New Intel Chip for Digital TV Could Remake the Market

[Gregg Lengling]

The Intel Corporation is planning to do to digital television what it has already done to computing.

At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, which opens on Jan. 8, Intel is expected to disclose the development of a class of advanced semiconductors that technologists and analysts say will improve the quality of large-screen digital televisions and substantially lower their price, according to industry executives close to the company.

 
Intel's ability to integrate display, television receiver and computer electronics on a single piece of silicon is likely to open new markets for a class of products - including plasma, projection and L.C.D. TV's - that now sell for $3,000 to $10,000.

Intel, as well as other large chip manufacturers, should be able to expand the benefits of Moore's Law, named for Gordon Moore, a founder of Intel, which accurately predicted decades ago that computer chips would continue to double in capacity roughly every 18 months, while their price would continue to fall.

"I think this brings Moore's Law to digital television," said Richard Doherty, a consumer electronics industry analyst who is president of Envisioneering, a consulting firm based on Long Island. He predicted that the low-cost display technology, which can be incorporated into the traditional rear-projection television sets, could lead to lightweight 50-inch screens only 7 inches thick for about $1,000, perhaps as early as the 2004 holiday season.

Intel's expected decision to enter the television market is another powerful indicator of the computer industry's assault on the consumer electronics industry.

Both Gateway and Dell are already selling large-screen digital TV's made for them in Asia, and Hewlett-Packard has indicated it will also enter the market. Such a powerful marketing and technology combination could blend easily with Microsoft's media center software, which is aimed at using personal computing technology as the heart of home entertainment centers.

The Intel announcement, which is expected to be made at the show by Paul S. Otellini, the company's president and chief operating officer, would come just as high-definition digital television is beginning to take off in the United States.

A spokesman for Intel said the company would not comment on Mr. Otellini's presentation to the consumer electronics show.

This year, the Consumer Electronics Association, the trade group for the industry, said it expected revenue from digital television sets to surpass revenue from conventional analog sets for the first time. In June, sales of digital sets were running 110 percent ahead of sales in the month a year earlier.

The technology Intel has been exploring is known as liquid crystal on silicon. It is one of a number of competing technologies, including a novel approach pioneered by Texas Instruments called digital light processors, or D.L.P.

The Texas Instruments approach involves a silicon chip that has hundreds of thousands of microscopic mirrors that can tilt to reflect light. So far, it has been limited to relatively expensive digital TV's.

By contrast, the technology used by Intel employs vast arrays of tiny electronic shutters that can alter the amount of reflected light, an approach that may allow companies to make big-screen TV sets using rear-projection technology that matches or exceeds the quality of flat-panel TV's at a much lower cost than plasma and conventional L.C.D.

Although Intel is not expected to enter the market for digital televisions for at least a year, Philips Electronics, the Dutch manufacturer, and several American start-up companies have already begun offering liquid crystal on silicon, or LCoS, components and televisions.

"LCoS had a Phase 1 in the mid-1990's," said Sandeep Gupta, chief executive of the MicroDisplay Corporation, a chip maker in San Pablo, Calif., that has announced an LCoS chip designed for HDTV applications that is planned for home televisions next year.

Many of the companies that introduced the technology at that time, however, quickly failed.

What is different today, he said, is that a high-growth consumer market has emerged, supported by a global manufacturing infrastructure.

"The true market test only started this summer," he said. "Rear-projection D.L.P. systems are flying off the shelf."

Intel and other semiconductor makers are interested in the new market for television because it shares many advantages with their traditional personal computer markets and has some rewards that traditional semiconductor markets lack.

For one thing, in the computer business Moore's law has been accompanied by "Moore's curse," Mr. Gupta said, which has meant that as computing power increases, prices fall at ever more drastic rates, cutting the profit margins of manufacturers.

The new LCoS chips, however, are both electronic and optical, suggesting that they may eventually achieve an optimal size and density that will limit the relentless pressure on profits that has occurred in many chip markets.

Analysts cautioned, however, that the display market is still evolving rapidly with many competitors and no clear victor. Many of the traditional makers of TV sets have themselves been researching lower-cost alternatives to the plasma and L.C.D. screens that now dominate the high end of the home entertainment market.

Technical experts also warned that there were still hurdles that must be overcome before manufacturers can build systems that offer bright high-contrast images capable of delivering fast-moving television images.

Still, progress has been impressive. At the consumer electronics show next month, experts said they expected to see rear-projection sets that are only 10 inches deep and far lighter than plasma and L.C.D. systems.

"They will blow you away," said Chris Chinnock, president of Insight Media, a digital television consulting firm based in Norwalk, Conn. The large-format displays, he said, "have captured consumers' imaginations."