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SID Selects Winners of Display Awards(Wireless News Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) The Society for Information Display (SID), an organization dedicated to the advancement of electronic-display technology, announced the winners of its 13th annual Display of the Year Awards. SID stated that this year s honorees represent advances in providing consumers with a superior viewing experience, whether handheld, in the home, or on the big screen. Commenting on this year s winners, Dick McCartney, Chair of SID s Display of the Year Awards Committee, said, Collectively, the 2008 award recipients have excelled at transitioning innovative products and technologies from hot buzzword to cool reality. The significant number of nominations we received around the world speaks to the mounting prestige associated with these accolades across the global display community. On behalf of SID, I would like to truly commend this year s award recipients ongoing commitment to innovation and to shaping the future of today s display arena. To qualify for consideration for a 2008 Display of the Year Award, a product had to be available for purchase during the 2007 calendar year. The six winners, two in each of three main categories, were chosen by a distinguished panel of experts who evaluated the nominees for their degree of technical innovation and commercial significance, in addition to their potential for positive social impact. The Display of the Year Awards will be presented to the winners during a special luncheon on Wednesday, May 21, as part of Display Week 2008: The SID International Symposium, Seminar & Exhibition, which will take place May 18-23, at the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles. Display Component of the Year Gold Award: Luminus Devices PhlatLight LED Backlight Unit Last year s Silver Award winner in this category for its PhlatLight light-emitting diode (LED) technology, Luminus Devices this year topped the balloting with the PhlatLight backlight unit (BLU) for liquid-crystal display (LCD) TVs. Developed with Global Lighting Technology, the PhlatLight BLU integrates Luminus PhlatLight LEDs with Microlens light guides from Global Lighting Technology, thus requiring only eight RGB chipsets to illuminate a large-screen LCD display. Other LED backlight units require hundreds, or even thousands of conventional LEDs to achieve adequate brightness and uniformity. By requiring fewer LEDs, the PhlatLight BLU dramatically reduces the cost and complexity of LED backlighting for large-screen TVs, enabling enhanced brightness and color uniformity over the life of the TV. Moreover, because it is edge-illuminated, the PhlatLight BLU also enables thinner LCD-TV designs. Silver Award: Fujifilm Corp. WV-EA Film Twisted-nematic (TN) mode thin-film transistor (TFT)-LCDs are popular and widely applied in PC monitors because of its high-light transmittance, relatively fast response time, ease of manufacture and cost effectiveness. However, TN-mode LCDs did not have enough viewing-angle performance compared to other LCD modes. The most successful method to solve TN-mode s weak point was the use of Wide View (WV) film by FUJIFILM Corporation. The WV film is an optical compensation film that enhances the viewing-angle performance of TN-mode LCDs, allowing users to see clear images at oblique angles. The newly developed WV-EA film in 2007 has succeeded in remarkable film thickness uniformity, in addition to improved viewing-angle performance (the viewing angles at a contrast ratio of 10:1 are 160 degrees in both horizontal and vertical directions). To improve the uniformity, two new technologies have been introduced in WV-EA film. One is a new airflow control technology with the precise control of airflow directions and speed in the drying chamber. The other is a new additive that makes film thickness uniformity compatible with wide viewing-angle performance. These improvements have allowed WV-EA film to expand in TV applications, which have never been possible for conventional WV films. Display Device of the Year Gold Award: Sony Corp. XEL-1 OLED TV The XEL-1 from Sony Corp. is the world s first organic light-emitting diode (OLED) TV. The 11-inch (diagonal) XEL-1 is just 3mm at its thinnest point and offers superior picture quality via Sony s independently developed Organic Panel, which delivers a host of advantages, including high contrast, peak brightness and color reproduction, as well as rapid response time. The OLED display panel s light-emitting structure eliminates both the mercury associated with traditional backlighting and the need for a separate light source, enabling extremely low power consumption. Sony s innovative Super Top Emission technology features a wide aperture ratio, which produces the high brightness and efficiency that allow the TV to deliver an accurate picture. The device s proprietary color filter and micro cavity structure allow it to reproduce natural colors, while featuring rapid response times for smooth, natural reproduction of fast-moving content, e.g., sporting events and action scenes in films. The XEL-1 includes two High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) inputs and a Memory Stick slot for viewing high-resolution photos. The inaugural model is also Digital Media Extender (DMeX) compatible, allowing consumers to Silver Award: Samsung SDI 2.2-inch QVGA AMOLED Display Operating on the principle that a display can never be too (feature) rich or too thin, Samsung SDI Co., Ltd. introduced the world s thinnest 2.2-inch active-matrix OLED (AMOLED) display. Just 0.52mm thick, no more than a business card, the QVGA (320 by 240 resolution) AMOLED has 100-percent color gamut, can realize high-speed, full-color (262K) video images, and can project images on brightness ratio ranging from 10,000 to 1. Based on a conventional glass substrate, the display employs low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS) technology to approach the dimensions of a 1.7mm TFT-LCD, considered to be the slimmest among the existing LCD modules available for mass production. A 1.2-mm spare in thickness for a cell phone means that there are infinite ways to use the electric device by adding built-in functions such as Digital Multimedia Broadcast (DMB) and increase the battery capacity. AMOLED is regarded as a promising display technology given its advantages over existing TFT-LCDs, including a 1,000x faster response time and a 40-percent improvement in weight and thickness. Display Application of the Year Gold Award: Apple Inc., iPhone iPhone combines three products a mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and an Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, searching and maps into a single small, lightweight handheld device. The iPhone s user interface is based on a large Multi-Touch display and revolutionary software that completely redefines what users can do on their mobile phones. iPhone employs advanced built-in sensors an accelerometer, a proximity sensor and an ambient light sensor that automatically enhance the user experience and extend battery life. The accelerometer detects when the user has rotated the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display accordingly, with users immediately seeing the entire width of a web page, or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio. The proximity sensor detects when you lift the unit to your ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches until it is moved away. And the ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the display s brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light, thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time. The iPhone is available with an 8GB or 16GB memory. Silver Award: RealD Stereoscopic 3D Cinema Technology Recently named one of the world s most innovative companies by Fast Company magazine, RealD is revolutionizing the cinema industry with its stereoscopic 3D technology, which turns movie-going into a uniquely near-tactile experience far different from the gimmick-filled films of old that come to mind when one thinks of 3D. The RealD system uses a single projector but places an active filter, which can switch between two different types of polarization, in front of the projection lens. This allows the viewer to wear much simpler and more lightweight passive glasses. Moreover, synchronization, which was a real problem for two-projector 35mm systems, is less of an issue with digital cinema. One advantage of the RealD system is that it allows theater owners to upgrade for stereo presentation without buying another projector. The impact of RealD s next-generation technology, deployed across the world s largest 3D platform in 24 countries, has been compared to the advent of color film when once there was only black and white. Display Week 2008: www.sid2008.org ((Comments on this story may be sent to [email protected])) ((Distributed on behalf of 10Meters via M2 Communications Ltd - http://www.m2.com)) ((10Meters - http://www.10meters.com)) Copyright ? 2008 Wireless News |