The Big Screen

[Gregg Lengling]

Imagine a ferocious football game played by five different teams at once. That's how the large-screen display market suddenly looks, as seen at the recent Society for Information Display (SID) conference in Baltimore.



"There's a huge battle brewing for big-screen dominance," says David Mentley, an analyst at iSupply/Stanford Resources.

The current market-leading technology—rear-projection CRT—is limited by its large size, hefty weight, and relatively low image quality. Plasma screen technology is the heir apparent, but the panels and supporting electronics remain expensive.


Most LCD manufacturers, however, are making big plays for the television market. LG.Philips LCD demonstrated a stunning 52-inch-diagonal active-matrix color display, only to be topped by Samsung's 54-inch-diagonal monster. New LCD manufacturing plants capable of handling glass sheets measuring 1,800 by 1,500 mm (nearly 6 by 5 feet) or larger promise lower production costs.

Meanwhile, new rear-projection televisions are breathing down the necks of LCD and plasma technologies. Though not as thin and light as LCD or plasma, microdisplay rear-projection TVs are lighter, brighter, and sharper than those based on CRTs. OCLI recently showed its DefiniTV, which uses a Texas Instruments DLP light engine.

New liquid-crystal-on-silicon designs also show promise. Three-Five Systems has spun off a division to create a new company, Brillian, which demonstrated a rear-projection TV developed in conjunction with 3M. Philips showed its 44-inch-diagonal Cineos RPTV, which is expected to sell this summer for $3,000 to $4,000, as well as a prototype that uses five separate colors to create an image instead of the standard three—red, green, and blue— for rich-looking results.

More players are poised to enter the market, as are other technologies (see "New Display Tech Revealed"). Front projectors suitable for TV are becoming competitive with big displays, and InFocus has dropped the prices of its units to less than $1,000. Organic light-emitting diode (OLED) displays are improving rapidly, and IDTech, a joint venture of Chi Mei and IBM, showed a 20-inch-diagonal OLED—the largest seen to date.