[opendtv] News: Mitsubishi Harnesses Colored Lasers to Produce New-Generation Lightweight HDTV
- From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: OpenDTV Mail List <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 3 Apr 2006 07:57:56 -0400
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/business/03hdtv.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
Mitsubishi Harnesses Colored Lasers to Produce New-Generation Lightweight HDTV
By MICHEL MARRIOTT
Published: April 3, 2006
As if shopping for new flat-panel, high-definition television is not
hard enough, Mitsubishi is scheduled to announce this week that it
has developed commercial television that uses colored lasers to
display bright, deep images on large, thin, lightweight screens -
surpassing images seen on film. The television sets, which Mitsubishi
is calling the first of their kind, are expected to reach stores
sometime late next year.
At the heart of the first generation of this new television is an
existing rear-projection technology called digital light processing.
In the past, this technology, developed by Texas Instruments, used
white-light mercury lamps as the television's light source. With
laser television, separate red, green and blue lasers are used in
conjunction with an HDTV chip, said Frank DeMartin, vice president
for marketing and product development at Mitsubishi.
He and Mitsubishi engineers said this provided a new look in
large-screen units, signaling a move to lighter, slimmer profiles for
rear-projection television. In terms of performance, Mr. DeMartin
said, laser television promises a greater range and intensity of
colors. He said the new sets would be made with compact, sculptured
cabinets and remain relatively light because the screens would be
advanced plastics rather than the glass common in plasma television
flat-panel units.
The screens will be so lightweight that the need for frames will be
significantly lessened, Mr. DeMartin added. This will give the
television a cleaner, practically all-screen look.
Its lighter weight, about half that of plasma models with comparable
screen sizes, will also have a smaller footprint, he said. For
example, a 50-inch plasma or L.C.D. television requires stands up to
17 inches deep to rest securely, Mr. DeMartin said.
Laser television technology is not new. For years, engineers have
experimented in laboratories and research centers, seeking to
illuminate television images with lasers. But the most optimistic
outlook had been for laser television to be available in two to three
years. Power and costs were barriers to bringing the technology to
the marketplace.
But Marty Zanfino, the director of product development for
Mitsubishi, said those issues had been resolved, resulting in
large-screen laser television that is expected to be competitively
priced with plasma television in sizes of 52 inches and larger.
Mr. DeMartin said laser television would use about a third the power
of conventional, large-screen models that depend on high-power lamps.
In such television, he said, the lamps are required to be on at full
power whenever the sets that use them are on. But Mitsubishi's new
lasers, which are based in semiconductors, turn on and off when
needed. For example, Mr. DeMartin said, when black is required in an
image - still a challenge for some plasma-based television - the
laser switches off.
These solid-state lasers, he added, will greatly outlast lamps. As a
light source, he said, they are practically "permanent," meaning that
the lasers should last for the set's lifetime.
A 52-inch model of the Mitsubishi laser television is scheduled to be
demonstrated when the company shows its new lines on Friday in
Huntington Beach, Calif. Mitsubishi is showing the new product at a
time consumers are expressing interest in high-definition, flat-panel
units.
Industry statistics show that consumers in the United States are
buying large display television at twice the pace they did three
years ago. Mitsubishi executives said Americans were buying five
million high-definition television units a year, urged on by
increased high-definition programming, the move to high-definition
video consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo, and
high-definition DVD players coming to market.
But unlike old technologies based on the cathode-ray tube, or C.R.T.,
which remained basically unchanged for decades, flat-panel television
is continuing to evolve rapidly.
At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January, Toshiba
and Canon demonstrated their jointly developed S.E.D.
(surface-conduction electron-emitter display) televisions, new
flat-screen units that essentially combine the best of C.R.T. emitter
technology with digital flat-panel technology. The two companies
recently postponed their introduction until next year.
"It's a story of complexity," Ted Schadler, a Forrester Research
analyst, said of the dizzying array of choices prospective buyers
face. He said there were more technologies, more shapes and sizes and
more competing manufacturers' agendas.
While he said the S.E.D. and laser television technologies had
"characteristics that are extremely interesting," he warned that
consumers and retailers were going to have to do their homework as
the flat-panel choices grew more complex.
"Television used to be very, very simple," he said. "You bought a big
one or a small one that was black and white or color."
That has all changed, Mr. Schadler said. "Now we've got complexity
like buying real estate or buying a car or something," he said. "It's
just gotten tremendously complicated."
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