Glassmakers shipped a record 687 million square meters (821.6 million square yards) of display glass in 2021, up 13% from 2020, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. Strong demand for large-screen LCD panels generated the increase, though shipments in Q4 of 174.5 million square meters (208.7 million square yards) were down 2% sequentially from Q3, said DSCC. Shipments are expected to increase 1% sequentially in Q1, as “higher capacity offsets slower panel maker utilizations,” it said.

The FCC doesn’t have the authority to require easy access to closed captioning display settings and doesn’t need to, said NCTA, ACA Connects and CTA in comments posted Friday in docket 12-108 in response to the Media Bureau’s call for a refreshed record (see 2201100052). A host of consumer groups disagreed, according to a joint filing from groups including Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the Helen Keller National Center, the National Association of the Deaf and the American Association of the DeafBlind. The problems highlighted in the FCC’s previous caption display settings round of comments have gotten worse, the groups said. “Apparatus and navigation devices still implement caption display settings through obscure, hard-to-find, hard-to-use, and inconsistent interfaces.” NCTA’s members already “have devoted significant resources to ensuring that the captioning features they provide are straightforward and simple to use,” NCTA said. The consumer tech industry “continues to innovate in user interface design” and “such advances demonstrate that the proposed mandate is unnecessary,” said CTA. The 1990 Television Decoder Circuitry Act “does not authorize the Commission to adopt rules regulating the provision of ‘ready access’ to closed captioning display settings by MVPDs,” said ACA Connects. Enabling viewers to easily access caption display settings is “required by the letter and spirit” of the Television Decoder Circuitry Act “as originally drafted” and consistent with other captioning rules, the consumer groups said. If the agency adopts a display setting requirement, it should include a “reasonable” compliance period and “narrowly tailored exemptions,” said CTA.

Pixelworks isn’t positioning its TrueCut Motion image-grading technology as a competitor to the UHD Alliance’s Filmmaker Mode initiative, emailed a Pixelworks spokesperson Wednesday. TrueCut Motion is “an end-to-end solution that starts with the filmmaker and a suite of advanced post-production tools, and includes a new delivery format and TV certification program ensuring the end viewer is experiencing the content exactly as the filmmaker intended,” she said. The technology takes “a holistic approach to deal with motion at a very fundamental level,” she said. New motion “looks” are now available to filmmakers using TrueCut Motion “that were not previously possible,” she said. “Viewers will see that now the TV can be set to a brightness level that is suitable for the living room, but without causing annoying judder.” Filmmaker Mode isn't a competitive technology because “it only solves for soap opera effect,” she said. That's when a TV's motion-smoothing processing that's optimal for viewing live sports can render movies looking on a big-screen set as if they were shot on high-speed video rather than film. “It’s a single-ended, one-size fits all content solution for TV sets and a convenient way to select a prescribed TV mode with motion smoothing disabled. The only commonality between the two is that TrueCut Motion and Filmmaker Mode both disable motion smoothing.” Pixelworks scored a big win at CES 2022 when TCL became the first device manufacturer to endorse TrueCut Motion (see 2202110002). TCL happens not to be a Filmmaker Mode supporter.

Epson announced a 4K laser projector Tuesday, calling the three-chip LCD unit its most advanced home theater projector to date. Features include HDR, hybrid log gamma and HDR10+ high dynamic range, HDMI 2.1 support and real-time scene adaptive correction. Brightness is given as 2,700 lumens. It has a 120Hz refresh rate for gaming. The $4,999 LS12000 is available from Epson’s online store, Magnolia and CEDIA dealers, the company said.

Onsite and virtual attendance options will be available for the Display Week show's business conference originating live May 9 from the San Jose Convention Center, said Display Supply Chain Consultants, conference organizers for show owner, the Society for Information Display, for the sixth straight year. DSCC issued a call for speakers Monday for about a dozen conference workshops, also giving program headliners the choice of participating remotely or in person. DSCC is charging a $1,095 "early bird fee" for attending the live conference physically or virtually, plus access to a second-day of on-demand prerecorded content May 10. DSCC set a Feb. 28 deadline on the call for speakers, and hopes to finalize the agenda by March 15, emailed CEO Ross Young. The Display Week show's technical symposium and exhibition tracks continue through May 13, said SID.

Nanosys will partner with SmartKem, an organic semiconductor platform, to develop a new generation of low-cost solution-printed microLED and quantum dot materials for advanced displays, said the companies Wednesday. The companies believe their partnership will result in creating a new class of low-power, robust, flexible and lightweight displays, they said: “Initial validation work on the equipment, processes and materials readiness has already occurred.” SmartKem will provide organic thin-film transistor backplanes to enable the manufacture of microLED displays using Nanosys’ microLED and electroluminescent quantum dot nanoLED technologies, they said. “We believe that display makers are eager to utilize microLEDs and quantum dot nanoLED materials for new display applications in a high-throughput and cost-efficient manner,” said Nanosys CEO Jason Hartlove.

With the holiday sales peak for smartphones now history, factory utilization at mobile display fabs is expected to decrease in Q1 but remain at a higher level than a year ago, reported Display Supply Chain Consultants Monday. Fab utilization in Q4 was up 3% sequentially and 16% higher year over year, while utilization in the current quarter is expected to be down 3% from Q4, but up 15% year over year, said DSCC. Fab utilization “varies substantially” by display technology and substrate, it said: “While there remains a seasonal component, flexible OLED fab utilization has increased substantially in 2021 and into this year.”

The CES 2022 arrival of quantum dot OLED screens from Samsung Display “heightens the technology battle in the premium TV space, and after a year of unprecedented volatility in LCD TV panel prices, we expect LCD products to become more aggressive as panel prices have come down,” blogged Display Supply Chain Consultants President Bob O’Brien Monday. “We know that Samsung’s TV business will introduce QD-OLED TV products this year,” and Samsung may well introduce white OLED TVs in 2022 as well, with panels sourced from LG Display, he said. That means the top three global TV brands -- Samsung, LG and Sony -- will have both LCD and OLED in their product mix, “with a wide variety of screen sizes and associated technologies,” he said.

BenQ is shipping a 4K laser projector designed for the home and commercial golf simulation markets, the company announced Tuesday. The $5,849 LK936ST, which uses a Texas Instruments single-chip DLP design, has a Golf Mode button designed to reproduce “natural blue skies and realistic green grass” from golf software, said the company. Seven other picture modes are available for home theater, gaming and other scenarios, it said.

Display Supply Chain Consultants President Bob O’Brien came away from CES 2022 convinced that Samsung Display’s quantum dot OLED screen (see 2201030004) “is the best flat panel for TV that money can buy,” he blogged Monday. LG Display’s existing white OLED technology “should not be dismissed” because its “manufacturability” is a key advantage over QD-OLED, he said. “We know that QD-OLED is an exceptionally complex product, with many new technologies that have never been manufactured at scale.” DSCC doesn’t know whether Samsung Display “can make millions of these panels cost-effectively with good yields and high throughput,” he said. “LGD had its own struggles in manufacturing WOLED, but those are nearly a decade in the past.” Along with wide color gamut, the QD-OLED “offers a superior color volume,” clearly demonstrable in Samsung Display’s private suite in Las Vegas “on scenes with bright red, green or yellow patches,” he said. “Because the WOLED panels require a white sub-pixel to boost brightness, they do not show peak brightness of individual colors as well as they show white.”