June 8, 2007
Amtran Technology has announced that it will begin shipping a 52″ 1080p LCD TV model next month, and that it plans to add 40″ and 46″ models to its existing LCD TV line up in the second half of 2007.
The 52″ GV52LF model features a brightness of 500 cd/m2, a contrast ratio of 1,000:1, viewing angle of 178 degrees, and a response time of 15ms.
Amtran will also ship 32″, 37″, and 42″ OEM/ODM LCD TVs to Japan later this month. The comapny added that it may introduce branded LCD TVs in Japan next year by teaming up with local TV companies.
Amtran is now developing a 24 LED-backlight unit for LCD monitors. The pricing for the new technology is still too high, but Amtran believes the demand for LED-based monitors may rise starting from 2008.
As for Amtran plasmas, Amtran prez and CEO Alpha Wu said that plasmas will still dominate the 50+” TV market this year, noting that as long as plasma display panel makers are able to decrease their production costs rapidly, plasma technology will remain a formidable competitor to LCDs. The company is now developing full HD plasmas, which may hit the market in 2008, Wu said.
May 18, 2007
UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science researchers Yang Yang and his graduate researcher Jinsong Huang have recently achieved the highest lumens per watt ever recorded for a red phosphorescent LED using a new combination of plastic, or polymer, infused liquid. And the best part is that they did it at half the current cost.
“That means your next LED flat panel TV could be less expensive,” Yang said. “And the picture will be brighter and clearer than ever before.”
LEDs are generally measured in lumens per watt. Lumens, a measure of the perceived power of light, and watts, a standard measure of power, combine to define the optical efficiency of power (how bright a device is and how much power it consumes).
Yang and Huang’s newest device rates a record-breaking 18 lumens per watt, as opposed to current red LEDs, whcih generally score around 12 lumens per watt. “That’s a significant difference,” Huang said. “Visually, it means you get a higher quality display, and the product is also lighter and thinner. And with our improvements, you also need less energy, but you get an all-around better product.”
In Yang and Huang’s new polymer light emitting diodes, the devices have a very simple single-layer structure, generated by a much cheaper solution process. The new LED, or more precisely PLED, developed by the two UCLA engineers uses a polymer powder and liquid mixture added to a previously top-secret material developed by the Canon company to create a paint-like product. The product is used to coat a layer of glass, and a charge is added, resulting in a slim single layer of glass with two electrodes.
“It’s a much simpler, lighter, thinner and more elegant answer to creating a better LED product,” Yang said.
He added: “The current results represent our ongoing quest to create better, slimmer, less expensive high-performance PLEDs. Using our simple solution method, we already have successfully achieved several world records in device efficiency, including 20 lumens/watt white emission fluorescent PLEDs, 30 lumens/watt green emission fluorescent PLEDs and 18 lumens/watt red emission phosphorescent PLEDs. So our latest red emission PLED is just one of our multiple records. It’s a very exciting development.”
The new LED technology has already been licensed by Canon and should be available to consumers in about three years. Yang and Huang’s latest work will be presented at the Society for Information Display 2007 conference in Long Beach, CA., from May 20-25.
May 11, 2007
Because of its contribution to global warming, the light bulb may soon dim from the market, as lawmakers at home and abroad are talking about banning the century-old technology.
Currently, compact fluorescent bulbs are the only real alternative, but “bulbs” that use light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, are quickly emerging as a formidable challenger.
Unfortunately for the fruit of Edison’s labor, California and Canada have decided to ban the sale of incandescent bulbs by 2012, Australia is banning them in 2010, and the European Union is looking at banning production. Here in the U.S., the Senate committee is working on a proposal that would phase out the light bulb in just 10 years. Even in New Jersey, where the first practical incandescent bulb emerged from Thomas Edison’s lab in 1879, a bill has been introduced to ban their use in government buildings! Ouch. The light bulb is much less efficient than fluorescents, using about five times more energy to produce the same amount of light, which has drawn the ire of the aforementioned governments.
According to the Department of Energy, lighting consumes 22% of electricity produced in the U.S., so widespread LED lighting use could cut consumption in half. By 2027, LED lighting could cut annual energy use by the equivalent of 500 million barrels of oil, with the attendant reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide, the gas believed to be responsible for global warming. Much of that reduction would be possible with today’s technology, using compact fluorescents (CFLs). But because the light quality of CFLs has been less than satisfactory and most CFLs aren’t dimmable and take time to turn on, consumers haven’t exactly warmed up to them.
The LED has advantages over the CFL in most of those areas, and judging by this week’s Lightfair trade show in New York, it could be a serious challenge to the CFL in a few years. What holds it back is chiefly price, but LEDs are already an economic alternative for niche uses.
In the last two years, the diodes have doubled in energy efficiency and brightness, according to Greg Merritt, director of marketing for LED-manufacturer Cree Inc. In particular, LEDs that produce a yellowish or “warm” light similar to incandescents have improved.
Dallas-based Lighting Science Group Corp. showed an LED “bulb” that screws into a standard medium-sized socket and produces a warm light equivalent to that of a 25-watt incandescent bulb, but consumes just 5.8 watts. One problem: it costs $50, which is hardly palatable to consumers who can buy a standard bulb for less than a buck.
Another big advantage for LEDs is that they last up to 50,000 hours, according to manufacturers. That compares to about 10,000 hours for fluorescents and 1,000 hours for incandescents. “Right now the applications that make sense are either high maintenance or high power consumption, like parking garages, where the lights are on all the time,” said Cree’s Merritt.
LEDs already beat fluorescents for energy efficiency in some niche uses. Wal-Mart, for instance, is putting LED lighting in its in-store refrigerators, where the cold dims fluorescents and incandescents produce too much heat. LEDs are also starting to replace flat fluorescent backlights in LCDs, where they produce better colors.
The cost of LED lighting should be coming down quickly. Polybrite founder Carl Scianna said the cost of individual white-light diodes, several of which go into an LED bulb and make up much of the cost, have come down in price from about $8 to $1.50 in a year. “They’re going to keep going down,” Scianna said. “By the middle of next year, they’ll be priced for consumers.”
May 3, 2007
Apple has confirmed that it plans to launch Macs featuring LED backlight technology in 2007. The announcement came in a statement from Steve Jobs published on the Apple website which addressed the company’s commitment to becoming “a greener Apple.”
“Apple has been criticized by some environmental organizations for not being a leader in removing toxic chemicals from its new products, and for not aggressively or properly recycling its old products. Upon investigating Apple’s current practices and progress towards these goals, I was surprised to learn that in many cases Apple is ahead of, or will soon be ahead of, most of its competitors in these areas. Whatever other improvements we need to make, it is certainly clear that we have failed to communicate the things that we are doing well,” Jobs wrote.
Jobs acknowledged Apple’s use of arsenic, which “is added during the manufacturing of the high performance glass used in LCDs to prevent the formation of defects,” and mercury, which is found in “minute amounts” in the fluorescent lamps used to illuminate LCDs.
Jobs wriote that Apple must transition from fluorescent lamps to light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to illuminate the displays to eliminate the mercury. “Fortunately, all iPod displays already use LEDs for illumination, and therefore contain no mercury. We plan to introduce our first Macs with LED backlight technology in 2007. Our ability to completely eliminate fluorescent lamps in all of our displays depends on how fast the LCD industry can transition to LED backlighting for larger displays,” the statement read.
Apple did not mention which products will incorporate LED backlight technology first, but its comments indicate that it would most likely be those that feature smaller LCD panel sizes due to technical constraints. Apple’s current Mac product lineup comprises of panel sizes from 13″ in the MacBook notebook range up to 24″ in the iMac desktop. Apple also has a 30″ Cinema high-definition display.
The statement closed with Jobs’ promise to “completely eliminate the use of arsenic in all of its displays by the end of 2008″ and to “reduce and eventually eliminate the use of mercury by transitioning to LED backlighting for all displays when technically and economically feasible.”
March 16, 2007
During the CeBIT show in Germany (March 15-21), Samsung Electronics is introducing a 30″ LCD monitor that incorporates an LED as the backlight source.
Featuring a 123% color production, the SyncMaster XL30 expresses Adobe RGB color range allows pictures taken with DSLR cameras to transmit emerald green, dark red and other natural colors onto the monitor in their true form. Other features include a 3,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio, a 2ms response time and a viewing angle of 170 degrees.
The monitor will come equipped with “Eyeone Design & Eyeone Photo” and “Natural Color Expert” software. The “Natural Color Expert” program will allow users to enjoy custom-made features of gamma, color temperature, and white balance. The settings can be set to Adobe RGB, as well as sRGB, so that users can operate on the color ranges of their choices.
Various input terminals such as USB terminal, DVI-D are available and the 30-inch monitor also features HDCP (high bandwidth digital content protection) for viewing high-definition (HD) contents via DVI ports.
At the show, Samsung is also launching a 19″ LCD monitor (SyncMaster 940UX) that can be connected with monitors using only an USB port.
The new concept monitor with SXGA (1,280×1,024) resolution makes multi-display significantly easier, as it can be expanded to six monitors using only an USB port without having to add graphic card. The monitor’s built-in DVI, D-sub input ports and USB 2.0 hubs facilitate connectivity with other devices and enhances its functionality.
Samsung launched a 20.1″ LED backlight unit in 2006, but Samsung said that the adoption of the LED BLUs in LCD monitors was commercialized due to a lack of price competitiveness and technical limitations.
March 13, 2007
Philips announced yesterday that it has dropped its advanced, blinking fluorescent backlights for flat televisions and will instead employ the much smaller LED backlights, thus signaling the demise of technology designed to dramatically reduce motion blur and smear on flat LCD televisions.
LEDs are solid-state lights, used in car indicators, bicycle lamps and increasingly in buildings. They require no bulb, which makes them sturdy and long-lasting, and they also consume less energy per lumens, a measure of light.
Philips’ scanning backlight emitted bursts of light — as opposed to emitting constant light, like in current LDC HDTVs — which tricked the human eye into seeing sharper images. Philips had touted the technology called Aptura as a major innovation and a potential cash cow for the lighting division which has been repositioned as one of Philips’ growth engines.
“If we want to continue developing this backlighting technology, we’ll have to make new investments. At the same time, LEDs are getting ripe for the market and they enable thinner TV sets, so we’ve chosen to invest in those,” a Philips representative said.
Philips unveiled its intention for a flickering backlight several years ago and started selling it commercially last year together with LG.Philips LCD, which makes the LCD panels for which the backlights are needed.
Some pricy, flat-panel displays already have LED backlights, but it will probably take several years before they are cheap enough to be put in mainstream flat televisions, the Philips spokeswoman said.
Philips Lighting has a unit called Lumileds, which is the world leader in bright LEDs and one of the fastest growing business segments in the lighting division with 25% annual revenue increases.
March 12, 2007
C and D Technologies has launched its Datel branded 3.5-digit DMS-30DR series LED, the first with an autodimming daylight-readable LED-display digital panel meter.
The DMS-30DR series satisfies the growing market requirement for displays that can be used in very high ambient light conditions, but can also dim themselves in poorer light. The LED is readable in direct sunlight without the need for special filters or shading devices. Previously, applications that required daylight visibility necessitated the use of less reliable LCD technology that incorporates complex high-power-consumption backlighting circuitry.
Here are some other specifications and features:
- viewing angles of up to 180 degrees, in both vertical and horizontal planes
- typical display accuracy is +/-1 count
- housed in a small, encapsulated, 12-pin DIP package; overall dimensions of 55 x 23 x 14mm
- suitable for either panel or PCB mounting
- rugged moisture and vibration resistant assembly integrates the display, autodim display drivers, a light sensor, reference circuitry and an A/D convertor
- user-accessible external brightness adjustment pin enables custom intensity settings or brightness matching in multiple-display applications
- each package also incorporates a built-in color filter and bezel
- DMS-30DR series comprises four panel meters offering a choice of four high-impedance differential input voltage ranges: +/-0.2, +/-2, +/-20 and +/-200V
- all models operate from a single +5V supply and draw as little as 7mA when operated in total darkness, and typically less than 200mA when operated at maximum brightness
- CMRR for all devices is 86dB, and inputs are overvoltage protected to +/-250V
- operating temperature range for all models is 0 to +60C
C and D Technologies has launched its Datel branded 3.5-digit DMS-30DR series LED, the first with an autodimming daylight-readable LED-display digital panel meter.
The DMS-30DR series satisfies the growing market requirement for displays that can be used in very high ambient light conditions, but can also dim themselves in poorer light. The LED is readable in direct sunlight without the need for special filters or shading devices. Previously, applications that required daylight visibility necessitated the use of less reliable LCD technology that incorporates complex high-power-consumption backlighting circuitry.
Here are some other specifications and features:
- viewing angles of up to 180 degrees, in both vertical and horizontal planes
- typical display accuracy is +/-1 count
- housed in a small, encapsulated, 12-pin DIP package; overall dimensions of 55 x 23 x 14mm
- suitable for either panel or PCB mounting
- rugged moisture and vibration resistant assembly integrates the display, autodim display drivers, a light sensor, reference circuitry and an A/D convertor
- user-accessible external brightness adjustment pin enables custom intensity settings or brightness matching in multiple-display applications
- each package also incorporates a built-in color filter and bezel
- DMS-30DR series comprises four panel meters offering a choice of four high-impedance differential input voltage ranges: +/-0.2, +/-2, +/-20 and +/-200V
- all models operate from a single +5V supply and draw as little as 7mA when operated in total darkness, and typically less than 200mA when operated at maximum brightness
- CMRR for all devices is 86dB, and inputs are overvoltage protected to +/-250V
- operating temperature range for all models is 0 to +60C
February 5, 2007
Alright, this will be the last NFL post. I’ve been getting a little carried away, I admit.
Thirteen years ago, the JumboTron at Buffalo’s Ralph Wilson Stadium was the biggest in America, and this summer, the Bills will install a new screen twice as large as the 1,300 sq. ft. JumboTron. The new screen will be a sophisticated Mitsubishi high-definition LED display, the upgrades for which will be sponsored by the taxpayers as part of long-term improvement contracts for the county-owned stadium.
Buffalo’s new board will feature a higher resolution and sharper image than the high-def screen at Dolphins Stadium, said Stephen Asposto, the Bills’ video director and engineer.
It will stand 33.5-feet high, only 2 feet higher than the JumboTron, but it spans 82.8 feet, about twice the JumboTron’s width and wider than needed for game replays. Roughly one-third of the screen will be reserved for game statistics, player profiles or advertising.
As for the old JumboTron, “It basically is going to get the wrecking ball,” Asposto said. Aposto and Public Works Commissioner John Loffredo described a JumboTron on its last legs, with many of its cathode ray tubes pummeled by the weather and the years.
Unable to find new tubes, the Bills scavenged them from the screen’s edges and positioned them in the center. “So the center looks pretty good,” Loffredo said. “But if you look at the edges, they don’t pick up what they should.” Two seasons ago, Asposto’s trained eyes saw the screen flickering, others noticed the flickering after Asposto pointed it out.
Images on the Mitsubishi screen are provided by millions of LEDs, or light emitting diodes, and Mitsubishi claims pictures on the high-def LED screen are as true to life as the actual event.
When adjusting for inflation, the new scoreboard is cheaper than the aging JumboTron, for which the Bills can no longer find replacement parts. The JumboTron in 1994 cost the equivalent of $8 million today, and the new HD LED video display and the ribbon board cost $5.2 million.
In 1995, Bills coach Marv Levy and several Bills players found JumboTron highlights from an Indianapolis-Miami contest distracting; as a result, many fans/taxpayers felt insulted when the players criticized the use of the giant scoreboard that they (the fans!) had funded. But don’t worry; Asposto said the use of the new HD LED scoreboard will revolve around the team’s wishes and the action on the field.
January 3, 2007
U.S.-based brands like Apple and Hewlett Packard (HP) are expected to launch notebooks using LEDs as the backlight source starting from the second quarter 2007, and Taiwan-based LED makers will not be the major beneficiaries, according to industry sources.
HP’s new LED-based notebooks will feature Microsoft’s Vista operating system and will aim at high-end, multimedia uses, the sources said, adding that using LEDs as the backlight source for large-size applications will become more popular thanks to more models of such kind from U.S.-based notebook brands.
Nevertheless, Taiwan-based LED makers will not likely earn orders from such major brands, as notebook makers have high requirements for their product specifications – a brightness of over 1,680 nits – and Taiwan-based makers have yet to offer such a brightness level.
Taiwan-based makers will also be hindered by patent restraints since international notebook vendors are more concerned about the completeness of the patent portfolio of LED makers than cost competitiveness, the sources explained.
Speaking of LED, AU Optronics (AUO) and Chi Mei Optoelectronics will enter volume production for LED-based LCD modules in the second and third quarters of 2007, with CMO being more aggressive for the segment since it will launch more models than AUO.
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