Luminus, Sony, Samsung products win SID Display of the Year awards

Selected by a distinguished panel of display industry experts, the six winners (two in each of three main categories) were chosen for their innovation and commercial significance, in addition to their contributions in helping shape the future of today’s display industry.

Display Component of the Year
Gold Award: Luminus Devices PhlatLight LED Backlight Unit
Silver Award: FUJIFILM Corp. WV-EA Film

Display Device of the Year
Gold Award: Sony Corp. XEL-1 OLED TV
Silver Award: Samsung SDI 2.2-inch QVGA AMOLED Display

Display Application of the Year
Gold Award: Apple Inc., iPhone
Silver Award: RealD Stereoscopic 3D Cinema Technology

Commenting on this year’s winners, Dick McCartney, Chair of SID’s Display of the Year Awards Committee, noted, “Collectively, the 2008 award recipients have excelled at transitioning innovative products and technologies from ‘hot’ buzzword to ‘cool’ reality.”

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.

As the display industry’s most prestigious honor, the Display of the Year Awards will be presented to the winners during a special luncheon on Wednesday, May 21, 2008, as part of Display Week 2008 at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

LED-related winners:
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.

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 add BRAVIAÒ Internet Video Link service and other future modules.

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.