Higher Resolution Coming

Pico Projectors to Shift to 720p in 2-3 Years, Executives Say

June 9, 2010 by Mark Seavy|Top News

LAS VEGAS -- The market for pico projectors will shift toward resolutions of 720p and higher within 2-3 years as the cost of adding them plunges, industry executives said at the Projection Summit. While many of the pico projectors including standalone accessories and built-in products offer resolutions of 640x480 and lower, LCoS chip supplier Syndiant expects to have a 0.37-inch 720p-capable display available in 2011, Chief Technology Officer Karl Guttag said. Syndiant partner Astri also demonstrated a 0.44-inch LED-backlit LCoS panel designed for 3D applications with 1,024x600 resolution, 300:1 contrast ration and 20 lumens at 2.3 watts, said Crystal L. M. Fok, project manager for Astri’s Display System Division. Moving to a 1080p display from a 720p version carries a 50 percent premium, but that will change, Fok said.

"We don’t believe that the consumer will be satisfied for long with resolutions that went obsolete in the 1980s,” Guttag said. “HD eventually is not going to cost much more than lower resolutions. I think we are going to see it’s all about size. If we are going to have to support a certain brightness, we might as well get more pixels."

Sales of pico projectors will jump to 27 million units in 2014 from 17 million in 2013 and 2.5 million this year, Pacific Media Associates President William Cogshall said. The shift to 720p and higher resolutions may turn on the application, said Frank Romeo, vice president of business and professional products. Customers using pico projectors for PowerPoint presentations may be satisfied with 800x600 resolution, he said. “It depends on the application and the market,” Romeo said. “If you look at high-end CE products, 720p isn’t going to enough, but if you look at other applications, that may not be the case."

Pico projector light engine suppliers are moving quickly to boost brightness and resolution. 3M will ship this fall the LED-backlit MM230 light engine to replace the MM200, doubling brightness to 30 lumens and increases resolution to 800x600 from 640x480, said Stephen Willett, lead research specialist for advanced optical solutions. The contrast ratio remains 100:1, but the size of the light-engine module increases to 42.1x43.9x15mm from 37.9x36x10.5mm to accommodate a “slightly longer” integrating rod for the LEDs, Willett said. The MM230 is based on the same 0.37-inch LCoS panel as the MM200, he said. 3M has used HiMax and Micron LCoS panels in the past, but Willett declined to disclose the supplier for the MM230.

Lighting designs also are being overhauled for standard-size models. Casio this year shipped a series of projectors that use a hybrid blue laser/LED light source that carry a $100-$200 premium over lamp-based models. The projectors, which use Luminus’ PT-54 LEDs, feature brightness up to 2,500 lumens, combining a red LED diode, 445-nanometer blue laser and green phosphor wheel. The top-end model features 1,600x1,200 resolution, 2,500 lumens and 1,800:1 contrast ratio and $999 price. The Casio XJ-A240 is carried in all Best Buy stores, and the XJ-A130 ($849) with 1,024x768 resolution and 2,000 lumens is in the chain’s top 200 outlets, Romeo said. Casio also will resume distribution through 33 Fry’s Electronics stores in July with two models, Romeo said.

The new Casio projectors haven’t been trouble-free. Shortly after the projectors shipped in February, brightness ratings were found to be less than those quoted in spec sheets. Tests conducted by Projectorcentral.com found the A130, which is rated at 2,000 lumens, measured a maximum of 1,288 lumens. The A145 came in at 1,220 lumens, against 2,500 lumens, Projectorcentral said. Casio found a glitch in the alignment of the LED and laser modules that was being done during assembly at Foxconn plants in China, Romeo said. Projectors with the new alignment start production this month, he said. While Casio agreed to replace projectors affected by the glitch, Casio has had “very few” returns through Best Buy, Romeo said. The hybrid lighting system has a 15,000-hour lifetime, half what it was under the original brightness spec, Romeo said. The lifetime is against a typical 2,000-3,000 hours for lamps, industry officials said. In the Casio projector’s first 200 hours of use, the green phosphor loses 5-10 percent of its brightness before stabilizing, Romeo said.

Projection Summit Notebook

Geo Semiconductor expects to ship late this year a second-generation Geo processor that adds support for 2,160x1,600 resolution and shifts to embedded flash memory from external DRAM, R&D Director Zorawar Bassi told us. Production of the chip at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing will shift to a 65-nanometer process from 130 nanometer, Bassi said. The chip will continue to use a Tensilica 160 MHZ processor, he said. The Geo IC was developed by Silicon Optix, which last year sold its business to Integrated Device Technology. Geo bought the Geo and Realta processors from Integrated Device for less than $5 million (CED June 17 p1). Geo has since expanded to 15-16 employees from 10 and added an ASIC engineer earlier this year, Bassi said. It has no plans for a new version right away of the high-end Realta chip, which was once priced at $40 in volume but is selling for half that amount now, Bassi said. Among those deploying Realta is Denon in high-end Blu-ray players. The Geo processor is selling for $18-$40, depending on order size, Bassi said. The current Geo has been upgraded to add alignment functions in addition to keystone correction, Bassi said.

LG Electronics will ship its 3D-capable LCoS-based CF3D front projector this month at $13,000 as it makes a play for the custom install market, said Sung Bum Kim, assistant manager in the projector marketing group. The projector, which has two separate light engines each using three 0.61-inch Sony SXRD LCoS panels, contains 1,920x1,080 resolution, 7,000:1 contrast ratio and 2,500 lumens from two, 230-watt UHP lamps. The projector has three HDMI 1.3 connectors formatted to support 3D and drops to 1,150 lumens in the 3D mode, Kim said. CF3D supports two of the four 3D formats, including field sequential, he said. The model has a zoom lens and RJ45 connector and consumes 600 watts of power. LG is assembling the CF3D in South Korea but relies on Optoma parent Coretronics to build many of its data projectors, Kim said. LG also will ship in September the DLP-based HX-350T ($800-$850) featuring 1,024x768 resolution and packaged with a plug in ATSC/QAM demodulator, Kim said. The HX350 was demonstrated inside the Hilton convention center using an antenna to get programming that was delivered in varying quality. The projector, which will use PT-54 Luminus LEDs, will have 2,000:1 contrast ratio and 300-350 lumens as LG increases brightness from the 270 lumens contained in the HX300 ($750-$800). The HX350 is DivX-compatible, Kim said. LG also demonstrated a prototype pico projector using a 0.17-inch DLP chip with 480x320 resolution and 50 lumens, Kim said.

Samsung is shipping the industry’s first LCD-based front projector that uses LEDs to deliver 1,000 lumens, company officials said. The F10 ($1,299) features Luminus’s three-chip PT-120 and three 0.55-inch Epson-sourced LCDs with 1,024x768 resolution and a 2,000:1 contrast ratio. To dissipate heat generated by the LEDs, Samsung placed thermal exchangers next to each LED to deliver the heat generated to a copper “pipe” that relays it to three thermal exchanges along the outside of the projector, said Thomas Grau, senior product marketing manager for projectors. These exchangers are tied to fans. The model, which has a 32dB noise level, consumes 265 watts and has an 41-95-degree Fahrenheit operating temperature. Without the cooling system, the LEDs would be severely damaged, Grau said. The projector also has a seven-watt speaker. Two F10s have been sold for use in medical surgery, and a third is deployed for digital signage, Grau said. The F10 represents a break for Samsung, which previously focused on DLP-based designs for its front projectors. “It’s a combination of economics and technology and it came down to which had the better color saturation,” Grau said. “In this design, we thought” LCD “was appropriate.” It was critical that LCDs have good color saturation that creates a higher perceived brightness that offsets the 1,000 lumen output, Grau said. The time to get the F10 to market was shorter with LCD than it would have been with DLP, he said. Samsung will likely expand the F10 into a line of products, Grau said. Samsung also will deliver its H03 pico projector ($299) this month featuring a 0.3-inch DLP chip with 854x480 resolution, 30 lumens, 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 1 GB of internal storage and a microSD slot for up to 16 GB and a lithium ion battery with a two-hour run time. The H03 also contains Luminus’s new SBT-16, which shrink the emitting area for the LEDs to 1.6x1mm from 2.09x1.87mm in the PT-39.

As Microvision introduces 720p-capable MEMs scanning displays, it will increase the scan angle to 46-47 degrees from 45 degrees, New Business Development Manager Martin Niesten said. The scanning frequency also will rise to 30 kHz from 18-19 kHz, he said. Microvision also is continuing development of head-up displays (HUD) for use in motor vehicles, although deployment isn’t expected before 2013-2014, Niesten said. The MEMs-based HUD would be built into a vehicle’s dashboard. While initial prototypes draw 50 watts, power consumption will be a “few watts” by 2014, he said. While Microvision several years ago worked with Visteon on HUDs, it’s now focusing on tier-one automotive parts suppliers, Niesten said.

Luminus raised $15 million this year to fund operations and is expanding LED technology into specialty lighting, Product Marketing Director Stephane Bellosguardo said. The company got the funding after resolving a dispute with lender Hercules Technology Growth Capital, which had issued a notice of default in December on a $15.1 million loan (CED Jan 12 p1). Liminus cut its work force to 100 employees from 130. Luminus recently gained design wins with Martin and Chauvet, which are using the CST-90 LEDs for TV studios, sports arenas, nightclubs and other venues. Luminus also is working with Almeco Group on development of LED-based street lights. The push into lighting won’t take away from Luminus’s R&D efforts in front projectors, Bellsguardo said. It will generate new revenue to help fund the front projector business, Bellosguardo said.