I have spent the day at the ADEAC conference, a SID-sponsored event focused on the professional, industrial and military display needs. As in the consumer TV space, there is a lot of technology innovation underway here, but it is different from what is going on in the consumer world.

Chris Chinnock
Sr. Analyst and Sr. Editor
of Insight Media

For example, displays for these non-consumer applications typically must operate in environments where consumer displays would fail. In a keynote speech at the conference, Barco North America President Dave Scott explained how many of these applications must push the existing display technology to meet the needs of users. Some applications for example, require the same display to operate well in both sunlight and dark environments. To solve this, Barco developed backlight with both CCFL and LED sources. Both can be turned on to boost brightness while the LEDs can be dimmed down for low light level operation.

Dr. Darrel Hopper of the Air Force Research Lab has conducted surveys of all the displays used in the military for years. The latest survey indicates that the military uses about 1.1M displays per year spread over 600 display platforms - not much by commercial standards. This includes hundreds of different displays and dozens of different display types indicating little coordination in the specification of displays across these applications. In fact, Hopper noted that in the 10.1-10.53" bin, there are 19 different sizes, while in the 18.55 to 19.5" bin there are 12 different displays. " There should be only two sizes here, not 31," says Hopper. Hard to disagree with that.

On the exhibit floor, I met with many other vendors offering solutions to fit the requirements of these many markets. One company, Systemation, makes LCD controllers and single board computers that can withstand the rigors of tough environments. " One of our monitors was found underwater on an oil rig, and when they plugged it in, it still worked," said Pat Hill.

She also noted that products need to be in service in these markets for 15 to 20 years, which means displays will become obsolete in this time frame. Finding solutions to this problem remains a challenging concern, "but if were knew display were moving to end of life, we could make better decisions."

We also saw several companies working on LED backlights, like Applied Concepts. Here, the better color gamut and contrast improvements offered by LED backlights in the consumer video environment are NOT prized attributes. Instead, customers want to move away from CCFL backlights to LED versions for different reasons. These include no high voltage operation, lower EMI, fewer drive wires, better dimming capability, solid state and RoHS compliance. The lack of high voltage is particularly compelling as the transformers needed for CCFL drivers must be encapsulated and tested to avoid arcing at high altitudes. While the LED BLUs consume more power than the CCFL units and may cost a bit more, these are valid trade offs for many military and industrial users.

Material needs are also different in these markets. Consumer markets don’t need heaters to warm up the LCD panel generally, except perhaps in automotive displays. In addition, a company called LCD Lighting has developed a technology called Amalgram that allows the CCFL tubes to operate more efficiently at the high temperatures encountered in non-consumer markets. And, companies like Fujitsu have developed conductive polymer materials that offer the same performance as ITO materials, but have a lot more flexibility without cracking. This is a big deal for the resistive touch screen makers.

My take away from this first day is that a lot of innovation is going on to make displays better for the non-consumer markets - and has been for a long time. But with the HDTV Tsunami absorbing so much mind share from the display industry, these other applications seem to have been ignored to some degree. Make no mistake, these are vibrant markets with many small, but growing niches - an area ripe for nimble companies to carve out growing, profitable business based on innovating technology. Isn’t that a nice contrast to the crazy TV, profit-hungry world? I’m sure I will learn a lot more on the second day.