Two interesting stories came in today, and I can’t get enough information on either of them for a full Display Daily column. So I’ll give you both of them.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

Sony to Introduce Quadruple Frame Rate LCD-TV in November

On November 10, Sony will introduce a 46-inch LCD-TV with a frame rate of 240 Hz, the world’s first. The set will sell for about ¥400,000 in Japan. That compares with on-line U.S. prices in the vicinity of $2300 for the company’s high-end KDL-46XBR4 with 120Hz frame rate.

Motion blur remains the Achilles heel for large-screen HDTVs relative to plasma and OLED (if there were any large-screen OLED-TVs to worry about). The problem has two sources. The first is cell-response time, and tremendous progress has been made with that. The second is the sample-and-hold nature of LCD addressing, which would produce motion blur even if cell response were instantaneous. The current approach is to reduce the hold time, which is done by fabricating extra frames between the 60 frames your digital broadcaster or cable company sends to you each second. Today’s high-end sets double this basic frame rate and give you 120Hz. That certainly reduces motion blur but doesn’t eliminate it, and 120Hz LCD-TVs do not do as well as a good 60Hz plasma on motion blur — as LG’s plasma unit delighted in demonstrating at last year’s Flat Panel Display International.

So the next step is 240Hz. I look forward to seeing how effective Sony’s implementation is, and to finding out how Sony gets the liquid-crystal material to respond quickly enough to make the quadruple frame rate meaningful and how it creates three fabricated frames for each "real" frame with unique content that comes down the pipe.

Delta Electronics to Introduce ePaper Display based on Bridgestone Technology

Delta Electronics, the Taiwanese company best known for switching power supplies and electronic components — although it also manufactures digital projectors and projector components — announced yesterday it has developed a high-performance ePaper display based on Bridgestone Corporation’s quick-response liquid-powder-display (QR-LPD) technology. (Despite the name, it should be noted that high-resolution Bridgestone examples seen in the last year weren’t particularly quick.)

Delta will be showing the first version its ePaper display at Booth 615, Hall 27 at the Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA 2008), which begins tomorrow in Berlin. Delta Electronics Vice Chairman and CEO Yancey Hai said, "We expect to achieve rapid time to market and return on investment incorporating Bridgestone’s technology, which will translate into high performance display solutions to meet the demands of the customer."

Bridgestone seemed to be focusing its latest prototypes on signage and newspaper-like content. It will be interesting to see if Delta continues in that direction, and to identify the motivation for the Delta-Bridgestone arrangement. It was always a stretch to believe that one of the world’s largest tire companies had any particular expertise in marketing and selling ePaper displays, so it’s not surprising that Bridgestone is reaching out now. But Delta, although it does have experience with projection displays, is not the most obvious choice.