New TV Display Elusive
It reads like a VIP list of failures -- Hewlett-Packard Co., Toshiba Corp., Intel Corp., and Royal Philips Electronics.
Each of these technology powerhouses tried to conquer a promising technology for making thin, big-screen televisions -- called LCOS, or liquid crystal on silicon -- only to back out in defeat.
“The roadside is littered with those who have tried and failed,” said Sandeep Gupta, chief executive of MicroDisplay Corp., a privately held designer of LCOS chips based in San Pablo, Calif.
As the television market moves to bigger and better screens, LCOS is one of a few technologies that, in theory, fit the bill to replace bulky cathode-ray tube televisions and costly plasma displays.
In an LCOS TV set, light reflects off one or more small microchips made up of a layer of liquid crystal and a layer of transistors, projecting an image onto the front of the screen.
The pictures from LCOS sets can be rich and bright. But as more than one technology giant has discovered, LCOS is also a black hole for investment cash.
Meanwhile, Dallas-based Texas Instruments Inc., using another rear-projection technology called digital light projection, has sold 5 million DLP engines, used in cinemas, projectors and TVs.
“TI has done a fantastic job marketing DLP,” said Bob O’Donnell, director of personal technology at market research company IDC.
A year ago, Santa Clara, Calif.-based Intel announced at North America’s biggest consumer electronics show that it would reshape television with LCOS products.
“It’s real,” Intel President Paul S. Otellini proclaimed at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, adding that TVs built with its high-definition displays would be on the market by the end of 2004.
That forecast deeply embarrassed the world’s largest chip maker, which delayed the project and then canceled it in October. Intel said it overestimated the economic payoff, though experts familiar with Intel’s technology say the company had an unrealistically complicated design.
It was deja vu for Chris Chinnock, a senior analyst with market researcher Insight Media. He has watched as project after project on LCOS -- developed in the 1990s by Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM Corp. and Japan’s Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.’s JVC -- has been canceled or quietly shelved.
“It has cast a serious pall and doubt about the technology,” Chinnock said.
Among the first large companies to try to commercialize LCOS was Palo Alto-based Hewlett-Packard, which originally expected high volumes of components in 1999. Chinnock said the project was shelved soon after.
“They couldn’t get the price and performance,” he said.
In 2002, France’s Thomson pulled the plug on an $8,000 television set built with LCOS panels from Tempe, Ariz.-based Three-Five Systems Inc. Three-Five later spun off the LCOS business into another Tempe company called Brillian Corp., which earlier this year lost a lucrative deal with retailer Sears, Roebuck & Co. amid component shortages.
Just before Intel put aside its LCOS adventure, the giant Dutch electronics company Royal Philips Electronics backed out of its LCOS project, saying it realized it wasn’t “big enough” to bring mature products to market quickly. Japan’s Toshiba Corp. also halted its LCOS plans after a supply snafu with Hitachi Ltd., Chinnock said.
What is it about LCOS that seems destined for failure, and what keeps bringing companies back?
For one, the technology promises a seemingly straightforward technical solution to a problem facing the entire TV industry -- how to make big, gorgeous TV displays on the cheap. It’s an especially attractive idea for chip makers, since LCOS displays get better and better as the silicon components gets more advanced.
And it can be done: JVC is making a big push on a mainstream LCOS set this year, and Sony is using the technology in its high-end projectors.
“If you actually dig a little bit deeper, I think what we’ve found and concluded is that these were really failed approaches to the LCOS solution, which does not necessarily mean that LCOS is dead,” Chinnock said.
Among those trying to turn the technology into a profitable business is MicroDisplay. It has been working on LCOS products for a decade.
Gupta, the company’s CEO, said LCOS can be a maddening technology to develop, with engineers fixing one problem only to uncover an even deeper flaw. There are eight technological disciplines required to make a good LCOS product, from optical expertise to software to analog chip design, more than many companies realize, he said.
MicroDisplay said it has the advantage -- at least until the next big technology company tries again.
