SID 2008
By John Latta, WAVE
0809 7/25/08
Los Angeles , CA
May 20-23, 2008
Society for Information Display (SID) is the conference for the display industry. It is both technical and exhibition. The society was started over 50 years ago in the Los Angeles area. Now the industry has moved to Asia where all the fab facilities are for AMLCD, PDP and OLED. There is very little display technology left in the US. But still SID seems to keep its place. The attendees are dominated by Asians who come long distances to give and hear papers. Yet, as with most global industries the multi-cultural attendees all seem to blend into the event. There is at least one common denominator – all are trying to make money.
Touch Technology Everywhere
Touch is in. We sought some understanding about who was offering what.
AUO
ATP in-cell 4.3” in cell projective capacitive multi-touch touch panel. Stated 70 to 80Hz update rate. 8”for sale with 12” under development.
4.3”
480X272
Sensor: In-cell Projected Capacitive
Multi-touch capable
4.3”
480X272 (?)
Sensor: In-cell voltage sensing
Multi-touch capable but only Stylus or Nail
Hitachi
Outline for technology under development.
Sheet overlay on LCD panel
Capacitive. Based on ITO wires on the touch panel
Drivers not shown.
Example display shown in booth with no details.
LG
52” multi-touch screen with integrated multi-touch. Supports gesture recognition. Similar of not the same panel shown at CES 2008.
1920 X 1080
Touch Recognition: Dual Points, Area and Gesture
Sensor: IR – integrated into bezel
Touch Response: 90Hz
Input: Finger, Pen and Handwriting.
4.3” WVGA MTSP
LTPS Process technology
Multi-touch
Sensor: capacitive
7” WVGA
800 X 480
Sensor: 4wire resistive touch screen
7” WVGA TSIC
a-Si Process technology
800 X 480
Color: 6 bit
Sensor: In cell photo sensor
RPO
Uses Digital Waveguide Touch proprietary technology which scans the above the panel to detect touch. Picks up shadow of touch and shows the area coverage of the touch. Able to detect single touch but determines multi-touch by the size of the shadow. Claims able to detect 4 touch from the same hand on a new panel being developed. Working only on small and medium panels as “this is where the market is.” Concedes that doing larger panels would be a problem with multi-touch.
Samsung
82” Ultra Definition LCD with integrated e-Board which is based on IR. Supports Multi-touch.
Multi-vision Multi-touch panel consisting of 4 panels side by side. Image sensor used. Supports 2 touch
points per panel. 82” diagonal.12.1” WXGA display with integrated touch sensor and the readout driver ICs were embedded in the panel. Supports both pen and multi-touch.
1280x800
Sensor resolution same as display resolution
Sensor Update rate: 360Hz.
Process: a-Si
Touch Sensor: Touch on screens shorts two contacts embedded in TFT panel. Paper given at SID.
Application: NotebooksThis panel is based on 2X2 42” panels which each have:
1920 X 1080 resolution
Up to 1 – 2 touch points at a time
60Hz sensor response
Seiko Epson
In a paper Seiko Epson described an active matrix in-cell capacitive sensor. One of the disadvantage of a passive matrix capacitive sensor is the cross coupling between cells. This makes the cell suitable for large objects but not small ones, like a stylus. The active matrix sensor has a single capacitive cell per pixel and operates on detecting differences between touched and non-touched states. The design can support stylus and makes for more reliable touch detection. A panel was built with the following characteristics:
2”
312 X 232
Process technology: LTPS
Display frame rate: 60Hz
Sensor: 156 X 156
Sensor update rate: 30f/sSeiko Epson was asked about the panel performance. It is poor for multi-touch, it has the advantage of not requiring additional process steps, can scale to large panels and the sensor update rate needs to be synced to the display rate, i.e., 120Hz panel would have a 60Hz sensor update rate.
Toshiba
8.5” Wide VGA touch panel
800 X 640
Resistive touch panel
10.4” XGA touch panel
1024 X 768
LED backlight
Resistive touch panel
Zytronics
Projective capacitive add on touch panel. Did not do Apple iPhone but has gain significant market response as a result of Apple’s use of the same technology. Current touch processor uses 8015 and will support large panels – booth panel approximately 40”. Update rate 9ms but this is the limit of the current processor. Going to ARM processor which will be available in October. Significant improvement in performance. Able to offer larger panels or able to embed more wires in the pane for higher resolution.
Reason for large panel support is digital signage market. Lots of buzz but remains to be seen if this is a real market.
One Laptop per Child (OLPC) on the Design of the PC
Mary Lou Jepsen, the co-founder of the OLPC initiative spoke of her experience in the development of the XO computer. Several observations from the talk:
This effort is the first major reexamination of the PC architecture since the original IBM PC.
The display is the computer. This is based on a number of factors including the cost and performance.
An example of the next generation XO was shown which was announced that day. The XO is based on a foldable design where the keyboard is virtual based on a display on both sides. Price point is claimed to reach down to $75.
AMLCED World Domination: Does Anything Stand in the Way
This was an evening panel discussion on the relative merits of: AMLCD, plasma, projectors and OLED. It was a fun and passionate series of short talks.
Given the domination of AMLCD panels most of the arguments were made why it could not achieve domination.
Plasma – LCD fabs are much too expensive. The latest fabs are costing over $3B. Plasma fabs are far more cost effective.
Projector – No all displays fit every market. In the microprojector market there is no way AMLCD can meet these needs. When it comes to a high quality, bright and cost effective display projectors cannot be beat.
OLED – AMLCD have a big drawback – the mercury in the backlights. In the green situation this will be increasingly unacceptable.
3D Cinema
A 3 hour session was held on the emergence of 3D cinema which will come in 2008 and 2009. Many clips were shown. The imagery was stunning. Presentations from 3 studios were made by Dreamworks, Sony Pictures and 3ality. 3ality did a 3D recording and video on a U2 concern of which 3 long clips shown. Dreamworks showed an internal clip on Kung Fu Panda. The visualization was superb. All the speakers commented that this technology is possible because of the advancements in digital cinema from the production to the digital theaters. RealD has a major lead in the movement of this market into the theaters. Some statistics provided include: Real D has:
97% of the screens in the US
90% of the screens in the world.
1225 theaters today, 750 on order
A deal was just announced with Regal Theaters, for
1500 additional screens
Thus, we will see theaters near you having 3D cinema soon. Dreamworks is only doing 3D pictures going forward.
The appeal to the audience is that the industry needs good solutions for home 3D. This begins with the home theater and will eventually go to the display panels. In the Samsung booth was one large screen LCD panel which is autostereoscopic.
3D Display Panels
LG
42”
Requires polarized glasses
Resolution: 2D – 1920 X 1080
Resolution 3D – 1920 X 540
Viewing distance 1 – 4m
Colors – 10bit
Samsung
52”
1920 X 1080
Autostereoscopic
Viewing Distance: 3 – 4m
Other Display Technology
AUO
42”
LCD TFT with Double Sided Display
1366X768
Application for Digital Signage
42”
1920 X 1080
LCD TV with LED Backlight
Ultra-Slim - <10mm
Mercury and Lead Free
1.5”
280X220
Display Frame rate: 60Hz
Process Technology: p-Si
Video-System-on-Panel
Silicon on Glass
Gate driver
Source driver
Timing controller
Reference driver
VCOM driver
CMO
56”
3840X2150
Quad Full HD TV
Color 8 bit
6.5ms Gray to Gray
13.3”
1280X800
Monitor
Ultra-Slim – 3.7mm
Backlight: LED
LG
4” Flexible AMOLED
Process technology: a-Si
Materials: Phosphorescent OLED
Bending Radius: 2”
Thickness: .25mm
Samsung
AMOLED display
Foldable
½ size is like a cell phone
Booth demo include continuous folding operations.
3”AMOLED
Transparent
800X480
10bit color
5” AMOLED
800 X 480
2” AMOLED
Application: Electronic Passport
Download content
Slim and Bendable Display
Developed with Bundes Druckerei
3.1” AMOLED
480 X 800
Mounted on a Glove to Illustrate Use
31”AMOLED
1920 X 1080
52” LCD
1920 X 1080
Narrow Bezel
Shown in a 4(V) X 2(H) configuration
Application: Digital Signage
14.3” Electrophoretic Color
1050X750
Quasi-256 gray
Color Gamut: 5% ntsc
Contrast ratio
In spite of the poor specs. This is the best
color epaper display seen.
WAVE Comments
There is no winning touch technology at SID. The support for touch varied from single touch, multi-touch, stylus, to finger nail. We saw no multi-individual multi-touch.
There is a significant emphasis on small panels, in part, because the scaling to large panels has not happened. Yes, LG and Samsung did have large panels but the touch technology was external to the display panel. The small touch integrated panels favor the cell phone and PMP markets. But it is not clear that the technology developed here will scale or even work well with large panels.
From the show floor, as a whole, the expectations for digital signage are significant. This fits the adage – where is life after television? The answer is in signs everywhere and digital signage is that next great hope. But the linkage of large display panels and touch is just beginning to happen. We would hardly call what was at SID for touch digital signage, ready for installation.
Our take away is that the FPD ecosystem is still coming to grips with the impact of touch requirements. We can only conclude that much research and product development lies ahead.
The state of OLED has for the last 5 years been the perennial next technology to emerge for the mass market. This is the standing OLED joke. But we did see a difference at SID.
OLED is still a technology to watch. But at SID we saw important progress. If OLED becomes a player in the touch market there are many interesting possibilities.