During the past few years, companies have been making larger and larger HDTVs. Not surprisingly, this is a reflection of the fact that marketers determined that consumers want large HDTVs. Well, the thinking now is that the next big trend in display physical form is that consumers will want HDTVs to be thinner. In today’s Display Daily article, let’s take a quick look at what is going on at some of the large consumer electronics companies related to thinning.

Art Berman
Insight Media Consultant

By changing the positions of parts and thinning the backlights, Hitachi recently showed off three prototype, 32" LCD TVs that were 1.9 cm thick. The company is planning to mass produce these models by 2009.

JVC has declared its intention to release a 3.7 cm thick, 42" LCD TVs by March 2008. The JVC HDTV illustrated to the right is 7.2 cm thick at the thickest part with a tuner and other devices integrated to the body. The real trick for JVC in accomplishing a thin LCD HDTV was the development of an innovative means of thinning the backlight unit. In accomplishing this, JVC
made use of the light diffusion and simulation technologies developed during creation of their projection screen components. This allowed the LCD module to be thinned from 35.3 mm to 20 mm.

Sharp has publicly shown a 2.88 mm thick (at the thinnest part) 12.1" LCD panel. It is illustrated to the right and incorporates an edge lighting system that utilizes white LEDs. The system can be applied to LCD panels of up to about the 15" size. A commercial production date has not yet been decided for this product although the company plans to start shipping samples as early as in November, 2007.

Sharp has also developed a 2 cm thick (display part) 52" LCD TV. The LCD TV model (illustrated to the left below banner) also has an embedded tuner and is 2.9 cm thick at the thickest part. Sharp plans to begin commercial production of thin LCD panels in conjunction with the start up of their new plant. This facility is Sakai City, Osaka and is to commence production in March, 2010.

The ultimate in thin, though, may be provided by OLEDs. Since OLEDs emit light, TVs based on this technology do not require backlights as do LCD TVs. Neither do OLEDs require a discharge space as do plasma HDTVs. This provides HDTVs based on OLEDs the potential to become dramatically thin.

At this time, the lead in OLED TV seems to be with Sony. Sony is set to commercialize a 3 mm thick (the thinnest part) 11" OLED TV. Pictured to the right, it is priced at 200,000 yen (US$1,717) and scheduled to be released December 1, 2007.

Toshiba and Panasonic are working jointly on OLED TVs but are still in the research and development stage. This past May, Samsung Electronics unveiled a prototype of a 40" set.

Not discussed in this article are thinned microdisplay based rear projection HDTVs. The reason for this is that the thickness of even an aggressively thinned RPTV such as the one proposed by Luminoz (DD September 20th) will still be thicker than any of the flat panel displays - before they were thinned. Sorry, but RPTVs simply can not fit into this new, super thin category.

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