-inch LCD TV. Samsung Electronics was clearly a star at the show as they unveiled two TVs plus some new backlighting technology. First Ill talk about the televisions. The companys 82-inch LCD TV panel, the largest in the world, was exhibited for the first time. It was produced on the worlds largest TFT LCD (1,870mm by 2,200mm) production line, located in Tangjeong, Korea. Benefiting from the 7G (seventh generation) technology, Samsungs large prototype is equipped with proprietary extended viewing angle technology, an unsurpassed vertical and horizontal viewing angle of 180 degrees, 92 percent NTSC color reproduction and a screen quality response speed of 8 ms or less. In addition to the 40- and 46-inch LCD TV panels currently in mass production, Samsung believes that the 82-inch LCD TV panel, along with a 57-inch LCD panel, will impact the growth of the large LCD TV market in a significant way.

The 40-inch amorphous silicon OLED prototype us the worlds largest single-sheet glass plate OLED and demonstrates that Samsung Electronics implementation of OLED is unique and scalable. It employs WXGA (1280 by 800) HD class resolution and screen brightness of up to 600 nits, as well as a black and white contrast ratio (shade ratio) of at least 5000:1 and a color reproduction scale of 80% or higher. The ultra-slim panel will enable large sized OLED TVs with a thickness of only 3 cm or less.

A 2.22-inch RGB backlight LCD also was featured. It uses a three- wave LED light source of red, green and blue instead of a conventional two wave light (blue and yellow) LED, allowing it to provide greater color reproduction for mobile LCDs. The three wave light source lets the 2.22-inch backlight offer enhanced color tones, improving color reproduction from todays 60% to 86%, relative to NTSC standards.

In addition, Samsung Electronics showed an ultra-slim 46-inch LED BLU (Back Light Unit) that employs Xmitter, the companys proprietary optical technology. It has an optical structure than enhances light usage efficiency by more than 40%, relative to todays widely used side scan method. The 46-inch LED BLU consumes 40% less power, compared to existing LED products. It not only displays outstanding color reproduction at 107% and brightness of 500 nits, but is being positioned as the next ...