The main exhibition and symposium for SID’s Display Week event kicked off yesterday in Seattle, Washington. And, like a great competitor on American Idol who suffers a "bad week", SID has overcome its woes from last year’s event to come roaring back with a stellar performance and get back in the running.

Chris Chinnock
Senior Analyst and Editor
for Insight Media

In a Display Daily I filed from last year’s SID event in San Antonio, I said that the low attendance didn’t matter and that Display Week would remain a relevant show. Seems others agree too. Unofficially, attendance is up — way up to nearly double last years’ event. And, the exhibit floor is clearly bigger with good traffic in the main hall.

What helped with the rebound? It seems like a number of pieces such as the extensive focus on 3D via conferences, special screenings and technical papers, a touch screen focus, as well as the support of key industry players like Samsung, LG, Sharp, DuPont and others. A better location and improving economy played their roles too.

There will be lots for our team to cover at this event, so let me use this DD to discuss the keynote presentations. Frankly, I find most keynotes long on marketing and short on real insight and news. Today’s were different as they were genuinely informative and thought provoking.

Dr. Sang-Soo Kim, executive VP, Samsung Mobile Display began the keynotes talking about the next big thing in displays. Not surprisingly, he touted 3D and Internet connectivity as the key features that will drive the next wave. What was a little surprising was his strong endorsement for OLEDs to be a driving force in this next wave. He noted for example, that Samsung has now committed to building a Gen 5.5 AMOLED plant that will primarily serve the TV market for screen sizes up to about 30 inches, starting in 2011. But, said Kim, they are already planning a Gen 8 AMOLED plant that will focus on 46" to 55" screen sizes. No dates were announced, however.

Kim also played a short clip from a 2005 SID keynote in which a key Samsung executive called for the industry to rally around LCD TVs so it could ship 100M TVs by 2010. At the time, most thought this a very ambitious goal, but the industry achieved this milestone 2 years early.

Kim then laid down his own forecast — 600M AMOLED unit shipments in 2015. But, he raised the ante saying that even 1B units were possible and that AMOLEDs would be a mainstream premium TV by that time. "Markets are created, not forecast," he concluded. He’s right. If anyone can make large area AMOLED TVs happen, I would put my money on Samsung.

Mike Sinnett, vice president/787 systems chief engineer, The Boeing Company then took the stage to describe how displays in avionics have evolved over the years. He asked how many people in the audience had traveled on a plane in the last year, using the nearly unanimous response to justify why avionic displays should be considered a consumer device. His talk was fascinating and concluded with his description of the cockpit displays in the soon to be released 787 Dreamliner, which he has been working on for 9 years. As expected, the size and scope of the displays is increasing, and even includes side-looking displays.

What I found more interesting is how such complex information is presented. This showed major improvements, which will allow pilots to better understand, manage and react in the cockpit. It sure made me feel safer, but perhaps there are some lessons that can be learned for information management in other complex applications.

He also pointed to an unmet need: displays that don’t retain fingerprint oils. Can anyone help him? And in the future, we may also ride in planes that have no real windows as such designs could take us to new level of air travel. But, how do we create display systems that allow pilots to see and passengers to not feel claustrophobic?

Finally, Steve Bathiche, director of research, Applied Sciences Group, Entertainment and Devices Division, Microsoft Corp. gave a tour de force of the new touch and gesture based technology his team is developing for interacting with displays and machines. He called it breaking through the fourth wall. Through dozens of short video clips showing novel ways to interact with, display, touch, and control displays and devices, he got many people’s minds thinking about the possibilities.

Bathiche also highlighted the wedge TV concept developed by Adrian Travis, who is now a part of the Microsoft team. This display concept allows a standard light source, like a projector, to inject an image into a thin waveguide. The image traverses the waveguide via total internal reflection and is output at a display section where structures allow the image to escape column by column. But, this can be a two-way device allowing light to be captured and processed and display via the same surface and waveguide. For example, it can be combined with eye tracking and a steerable backlight to create a high-resolution autostereoscopic display. He has lots of cool stuff and ideas. I think I need to find a way to invite myself to his lab for a look.

Anyway, that’s all for now. Others will have additional reports for the rest of the week with full coverage available in our subscription news reports.