About a month ago we reported that Mitsubishi planned to develop a rear-projection TV using lasers instead of lamps as illumination source. Now, Seiko Epson has announced it too will develop laser-based TVs. Epson says it will use lasers from Novalux and has entered into a joint development and license agreement with the company for “Novalux Extended Cavity Surface Emitting Laser” (NECSEL) RGB illumination devices. Mitsubishi didn’t say who would supply its lasers, but we suspect Novalux also.

Matt Brennesholtz
Analyst for Insight Media

The idea of using a laser as a light source for a projection display is nothing new. In fact, Texas Instruments issued an internal report titled “Experimental Laser Display for Large Screen Presentation” in January, 1966. It is well understood that lasers have several major advantages over lamps, including low étendue that allows them to couple efficiently into small microdisplays, good colorimetry with very saturated primary colors and polarized light output. The problem with laser illumination has always been the cost of the lasers. While there are a few laser projectors on the market today, their prices all run into 6 figures US. Even if the price were 6 figures in Yen, the price would be too high for most mass-market projector applications.

Novalux has worked since 1998 to develop red, green and blue lasers with high enough powers and low enough costs to allow them to be used in mass-market projection displays. Today’s development indicates that these efforts may finally be coming to fruition.

“We are delighted to enter into this agreement with Epson, one of the world’s leading microdisplay manufacturers,” said Jean-Michel Pelaprat, Novalux chairman and CEO. ” It is a testament to the benefits that our technology brings to the display marketplace and a validation of our business model. It will allow solid-state light sources to infiltrate projection display, a market that has been severely limited by legacy lamp technology. NECSEL sources are higher performance, longer life and lower cost-they are perfectly suited for next-generation projection devices and will enable the best viewing experience to date.”

Epson is presumably excited about one of the features of the Novalux lasers - the output of polarized light. This simplifies the design of 3LCD projectors by eliminating polarizing components. NECSEL lasers can also eliminate fold mirrors, dichroic color filters and the fly’s eye integration lenses. All this can help to reduce cost.

Epson President Seiji Hanaoka said, “We believe laser illumination is a breakthrough in lighting technology that - combined with Epson’s cutting-edge projection technologies - could allow us to provide enhanced device performance at a competitive price. NECSEL technology is ideal for this application and we are excited to work with Novalux to bring this innovation to our customers.”

The press release did not mention any specific projector types or timetable for product introduction. SID’06 and INFOCOMM are coming: hopefully we will be able to see demonstration projectors soon. -MB