Seth Coe-Sullivan (who some of you know him from QD Vision where he remains on the board) is from Luminit where he is mainly working now. The company is a privately held business with around 70 staff and has dealt with many companies in the industry. It is around 10 years old.
The company’s Light Shaping Diffuser (LSD) is a pseudo random pattern lens. The transmission is very high for a diffuser. The company can develop different elements that are more or less diffused in different directions according to the application. It can be made on a 65″ roll to roll process and the firm can make many different shapes on the film. The company has three new products. The technology is used in automotive, avionics and lighting.
At the event, Coe-Sullivan talked about Crystal Screens which have been developed for home cinema and will develop to full scale cinema. The LSD is used to direct the light using a variety of microlens structures. Different structures can be used to direct the reflected light into the auditorium and away from the walls, floors and ceiling which means gain. Coe-Sullivan said there is no hotspot.
There will be four products from 80″ – 106″ with 120º viewing angle and gain of 2.5. You get both high gain and wide viewing angle without hotspots, Coe-Sullivan claimed. It is polarisation preserving so can be used for 3D and ‘endless’ rolls can be created in the 65″ width.
Moving to the future, Luminit is working on computer-generated holography. A ‘pixel-based’ system of square pixels creates a static projected design. Car door projectors are an obvious first market as the system projects a fixed image, which can be designed and made in a fixed way. Holographic optical elements are proving to be interesting for automotive applications, for example, brake lights can be transparent. The technology can also be used as an optical element for augmented reality and can also be used for gaze and foveated rendering using infrared.
Analyst Comment
I had the chance to look at a sample screen on the show floor and it was bright, had no hotspot and good viewing angles, so it looks as though Luminit has something here. (BR)
