For years, we at Insight Media have been promoting the obvious proposition that edgelighting was the most economical way to introducing LED backlighting to LCD television in reasonably high volume.

Ken Werner
Senior Analyst and Editor

Notebook PC makers understood this relativiely early, and LED backlight units (BLUs) are penetrationg the notebook PC market rapidly. This growth is fueled by power savings, thinner packaging, lighter weight, the ability to do away with high-voltage inverters, and the elimination of mercury from the BLU.

We have also seen LEDs replace cold-cathode fluorescent lamps in medium-size industrial LCD, with LEDs having pretty much taken over at 7 inches and being in the process of doing so at 10 inches. It wasn’t that many years ago when CCFLs were common in 4-inch LCDs modules.

But TV makers were slow to catch on, in part because they were enamored of the local area dimming that is possible with direct LED backlighting, and the substantial increase in dynamic contrast ratio and reduction in power consumption that technology enables. In the end, for TVs as well as notebooks, it was the thinner packaging that became an important point in selling the edgelighting technology. Samsung has used this design capability to striking effect in its recently introduced Series 6000, 7000, and 8000 "LED TVs," and sold 2,000 to 3,000 into the North American market in one week (at very high-end prices), industry sources told Digitimes’ Siu Han and Yvonne Yu earlier this week.

The new LED edgelit panels are only 10.8mm thick, and the TV sets build around them are only slightly more than an inch thick, including tuner. And Samsung says the 55-inch models consume up to 40% less power than CCFL-lit TVs.

Samsung has been leading the LED charge, but its major Taiwanese competitors have found the new religion, too. Industry sources told Han and Yu that AUO and CMO are preparing to produce LED-lit LCD-TV panels in volume during 2H’09. BLU maker Coretronic said it is developing four LED BLU’s for LCD-TVs - two edge and two direct - for panels with sizes from 40 to 52 inches. The company says it will start shipping to AUO and CMO in the fourth quarter.

Samsung doesn’t seem to be abandoning direct LED backlighting, either. Digitimes reported in early April that Samsung had granted certificatin to Radiant Opto-Electronics in Taiwan for direct LED BLUs, and that Radiant was expected to begin volume production in Q3.

Volume production of LED edgelit LCD-TV panels isn’t the only panel story I planned to cover today. There are also the plans of notebook PC makers to launch touchscreen notebooks in the 2H, and the interest of notebook and monitor makers in 3D products later this year. What’s particularly interesting about this story is that the panel makers are telling the system makers that they (the system makers) are being too optimistic about the potential for 3D in these segments.
And PVI, which makes the ePaper displays for Amazon’s Kindle eBook readers (including the new 9.7-inch Kindle DX announced yesterday), said today it would push back its launch of color ePaper displays into 2010 because "there are still barriers to achieving satisfying results" - no surprise to regular readers of Display Daily.

I was going to cover these stories, too, but I’ve run out of space. More to come.