LCoS Display Technology Shoot-Out
Dr. Raymond M. Soneira
President, DisplayMate
Technologies Corp.
Copyright © 1990-2006 by DisplayMate
Technologies Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
This article, or any
part thereof, may not be copied, reproduced, mirrored, distributed or
incorporated
into any other work without the prior written permission of DisplayMate
Technologies Corporation
Part D – Comparison with CRT, LCD,
Plasma and DLP
Article Links: Overview Part A Part B Part C Part D
LCoS HDTV
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Introduction
This is the
final article in a four-part series examining Liquid Crystal on Silicon, LCoS, a
relatively new and obscure display technology that is now making its grand
entrance into the HDTV marketplace. Here in Part D we’ll start with an overall assessment of
LCoS technology, followed by detailed technical performance comparisons between
all of the major display technologies: CRT, LCD, Plasma, DLP, and LCoS. We’ll
finish with a discussion of the most exciting new developments in display
technology that will be the subject of future articles in this series.
If
you read Part A,
then you can skip this Introduction. Already, LCoS provides the highest
resolutions, the highest non-CRT Contrast Ratios, and the most artifact-free
images of any display technology. For people that are sensitive to flicker and
eye-fatigue, LCoS operates at the highest refresh rates (120 Hz) for the
smoothest most flicker-free images. This article series is an in-depth
examination of LCoS technology and five LCoS HDTVs, all but one of them
prototypes, in order to get an early look into this unfolding technology.
In
Part A we started
off with a description of the LCoS HDTV units that we tested, followed by an
overview of LCoS technology. In Part B we continued
with a discussion of How We Tested and then examined the photometry and
colorimetry of the units in detail, which provides a quantitative assessment of
their color and gray-scale accuracy. In Part
C we began with a revealing Test Pattern analysis, followed by a
description of the extensive Jury Panel testing and then provided individual
Assessments for each of the units, including Jury evaluations and comments.
Here in Part D
we’ll begin with an overall assessment of LCoS technology, followed by detailed
technical performance comparisons between all of the major display
technologies: CRT, LCD, Plasma, DLP, and LCoS, and we’ll finish with a
discussion of the most exciting new developments in display technology that
will be the subject of future articles in this series.
Note
that these articles are the latest in a series of Display Technology Shoot-Out
articles that have covered CRT, LCD, Plasma and DLP display technologies. The
topics for the original series are: Part I: The Primary
Specs, Part II:
Gray-Scale and Color Accuracy, Part III: Display Artifacts
and Image Quality, and Part
IV: Display Technology Assessments. Online versions of these earlier
articles are available on www.displaymate.com.
Part D will draw extensively from the entire 7-part series.
Caption:
The
Shoot-Out with the lights turned on. From left to right: JVC Consumer 720,
Brillian 720, JVC Professional 1080, CRT Studio Monitor, eLCOS-JDSU 1080, and
Brillian 1080 units. Photograph by David Migliori.
LCoS Technology Assessment
The
first generation of LCoS rear projection HDTVs is impressive, entering the
market in a top position for overall image and picture quality. Here is a
summary of the most important features of LCoS technology based on the
measurements, analysis and discussions in Parts A to C:
●
LCoS is a reflection based display technology that can produce very bright high
resolution images, which is essential for large High Definition screens (home
theater and digital cinema) and also for high ambient light viewing.
●
A true Contrast Ratio of 4000:1, the highest calibrated Contrast Ratio for all
of the non-CRT display technologies, which means that LCoS produces very deep
blacks. A fixed iris can further increase the Contrast Ratio by 50 to 100
percent or more. Note that Contrast Ratios reported for any display technology
with a dynamic iris will be artificially raised because the iris has different
settings for the Peak Brightness and Black Level measurements.
●
LCoS easily handles HDTV resolutions of 1920×1080 and the technology is
scalable up to even higher resolutions. JVC and Sony have already demonstrated
4096×2160 LCoS projectors and 12 mega-pixel devices are currently possible
without requiring any new technology developments.
●
Flicker-free images with refresh rates up to 120 Hz. The units all drive their
panels at double the input signal frequency, which is 60 Hz in the US and 50 Hz
in Europe.
●
Uniformity tables correct for any variations in intensity or gamma within a
device or between devices. Yields high uniformity in color and gray-scale
across the screen.
●
Very accurate Gamma Curves, Transfer Functions, and gray-scales with built-in
factory calibration tables and measurements for each of the 255 signal
intensity levels, which compensates for any device variations. Many of the
panel driver boards currently operate internally at 12 bits.
●
Very smooth CRT-like gray-scales that are free of false contouring due to the
above.
●
Dark images and dark gray-scales that are smooth and free of dithering noise as
a result of the analog nature of the Liquid Crystal response.
●
None of the units tested had any pixel defects.
●
The highest pixel Fill Factors of all of the current display technologies (89
to 92 percent), which produces a very smooth picture with imperceptible gaps
between the pixels.
●
No noticeable deterioration with age. Most LCoS manufacturers claim device
lifetimes of more than 100,000 hours.
Comparing LCoS with Competing Display Technologies
Fifteen
years ago the CRT had a virtual monopoly for displays used in televisions and
computers. Today we have half a dozen competing display technologies. In spite
of all of this competition, the CRT has managed to hold onto its crown title as
the Reference Standard against which all of the other display technologies are
measured. There are two reasons for this: each new technology had to mimic the
dominant CRT in order to be accepted in the marketplace; and second, the image
and picture quality delivered by the best CRTs was simply outstanding and
untouchable by any of the new technologies. Virtually all professionally
produced content is still produced and optimized on CRT monitors. So, while all
of the other technologies have been quite successful at chipping away at the
CRT’s total market share, it has managed to hold on to the very top-end of the
market and continue on as the Reference Standard for image and picture quality.
But its lead has been steadily slipping and we’ll review its current status
here.
Below we
compare the state-of-the art for each of the display technologies, based upon
the best consumer and commercial grade units available today, regardless of
price. Most of the comparisons are based on the in-depth and comprehensive
testing and analysis that we performed in this 7-part Display Technology
Shoot-Out series. Because the state-of-the-art is always changing (although not
as much as the manufacturers and published specification sheets would have you
believe), we’ve also taken into account evaluations and observations of newer
shipping units and product introductions at tradeshows.
In Table 1 we compare all of the technologies
side-by-side: CRT, LCD, Plasma, DLP and LCoS. We’ve compared the technologies
in 15 categories. No technology comes even close to wining in every category,
but there are definite performance trends. DLP appears twice: in 1-Chip
configurations, by far the most common, which currently use a spinning color
wheel, and 3-Chip configurations, which are currently found only in high-end
front projectors. LCD also appears twice: in Direct View and Projection. Each
entry is an evaluation based on a letter grade system, with A for excellent, B
for good and C for fair, with pluses and minuses added to indicate differences
where needed. Some entries have two grades listed, together with a keyword
suggesting the source of the duality. Each are explained further below. They
are also visually color coded: A is green, B is yellow and C is red. They are
all judgment calls based on my own measurements and detailed evaluations.
Manufacturers are likely to question or challenge some of them, but I have no
affiliation or vested interest in any of the technologies, so they are as
objective a set of observations as you’re likely to find.
Table 1: Display
Technology Assessments
|
CRT
|
LCD
|
Plasma
|
LCD
|
DLP
1-Chip
|
DLP
3-Chip
|
LCoS
|
Format
|
Direct View
|
Direct View
|
Direct View
|
Projection
|
Projection
|
Projection
|
Projection
|
Peak Brightness
|
C
|
A
|
A / C
APL Level
|
A
|
A
|
A
|
A
|
Screen Brightness
Low Ambient Light
|
A
|
A
Backlight Control
|
B
|
A / B
Iris or Lamp
|
A / B
Iris or Lamp
|
A / B
Iris or Lamp
|
A / B
Iris or Lamp
|
Black Level
|
A+
|
C
|
A
|
C
|
B
|
B
|
A
|
Contrast Ratio
|
A+
15,000+
|
C
1,000
|
A / C
4,000 / 1,000
APL Level
|
C
1,000
|
B
2,500
|
B
2,500
|
A
4,000
|
Checkerboard
Display Contrast
|
C
|
A
|
A / C
APL Level
|
B
|
B+
|
B
|
B
|
Color Primaries
|
B
Phosphors
|
B
Sub-pixel Filters
|
B
Phosphors
|
A
|
A-
Color Wheel
|
A
|
A
|
Drive Electronics
|
A / C
Analog
|
B
|
B-
|
B
|
A
|
A
|
A+
|
Gamma Curve
Transfer Function
|
A
|
B+
Compression
|
B / C
APL Level
|
B+
Compression
|
A-
|
A-
|
A+
|
Gray-Scale Contouring
|
A+
|
B
|
B-
|
B
|
A-
|
A-
|
A+
|
Gray-Scale
Dark Artifacts
|
A+
|
B
|
C
|
B
|
B-
|
B-
|
A
|
Motion Artifacts
|
A
|
B
|
A-
|
B
|
A-
|
A-
|
A-
|
Viewing Angle
|
A+
|
B-
|
A+
|
B / A
Screen
|
B / A
Screen
|
B / A
Screen
|
B / A
Screen
|
Aging
|
B
Non-uniformity
|
A / B
Backlight
|
B
Non-uniformity
|
B+
|
A+
|
A+
|
A+
|
Peak Resolution
|
B
2048 x 1536
Color CRT
|
A
3840 x 2400
|
B
1920 x 1080
|
B
1920 x 1080
|
B
2048 x 1080
|
B
2048 x 1080
|
A
4096 x 2160
|
Other Artifacts
|
Moiré, Gaussian Beam,
Mis-convergence,
Soft Image,
Visible Raster,
Geometric Distortion, Video Bandwidth, Drift, Screen Regulation, Magnetic
Interference
|
Gray-Scale Compression
|
Temporal Dithering,
Spatial Dithering
|
Gray-Scale
Compression,
Projection
Optics
|
Rainbows,
Temporal Dithering,
Spatial Dithering,
Wobulation,
Projection Optics
|
Temporal Dithering,
Spatial Dithering,
Projection Optics
|
Projection Optics
|
Other Issues
|
Flicker,
36” Maximum,
Very Bulky
|
Fill Factor
|
Flicker,
Fill Factor,
Internal Reflections
|
Fill Factor
|
Flicker
|
Flicker
|
---
|
Other Advantages
|
No Native Resolution
|
Thin
|
Thin
|
---
|
Perfect Convergence
|
---
|
---
|
Other Grade
|
B
|
B+
|
B-
|
B+
|
B-
|
B
|
A
|
Overall Grade
|
A-
|
B
|
B
|
B
|
B+
|
B+
|
A
|
Overall Rank
|
2
|
4
|
4
|
4
|
3-
|
3+
|
1
|
Table Entry Explanations
We are going to cover a lot of material here, so we’ll
only be able to briefly explain the meaning and interpretation of each of the
entries in Table 1. For in-depth definitions, explanations and interpretations
please refer to all seven of the Display Technology Shoot-Out articles, which
are the foundation of virtually all of the material discussed here.
Peak
Brightness is important
only for high ambient light applications. It’s overrated since most displays
are already too bright for their intended application. The excess brightness
can actually be put to good use by trading it in for improved contrast,
gray-scale accuracy, and viewing angle. Peak Brightness for Plasma displays is
significantly reduced when there is a high Average Picture Level due to
limitations in power dissipation.
Screen
Brightness indicates how
well a display can operate in low ambient light with lower brightness levels.
An iris, backlight or lamp control is desirable to optimize screen brightness,
otherwise the Contrast Ratio is reduced and Artifacts increase (when using the
Contrast Control to reduce screen brightness).
Black Level is very important for low ambient light
and not very important for high ambient light. Brightness and Black Level
determine the Contrast Ratio. The additional enhancement from an adjustable or
dynamic iris is not part of these ratings.
Contrast
Ratio is very important for
low ambient light and not very important for high ambient light. For projectors
the indicated Contrast Ratio can generally be further increased by 100 percent
or more by constricting the optical path with an iris, which reduces brightness
and the overall optical efficiency (lumens per watt). The additional
enhancement from an adjustable or dynamic iris is not part of these ratings.
Plasmas are again affected by the Average Picture Level.
Checkerboard
Display Contrast is highest
for the direct view LCD and Plasma displays. Plasmas are again affected by the
Average Picture Level. CRTs and projectors have lower values due to the amount
of glass in the light path. Checkerboard Contrast has only a minor effect on
perceived picture quality (see the discussion in Part B).
Color
Primaries indicates how
easy it is to adjust the primary colors for a given technology. It’s easiest
for projection optics, but harder to change the sub-pixel filters in LCDs and
the phosphors in CRT and Plasma displays.
Drive
Electronics indicates how
capable the electronics is in producing artifact free images with accurate
gray-scales, and in compensating for irregularities and limitations in the
display devices themselves. DLP and LCoS have very sophisticated electronics
that contribute significantly to their performance. CRT analog electronics is
excellent in professional units but is frequently lacking in consumer and
commercial units. LCD and Plasma have the most to gain in enhancing their drive
electronics.
Gamma Curve
Transfer Function indicates
how accurately displays follow the ideal power-law gamma of 2.20 via Drive
Electronics and calibration. LCoS is the best because all 256 signal levels are
measured and adjusted to match the ideal relation. Other technologies lack this
detailed calibration or are pushed for peak brightness instead of gray-scale
accuracy. Modern CRTs require some signal processing to deliver the ideal
gamma.
Gray-Scale
Contouring arises from irregularities
in the Gamma Curve, which introduces false intensity steps and visible contours
in an image.
Gray-Scale
Dark Artifacts: the
dark-end of the intensity scale is especially difficult to generate accurately,
often leading to all sorts of irregularities. Temporal Dithering due to Pulse
Width Modulation produces visible screen noise at low intensities for Plasma
and DLP.
Motion
Artifacts include any form
of smear, flicker or breakup when the image is changing. This can be caused by
limitations in the drive algorithms, processing or electronics in addition to
device latency.
Viewing
Angle artifacts arise from
undesirable variations in intensity, contrast or color with angle. LCDs have
improved significantly. Low gain projection screens perform much better than
high gain screens that are used to boost screen brightness.
Aging refers to a change in performance over
time. Replaceable lamps in projectors are not considered aging here. The
backlight in many Direct View LCDs is difficult to replace. The phosphors in
CRT and Plasma units may age non-uniformly, but this is currently not a serious
problem (See Part IV).
LCoS and DLP devices do not deteriorate noticeably with age (based on lab testing
as well as actual field use over 60,000 hours).
Peak
Resolution is highest for
LCoS. CRT peak resolution is affected by Other Artifacts.
Other
Artifacts: although CRTs
have the longest list of Other Artifacts, their primary effect is a softer
image, which is sometimes desirable. The Color Wheel in 1-Chip DLPs can cause
rainbows to appear occasionally but it depends on the image and sensitivity
varies from person to person. Many DLP projectors double the screen resolution
by using a dithering process called Wobulation.
The New Reference Standard
Now that
we’ve discussed all 15 parameters and categories, it’s time to consider which
display technology currently offers the best overall image and picture quality.
The winner should be crowned the Reference Standard. To come up with an Overall
Grade and Overall Rank we need a scheme to appropriately weight all of the
entries. Because there are so many diverse applications for displays, even for
HDTVs, no single weighting scheme is appropriate for everyone. Readers are
encouraged to apply their own weightings based on their particular
applications, interests and personal biases. For example, in high ambient
lighting conditions, the C grades received by LCDs for Black Level and Contrast
Ratio are irrelevant, and should receive a low weight, possibly even zero. On
the other hand, in a high-end Home Theater, those parameters are very important
and might receive the highest weights of all.
A generic
approach for the Overall Grade is to take a straight unweighted average of all
of the individual grades. For general applications, it turns out that the end
result is relatively independent of the weighting scheme because there is a
fair degree of consistency in the grades for each technology. LCoS received
almost straight As, the CRT got mostly As with some Bs and Cs, DLP received an
even mix of As and Bs, both LCDs got mostly Bs with some As and Cs, and Plasma
got a relatively even A to C distribution. With that point of view I came up
with the grades and ranks shown in the table (which are relatively close to the
unweighted averages): LCoS got an A and Rank 1, close behind was the CRT with
an A- and Rank 2, DLP got a B+, and Rank 3, with a slight advantage for the
3-Chip over the 1-Chip. Plasma and both LCDs received a B, and tied for Rank 4.
They are simply too close to call for general applications, but any specific
application will most likely favor one significantly over the others.
And the
winner is… LCoS, the new Reference Standard for overall image and picture quality,
dethroning the CRT after more than 75 years at the top. An impressive
achievement for a technology that has only recently started shipping in
quantity. The new display technologies have now moved out from under the shadow
of the CRT to stand on their own accomplishments.
CRT versus LCoS Reference Monitor Shoot-Out
For
the time being LCoS has only a tiny overall market share in comparison to all
of the other established display technologies. However, LCoS is likely to have
an immediate impact at
the top-end of the professional market, with the reference monitors that are
used in television and movie post-production studios, particularly with the
switch to true High Definition content and digital cinema. The undisputed
leader up until now has been Sony’s Professional Trinitron CRT monitors, which
are found in just about every major studio. A side-by-side comparison with the
JVC Professional LCoS monitor would have been really interesting. We invited
Sony to send one of their flagship Professional CRT monitors for a side-by-side
Shoot-Out with the JVC Professional LCoS monitor, but Sony (again) declined to
participate. Both units are well matched and cost around $45K. The performance
of these Sony monitors is well known so it was easy to perform a virtual, in
absentia, Shoot-Out by relying on my prior experience with these monitors
(and with an eye on Table 1). In terms of image and picture quality, color and
gray-scale accuracy, pixel-to-pixel sharpness, and freedom from artifacts, JVC
Professional’s 48 inch LCoS Reference Monitor (DLA-HRM1, $45K) with true 1920×1080 resolution easily outperforms
Sony’s flagship BVM 32 inch Professional CRT monitors (BVM-D32E1WU or
BVM-A32E1WU, $42K plus plug-ins). The darker black level generated by the CRT
is not an advantage in a studio because they intentionally use a low (but not
completely dark) level of ambient lighting for production work. So the
difference between the extremely dark black of a CRT and the very dark black of
an LCoS monitor is not visually apparent.
Developments
for the Near Future
LCoS
has been such a difficult technology to master that it now has more advanced
processing and calibration tools and procedures than any of the other display
technologies. That certainly gives LCoS an edge for now. With a comprehensive
and fully automated factory digital calibration system that depends only on
computer data processing, and with results that are digitally downloaded to
each HDTV, it’s clear that the photometry and colorimetry issues that
reviewers, calibrators and videophiles deal with today are going to go away in
the very near future. In fact, with a small amount of computer processing in
the LCoS driver boards it will be relatively easy for the set to recalculate
the factory device tables real-time for any user specified color temperature,
primary chromaticities and gamma – and to do so with very high accuracy,
including color and gray-scale tracking (because the tables are already
operating at 12-bits).
So
consumers will be able to easily specify their exact parameter preferences and
the HDTVs will also be able to easily reconfigure automatically to any SMPTE or
ITU standard. For situations where you want to squeeze extra brightness from an
HDTV, the device tables can again be easily recalculated to allow for a higher
color temperature and a specified amount of gray-scale compression near peak
white (which could be implemented as an Overdrive Control). With this approach
the incompatibility between the retail showroom and home theater calibrations will
simply cease to be an contentious issue.
With
pricing pressures it’s likely that many manufacturers will none-the-less cut
corners in the calibration process. Even with fully automated procedures, low
cost manufacturers will feel pressed to save development time, equipment costs
and manufacturing line time, all of which affect time-to-market and their
manufacturing costs. Presumably that won’t be much of a factor for the
higher-end units that many readers are likely to consider. It’s also clear that
many manufacturers don’t yet understand the many subtle quantitative
colorimetric and photometric measurement and data reduction issues that are
necessary for accurate numerical calibration. Another related issue is that
dealers and calibrators will not have the very specialized and expensive
calibration equipment and access to the proprietary (secret) factory
optimization and calibration software necessary to do the most important
low-level device board calibrations.
The next question is what is likely to happen in the near
future? The competition is intense and all of the technologies will continue to
improve, and they will certainly respond to the new challenges from LCoS. One
reason why LCoS is doing so well now is that it was a very difficult technology
to perfect, so its drive electronics is the most sophisticated of all of the
display technologies, allowing very accurate unit calibrations at the factory
to overcome limitations in the display devices themselves. The other
technologies would benefit from a similar approach. Plasma and LCD have the
most to gain from improving their electronics up to LCoS standards. The payoff
there is very big return for a modest investment. So I expect that within a
year or two many of the entries for the other technologies will show a marked
improvement and close their gap with LCoS. It should be interesting to watch.
What
is really exciting is that we are about to enter an era where quantitatively
accurate HDTV colorimetry and photometry will be the rule rather than the exception.
Of course, there is still plenty of work to be done and plenty of room for
improvement. Black Levels and Contrast Ratios, for example, need to keep
getting better, the resolution for consumer units will eventually rise to 4
mega-pixels and beyond, but the most important factor that will differentiate
display technologies will be their image artifacts (which were discussed here
and in greater detail in Part III). While it seems likely that LCoS will
hold an edge in many of these areas for the near future there's plenty of
competition approaching on the horizon.
What’s Coming
Next
While
this is the last of the LCoS articles, the Display Technology Shoot-Out series
will be continuing in the near future with articles on a number of exciting new
display technologies. They will continue to be in-depth display technology
assessments rather than product reviews.
Potentially
the most interesting is the Canon-Toshiba Surface-conduction Electron-emitter
Display, SED, which is a very thin (under 1 centimeter) CRT-like phosphor based
display technology. It has digitally addressed pixels, however, the brightness
of each pixel is produced through an analog process, so it should be free of
the digital artifacts that are present in Plasma and DLP displays, which have
digital on-off intensity controls produced with Pulse Width Modulation (see Part III). In this
regard SED is very similar to LCoS. As an emissive technology, SED already
produces CRT-like Black Levels, with Contrast Ratios in the 10,000 to 100,000
range (much better than Plasma because it doesn’t need to maintain a background
level for priming the discharge). The response time is speced at 1 ms, which is
very fast. SED is a type of Field Emission Display, FED, another difficult
technology that has been under development for over 15 years. The SED products
were initially announced to ship in 2005, but that date has been repeatedly
pushed back. The most recent announcement as of March 2006 is for a product
launch at the end of 2007, with volume shipments to begin in 2008. That’s
disappointing but typical for a new display technology. The SED prototypes that
have been periodically shown since 2005 are very impressive. Canon has so far
been very skittish about allowing us to test any of their SED prototypes, but
with the current schedule we’ll be able to evaluate an early production unit by
the latter part 2007.
There are a
whole series of very exciting display technology developments based on LED
lighting for (front and rear) projectors and direct-view LCD panels. The
extended color gamut that is possible with LEDs seems to be getting most of the
attention. But as we have pointed out in Part II and Part B, an extended
color gamut is undesirable for HDTVs because the primary colors need to match
the standard Rec.709 primaries, which are used for color balancing all
professionally produced content. If you have an HDTV with an extended color
gamut you’ll see inaccurate gaudy colors.
Two
important advantages of LED lighting are their very long lifetimes and their long-term
color stability. The UHP lamps used in most projectors have a spectrum and an
arc profile that change with age, so brightness, color accuracy, screen
uniformity and Contrast Ratio all vary over the life of the lamp. LEDs are
immune from all of these effects. You’ll also save money by not buying the
relatively expensive replacement lamps.
But the
most amazing advantage of LEDs is that they can be pulsed at incredibly fast
rates. This strobing can be used to cut down on visible motion smear in LCDs (Part III) and improve
the Contrast Ratio. For DLPs it can dramatically reduce dithering artifacts (Part III), dispense
with a color wheel, and best of all eliminate visible rainbow artifacts (Part IV). Both of
these developing technologies will be fantastic candidates for future Shoot-Out
articles. We will be evaluating them at the appropriate time in the near
future.
LEDs can
also behave like a super-fast dynamic iris, so they can dramatically improve
Black Levels and Contrast Ratios (but with constraints that generally introduce
some gray-scale artifacts, Part B). There’s
still more… by using a very large number of addressable LEDs for backlighting a
direct-view LCD panel, it’s possible to produce a display with an incredibly
large Dynamic Range with reduced artifacts. For example, with a 1000:1 Contrast
Ratio LCD panel illuminated by LEDs with a duty cycle range of a 1000:1, it’s
possible to produce a display with a 1 million:1 Dynamic Range. BrightSide
Technologies and Sharp are each developing displays with values of 200,000 and
1 million, respectively. We plan on evaluating them at the appropriate time in
the near future.
To take
proper advantage of all of the opportunities provided by pulsed LEDs without
introducing significant artifacts will require the development of new and very
sophisticated image data processing and control algorithms and electronics. It
will probably take years for optimum implementations to be achieved. Once again, it will be
really interesting to watch all of these exciting new technologies develop,
improve, jockey for position, and keep the renaissance in display technology
going strong…
If you know
of a technology or product that is appropriate for a future Display Technology
Shoot-Out article please let us know at dtso@displaymate.com.
The Shoot-Out articles appear in select publications worldwide.
Article Links
Series
Overview
Part A: Introduction
to LCoS Technology
Part B: LCoS Color
and Gray-Scale Accuracy
Part C: Test Pattern
and Jury Panel Evaluations
Part D: Comparison
with CRT, LCD, Plasma and DLP
Sidebar: LCoS
HDTV Manufacturers
Sidebar:
Shoot-Out Hardware and Software
Acknowledgements
Over 75
people were involved with the LCoS Shoot-Out: about half were participating
manufacturers and the other half were Jury Panelists (Part C) that came to
evaluate the HDTVs.
Special Thanks: A number of people made important contributions that warrant
a special mention: special
thanks to Dr. Edward F. Kelley of the NIST (National Institute of Standards and
Technology) for many interesting discussions and for generously sharing his
expertise. Special thanks to Dave Migliori for his
excellent photography of the Shoot-Out with its difficult lighting layout and
viewing angles. Special thanks to Julia Soneira and Lauren Soneira for
helping to produce the Shoot-Out, which turned out to be a much larger
operation than I had anticipated. And finally, very special thanks to Hope
Frank (Brillian), David McDonald (eLCOS), Terry Shea (JVC Consumer) and Rod
Sterling (JVC Professional) for the tremendous amount of work that they put in
coordinating their company’s efforts, which was crucial for making the
Shoot-Out a success.
HDTV Manufacturers: Brillian Corporation: Hope Frank
(Vice-President), Chad Goudie, , Gil Hazenschprung, Dr. Robert Melcher (Chief Technology Officer), Dr.
Matthias Pfeiffer, Jack Waterman. eLCOS Microdisplay
Technology: Dr.
David J. Cowl, Roland Lue, David McDonald. JDS
Uniphase: JVC (Consumer Division): Dan McCarron, Terry Shea, Fumi Usuki. JVC Professional
Products: Jack Faiman (Vice-President), Dr. David Hakala (Chief Operating
Officer).
Equipment Manufacturers: Anchor Bay Technologies: Gefen: Hagai
Gefen (President), Linda Morgan, Khasha Roholahi. CinemaQuest: Alan Brown (President). Konica
Minolta Instrument Systems Division: Tom Kwon and Maria Repici. Microsoft
Windows Digital Media Division: Silicon Optix: Gary Chin, Ney Christensen, Darren Gnanapragasam, Justin Lam, Gopal Ramachandran, Derek
Yuen.
About the Author
Dr. Raymond Soneira
is President of DisplayMate Technologies Corporation of Amherst, New Hampshire,
which produces video calibration, evaluation, and diagnostic products for
consumers, technicians, and manufacturers. See www.displaymate.com. He is a research
scientist with a career that spans physics, computer science, and television
system design. Dr. Soneira obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Princeton
University, spent 5 years as a Long-Term Member of the world famous Institute
for Advanced Study in Princeton, another 5 years as a Principal Investigator in
the Computer Systems Research Laboratory at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and has
also designed, tested, and installed color television broadcast equipment for
the CBS Television Network Engineering and Development Department. He has
authored over 35 research articles in scientific journals in physics and
computer science, including Scientific American. If you have any comments or questions about the article, you can contact
him at dtso@displaymate.com.
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