BenQ to launch 65-inch LCD TV
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(InfoWorld) - BenQÂ plans to offer a 65-inch LCD TV in the second half of this year as it moves to expand the size of its LCD TV products, a manager in its digital media group said Friday. The company is also researching the possibility of using LED (light emitting diode) backlights in some desktop LCDs (liquid crystal displays), including 19-inch and 21-inch sizes. The company currently has noÂ laptop PCs equipped with LED backlightsÂ due to concerns that the displays are too easy to break, said Greg Lin, a manager at BenQ's digital media group, in Taipei. BenQ plans to offer a range of new LCD TV products this year, including a new 37-inch model that supports full high definition viewing, due out in April, and a 46-inch model to be launched in July or August. "Our focus is on the middle to high end LCD TV, and we want to increase our offering of larger and larger sizes," said Lin. The new LCD TVs will be sold in Taiwan, China, and the Middle East initially, and some will make it to Europe by the second half of this year, he said. The LCD panel used in the TV makes the biggest difference in picture quality, and it's down to the supplier to improve their technology in order to meet user demands for clear images and vivid colors, he said. Around 80 percent of BenQ's LCD panels come from AU Optronics, he said. LED backlights, which greatly enhance color saturation in LCD TVs but cost a lot more than older technologies, could be used in BenQ LCD TVs sometime in 2008, he said. Currently, LED backlights for larger displays go into high end LCD TVs. AU has said it ships some LCD TV panels equipped with LED backlights to customers in Japan that are willing to pay a premium for the picture quality. A backlight is a light behind the LCD display, on a laptop, monitor or TV, used to illuminate the screen. Most flat displays currently rely on cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlights because the technology is less expensive than LEDs. The LED backlights can be two to three times more expensive than CCFLs, an executive at AU, the world's third largest LCD (liquid crystal display) screen maker, said in an interview last year. LED makers have been driving down costs by putting LEDs into more gadgets. The more they increase production, the lower their per-LED cost. LEDs are now used in auto lights and the small displays on DVD players and MP3 digital music devices. Some companies, including Asustek Computer, are starting to announce new laptop PCs with LED backlights in their screens. As costs come down, LEDs will be used in larger and larger screens. Â
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Will Sears shoppers go for the high-definition television? Stay tuned.
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Sony announced today that they will start mass production of a full-color Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) display. The new displayed will be first used in their new CLIE PEG-VZ90 handheld.
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(InfoWorld) - lTwo of the world's biggest flat-panel display makers, Sony and LG.Philips LCD Co., unveiled flexible full-color displays at a display industry show in California this week. Sony took the wraps off its prototype on Thursday and released an impressive video showing the display being bent to form a semi-circle while still displaying a moving video image. The 2.5-inch display has a resolution of 160 pixels by 120 pixels making it a little larger than the typical cell phone screen and a little lower resolution. The screen from LG.Philips LCD is larger at 4 inches in diagonal width and has a higher resolution of 320 pixels by 240 pixels. In contrast to Sony's video, LG.Philips LCD released only a photo that showed the display curved at a slight angle. Typically flat-panel displays are built onto thin sheets of glass but the Sony and LG.Philips screens are made on thin sheets of plastic and metal, respectively. That allows them to be bent but also introduces a range of other problems such as keeping everything aligned and working while the panel is flexed. Indeed the video of Sony's prototype showed several bad pixels and other problems. Neither company has said when it thinks the displays will be ready to go on sale but early customers might be attracted to them for reasons other than their flexibility, said Paul Semenza, an analyst with iSuppli, who attended the Society for Information Display conference where they were announced. "What tends to get forgotten is that these displays are also rugged and lightweight," he said. "Those are valuable properties." Sony sees OLED technology as important for its future products and is putting a lot of research and development resources behind screens like that unveiled this week. The screens are different from today's LCD (liquid crystal display) and PDP (plasma display panel) screens in that OLED pixels use an organic material that emits its own light, so no backlight is needed. That means the screens consume less power and can be made thinner. OLEDs also handle fast-moving images better and offer good color reproduction. At theÂ Consumer Electronics ShowÂ in Las Vegas in January the company showed off prototype televisions based on larger, non-flexible 11-inch and 27-inch OLED panels. Thanks to the lack of a backlight the 11-inch prototype was just 11 millimeters thick but displayed a vibrant, colorful image. Sony plans to have its first OLED TVs on sale in Japan this year. Last week in Tokyo Sony unveiled its latest OLED TV prototypes, which appeared to be close to commercialization. The sets had an integrated digital TV tuner and could also accept a high-definition input via an HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) connector. Â
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Japan's Sharp Corp  on Thursday  unveiled a prototype of what it called the world's thinnest LCD  TV with a main display section only 20 mm thick.
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(InfoWorld) - Even if you bought a TV in the last several months you may already feel like it's out of date. Your shiny new flat-screen arrives, you hook it up to the antenna and the first thing you see is a commercial for a bigger, better model. It might even have a cheaper price. It's the way things seem to work these days in the world of TVs. Things aren't likely to change any time soon. The latest buzz is around "100Hz" or "120Hz" technology, which relates to how often the image on the screen is refreshed or redrawn. The technology is already appearing in TVs, and if you haven't seen promotional stickers for it yet you probably will soon. Most TV sets today refresh the picture either 50 times per second (50Hz) or 60 times per second (60Hz) depending where in the world you live (different regions use different color formatting.) That rate is fine for most images, but when it comes to fast moving shows like sports events the images can appear blurry on an LCD (liquid crystal display) TV. Doubling the rate at which images are displayed, to 100 or 120 frames per second, makes for a better, more high-definition picture. The need to improve LCD TVs has been especially acute because their chief competitor, PDP (plasma display panel) TVs, don't have the same blurring problem. Compounding the issue is that screen sizes are getting bigger, so any imperfections are more noticeable, said Mina Naito, a spokeswoman for Sony. PDP makers have trumpeted their advantage for some time, but things may be about to change. Compared to previous LCD panels, the new 100Hz and 120Hz models are "a big improvement," said Hisakazu Torii, a TV industry analyst with DisplaySearch in Tokyo. Prototype panels with the faster refresh rate began appearing last year. At the FPD International 2006 show in Yokohama in October, Samsung ElectronicsÂ demonstrated images and text scrolling across just such a panel, and they appeared to move more smoothly than on existing LCD TVs. Then at theÂ Consumer Electronics ShowÂ in Las Vegas in January, Sony announced a 120Hz model with the Samsung screen for the U.S. market. The 70-inch LCD TV is launched this month and carries the hefty price of $33,000. Samsung plans a 70-inch set, also based on the Samsung panel, which will go on sale in the first half of this year. Competitors including Victor Co. of Japan (JVC) and Matsushita Electric Industrial Co. (Panasonic) are also promoting 120Hz sets in Japan. The latest company to join the party isÂ Sharp, which last week said it would put five sets in its Aquos range on sale in Japan from March. The price runs from Â¥500,000 for a 42-inch model to Â¥1 million for a 65-inch model.
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Panasonic is preparing to repeat its CES show-stopper of a couple of years ago with the unveiling of the largest flat-panel screen manufactured to date, according to a Japanese media report.The company will unveil a 150-inch PDP television at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) that begins in Las Vegas on January 6, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported earlier this week.Two years ago, Panasonic stole the lead on two South Korean rivals, Samsung and LG, by unveiling a&#160;103-inch PDP screen. The two Korean companies had previously shown 102-inch panels. With the new screen Panasonic captured by an inch the title of &quot;world&#39;s biggest flat-screen&quot; and held that title until CES 2007 when Sharp unveiled a prototype 108-inch LCD (liquid crystal display) panel. Panasonic&#39;s display remains the biggest PDP in the world but not the biggest flat panel.Panasonic declined to comment on its specific plans for CES 2008 but did say that say it is &quot;putting its efforts in developing larger screens&quot; because the 103-inch was well received.If the 150-inch screen does appear at CES it is likely to be an early prototype from the company&#39;s &#165;280 billion ($2.5 billion) state-of-the-art PDP production line in Amagasaki, in western Japan, that is due to start production sometime in the year from April 2008. The new production line is a step more advanced than Panasonic&#39;s current line and should be able to make more advanced PDPs at lower costs.The cost savings come from the line&#39;s use of larger sheets of mother glass -- the initial glass sheets on which several panels are produced. Panasonic&#39;s current line can handle mother glass from which eight 42-inch panels can be produced while the new production line will accept sheets from which twelve 42-inch panels can be made.Panasonic won&#39;t disclose the exact size of the sheets but simple arithmetic shows they need to be roughly 2 meters by 3.4 meters to produce twelve such screens. To make a 150-inch PDP panel would require a sheet of glass about the same size.
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Personal TV Channel system is making its debut at IFA consumer electronics show.
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LG.Philips LCD Co. Ltd. , the world's second-biggest maker of large liquid crystal display (LCD) panels, said on Sunday it would increase the capacity of its biggest TV panel production line by 22 percent to meet growing demand for large LCD televisions.
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Take a look at Panasonic's 150-inch plasma TV, which has been the talk of the show at CES 2008.
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Global electronics giant Sony will launch its popular projection televisions with large LCD screens in China early next year, a company official said on Wednesday.
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New rear-projection technology from Sony to be featured in new HDTV.
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Sharp Corp. has developed a 65-inch (1.66 metres) liquid crystal display (LCD) colour television under its AQUOS brand, the world's largest.
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Plasma successor ramping rapidly Samsung will follow its roll-out of 14in OLED screens by 2010, revealed last week, turns out to be merely the first step toward the release of 40in and 42in panels a year later.â¦
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High-definition television is set to take off in Europe in the coming year, say TV executives.
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Samsung is close to producing a lighter, thinner, better television.
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Eizo's 24.1-inch wide-screen ColorEdge CG241W can display high-def video as well as still images.