We picked up a new kid on the block story from Microdisplay Corporation yesterday with their announcement that the company will soon begin manufacturing HDTVs for "well known" brands, powered by their 1080p color sequential LCOS imager.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor
Projection Monthly

First, while Microdisplay is certainly not new to LCoS technology, the company has remade themselves from an LCoS panel supplier into a full-blown CE company with big plans to enter the market as "the low cost technology alternative for the digital era" director of marketing Hanneka Krekels said in a recent interview.

"Microdisplay Corp. has spent two years in LCoS development overcoming the challenges of speed, uniformity, and brightness," according to vp of engineering, Dr. Long Yang. The company calls the new system "Scrolling Color Technology." This approach positions the color wheel so the color filter boundaries are focused on to the LCoS panel with multiple colors present simultaneously - giving higher optical throughput, lower data bandwidth and higher color depth. The Philips LCoS system, discontinued in 2004, also used a scrolling color technology with a far more complex and less manufacturable design than the Microdisplay color wheel approach.

To get the speed improvements needed for the single-chip LCoS implementation, the company based the architecture on their familiar TN LC module with some advances in the organic alignment layer developed with another (also unnamed) partner. Yang said the goal is to move to an inorganic layer and to achieve this they are presently working on many "combinations affecting yield and process" with an eye on cost. As a side note, Dr. Yang did mention the company is also working on a VAN mode approach but that is still a bit "brightness constrained."

Adding to the speed and to help address image uniformity of the pixel array, the company developed a thin cell gap (1 micron) together with a high voltage process. This resulted in a rise plus fall time of 0.6ms with the fall time somewhere around 16 microseconds. Fast fall times are key to getting accurate colors and good contrast while fast rise times are the key to system efficiency.

Other specs on the new LCoS design include a 0.82-inch imager, with a pixel pitch of 9.3 microns, and fill factor of 91%. The device also boasts a contrast ratio of 1000:1 at 1920×1080 true resolution with no wobulation needed.

On the business side, the company is looking to leverage up to 80% of the DLP optical engine with the goal to supply a drop-in LCoS replacement for TI OEMs.

We can look for 2 versions of this technology using 132W and 150W UHP lamps. These engines are intended to cover the set size range from 52-, through 56- and 62-inch models. The new MDTVs will be sold by "well known brand suppliers" as early as CES, with the 62-inch price target at $1500 retail, according to the company. A sample set is shown in the photo in the sidebar.

Our take: If the image looks as good as it sounds on paper, Microdisplay Corp may have just shifted the paradigm back in favor of MDTVs filling the gap as the low-cost replacement for aging CRT technology. One look at the numbers tells the story. Worldwide, CRT still dwarfs flat panel sales by an order of magnitude - and until now, with no price compatible alternative. From the looks of this, the folks at Microdisplay Corp may just have that alternative in-hand.

Note: see an expanded version of this story in this month’s Projection Monthly with Flat Panel Coverage from Insight Media.