Last week in this slot Insight Media president and Display Daily publisher Chris Chinnock wrote about better defining the company’s position in the display industry and our focus on emerging technologies and display market segment areas including 3D, LED / Laser projection and E-paper displays–all on the cusp of new investment and product development decisions.

Steve Sechrist
Senior Analyst and Editor

One of the best ways we know to get a handle on this is through our subscription based newsletters. So in a bit of shameless self-promotion this week, let’s review the most recent January issue of Large Display Report (LDR) published just prior to the CES show. Many of the LDR stories anticipated news that emerged at CES.

The elephant in the room–the economy is the story dominating early 2009. Just how deep and wide–have we hit bottom-and just how long will it take for things to recover are questions most, if not all of us are looking to answer. Our LDR coverage for January is punctuated with the effects of the economy and how industry wide everyone from display manufacturers to companies in the surrounding ecosystem are dealing with the tough times. The tough times were echoed at CES with even the cab drivers complaining about the low attendance.

The January LDR reports on a LED industry seeing news of consolidations, cross licensing and cooperation and even expanded capacity (Konka) in China as the industry hunkers down for the economic challenges ahead. Gallium nitride high-brightness LEDs are on the radar as they provide the light source for the LED-based pico, ultraportable and home theater projectors that showed up at CES as products ready for commercial distribution.

The new LED devices have other display applications too and thin LED backlight products from both Taiwan and Korea have been introduced to support the dominant slim and green product trends in displays that made their way to the CES show floor last week. LED backlights are a key technology as they help differentiate products by boosting display image quality and allow TV makers to offer an environment friendly green message with reduced power consumption and the elimination of some chemical toxins like mercury found in CCFLs.

The sour economy is affecting OLED development plans and the first casualty is Samsung where the large display OLED production schedule is at a virtual standstill. The company is putting a hold on OLED-TV development, citing higher technology costs that customers are now unwilling to pay. They are focusing rather on iterative improvements in LCD display trends that include thin, green, and fast. Yet this is something you would never get from attending CES. At the Samsung CES booth the company showcased beautiful next generation 14- and 31-inch OLED-TVs at the front entrance–eye level of its massive cavernous display.

Even given these uncertain times, 3D technology is booming and this was reflected in our comprehensive LDR coverage of the category. Six sections in all were dedicated to 3D technology including 3D digital cinema, consumer displays, gaming, content creation, broadcast and distribution. At CES, 3D was also a hot topic. Perhaps the most important 3D innovation introduced at CES were eye-sequential LCD displays from several vendors, with drivers for them from NVIDIA. Previous 3D LCD displays were expensive or had poor image quality, leaving the affordable 3D consumer market to DLP-based RPTV. While there were 3D DLP RPTVs at CES, there were far more 3D LCDs and plasma sets than seen previously.

For Hollywood, 3D technology is all about driving higher ticket sales at the box office. 3D has proved this repeatedly, and is gaining massive support from major studios, with announced 3D production plans well into the next decade. It is powered by the transition to digital cinema which is in turn powered by the money saved by digital distribution of films. The movement goes well beyond the US, as demonstrated by the recent CineAsia trade show in Macau, China held in mid December and covered in the January LDR. Asia is moving forward with the digital cinema conversion with as many as 6500 new theaters coming on line under a virtual print model similar to the one here in the US. CES is not a Hollywood trade show, but there certainly was evidence of the cinema industry’s interest in 3D in Las Vegas. The high light (or, if you prefer, the low point) of large-screen 3D at CES was the live broadcast of the Florida/Oklahoma Bowl game in the theater at the Paris. This show went not only to invited guests at CES but to paying customers in about 80 theaters around the US. Unfortunately, the 3D content quality was terrible, showing just how hard it is to produce live action, real time 3D content. The images were produced by a pair of Sony SXRD cinema projectors and when the content was good, they produced good images.

For 3D content makers, cinema is only the first tier in a content distribution strategy that reaches 3D displays in the home with films, games, and live content such as sports and concerts. Content distribution was a key topic at CES, with TDVision and Sensio each showing off their competing encoding systems, both backward compatible with Blu Ray and other means of distribution to the consumer.

Tough times or not, the display industry is an exciting place to be especially when the focus is on emerging technologies that empower new products and continually push the realm of possibility. For more details on CES, see the February issue of LDR. In addition. we hope you will join us throughout 2009 as we track, the progress and help define the future with thought and insights from Insight Media.