Displays Go Green

Yesterday, I attended the IMS Research “Green Displays” market focus conference within the SID Display Week 2011 conference. The program included presenters from a wide range of prominent companies that are involved in different parts of the display industry, including Merck, Corning, Samsung, and LG.

One might have the initial reaction that this is just some lightweight tree-hugger topic that companies use to demonstrate their social conscience and responsible attitude. While it is true that saving energy and using environmentally friendly materials and procedures do have some general benefit, I was struck by the fact that most of these efforts are driven by solid bottom-line business considerations.

For example, if you use thinner glass in a flat-panel display, the finished product takes up less space. This means that you can fit more units in a container, which in turn lowers shipping costs. That lighter glass will also reduce the total weight, which also can reduce freight costs. If the thinner glass costs less because it uses less material, that is simply extra gravy on the balance sheet.

Similar arguments can be made for everything from controller design, use of LED lighting, and even the industrial gases used in manufacturing processes. These improvements can save money and help the environment at the same time. One problem, however, is that the savings don’t always occur in the same place that has to fund the improvement. As Bruce Berkoff of the LCD TV Association pointed out, the use of a better grade of plastic packing material can make more reliable and smaller packaging per unit. You might be able to save $20 in shipping by spending $0.80 more on the packing material. The problem is that the department that buys the packing material is not the same one that pays for the shipping, so the extra expense for one may not be approved in spite of the potential savings for another.

My take-away for the day was that there are real and tangible cost savings for the manufacturer and the consumer that can come from adopting green materials, technology, and processes. The social benefits are additional intangible returns, but the opportunity is there to make changes for the better based on financial considerations alone.
Alfred Poor. HDTV Almanac

3D: Samsung Goes Actively Passive

May 18, 2011. At CES in January, Samsung and company (including Sony, Panasonic and others) positioned active 3DTV Shutter Glasses as the “step-up technology” from lighter, lower-cost passive shutter glasses. Active technology keeps 3D display resolution high, but at the cost of a dimmer image, heavy glasses, and added expense to the consumer that (depending on the number of glasses needed) can approach 25% or more of the cost of the TV.

Other issues, including the impracticality of keeping enough pairs of 3D glasses on hand to serve the needs of guests, then keeping track of the expensive accessories, only added to the grief associated with moving to 3D at home adoption.

Too much! Cried LG at CES, as the company threw all its weight behind the passive approach, stating its research showed consumers could overlook the ½ resolution 3D image downgrade in favor of the benefits associated with using low-cost (sometimes no-cost) passive glasses that just happen to work with the RealD versions that many consumers kept from a recent trip to a 3D movie.

But here at the 2011 SID conference on the opening day of the show floor, Samsung and RealD (yep the same one with passive shutter glasses that work with LG) announced a joint licensing agreement in which Samsung will license and make RDZ version passive 3DTVs that support a full 1080p resolution to each eye—not the half resolution used in the LG approach.

Clearly Samsung has done a re-think on the “step-up” messaging it was giving with the active 3D shutter glasses approach. The company may have recognized the wisdom in the LG customer centric approach, and did their rival one better with its no-compromise passive shutter glass solution for its 3DTV at home.
Reports say Samsung will ship a pair of 3D monitors first (23- and 27-inch class) with a 55-inch class 3DLCD TV to follow. With passive glasses getting so much attention these days, perhaps the biggest winner is RealD. – Steve Sechrist

Do LG’s Passive 3D Glasses Point the Way For 3D At Home?

Tuesday, May 17. With the feud still simmering between Samsung and LG over active vs. passive 3D glasses, Dr. Min-Sung Yoon, Chief Research Engineer, 3D Technology at, LG Display pulled no punches at his presentation yesterday at the SID Business Conference co-sponsored by Display Search.

The afternoon session by Dr. Yoon focused on his company’s insistence that its version of passive 3D using film patterned retarders (FPRs) truly does represent “A New Paradigm in 3D Display,” with technology advancements that virtually eliminate flicker and cross-talk, and include viewer-friendly features such as light, brightness, and very low-cost 3D glasses.

The technology even supports 3D viewing with your head tilted, or lying down—a claim that two months earlier, prompted a public war of words between rival TV maker Samsung (primarily in the active 3D glasses camp), which publicly announced, “There’s no 3D that works while you are lying down sideways!” A subsequent war of words played out in the Korean media this past March.

The issue gets down to LG’s circular polarization (in FPR approach) versus the linear polarization used in traditional liquid-crystal module (LCM) and shutter glasses. For LG, the string of benefits goes well beyond consumer preferences of low cost, comfort, and simplicity of specifications with the promise of no flicker, low cross talk, enhanced brightness, and frame rate and freedom of motion that includes head tilting while viewing.

We think LG is demonstrating thought leadership in this field, with its consumer preference approach—that may just lead to the next standard (passive shutter glasses) in the 3DTV at home space. Time will tell. -- Steve Sechrist