A top Samsung Mobile Display executive used his keynote Thursday at the DisplaySearch Emerging Technologies Conference to repeat his prediction that large-screen OLED TVs are “on the horizon.” But the executive, Brian Berkeley, the company’s vice president of engineering, used less sweeping language than when he predicted five months ago at the DisplaySearch Flat-Panel Display Conference that large-screen TVs could arrive on the market sooner than most people think (CED March 4 p1). OLED will be better for 3D TV than LCD or plasma technologies because it has the fastest response times and eliminates almost all crosstalk between left- and right-eye images, he said. But “Gen 8” fabs are “essential” for OLED TVs in screen sizes as large as 46 and 55, and Samsung Mobile Display is ready only to begin producing Gen 5.5 OLED substrates for smaller-screen smartphone applications, Berkeley said. High-volume Gen 5.5 OLED production is scheduled to start 2011 at the company’s factory in Tang-Jeong, South Korea, and to reach “full capacity” by 2012, he said. The company thinks OLED can become a “mainstream premium TV technology” by 2015, if it can develop technologies like backplanes and color patterning needed to make OLED TVs work, Berkeley said. Backplanes hold the active-matrix switches that turn the OLED’s individual pixels on and off. Not only do backplanes for large-screen TVs have tighter tolerances, they also require a lot of equipment to be produced, he said. Still, “backplane scaling is under way,” Berkeley said.
Paul Gluckman
Paul Gluckman, Executive Senior Editor, is a 30-year Warren Communications News veteran having joined the company in May 1989 to launch its Audio Week publication. In his long career, Paul has chronicled the rise and fall of physical entertainment media like the CD, DVD and Blu-ray and the advent of ATSC 3.0 broadcast technology from its rudimentary standardization roots to its anticipated 2020 commercial launch.
"The standard being pursued by CEA’s 3D Technology working group is for the IR emitter signal that synchronizes active-shutter 3D glasses,” Brian Markwalter, CEA vice president of technology and standards, told us by e-mail. He was responding to statements by XpanD executive David Chechelashvili that the working group’s effort to draft standards for interoperable 3D glasses is moving more slowly than expected (CED Aug 19 p1). The standard “is not for the glasses themselves, but would facilitate making interoperable active-shutter glasses, assuming 3D TVs adopt the standard when it is adopted,” Markwalter said. “The availability of universal active-shutter glasses is beneficial to the nascent 3D TV market. A standard helps keep the market from splintering into more emitter approaches, which would complicate universal glasses in the future. The aggressive target for completing the CEA standard is November of this year.” Chechelashvili said it would take at least a year to finish work on the standard.
Accessories supplier iGo received its second U.S. patent (No. 7,779,278) for its “novel approach” to reducing wasted standby “vampire” power, the company said. The company estimates its green technology can automatically reduce vampire power loss up to 85 percent.
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The Natural Resources Defense Council’s point man on the California Energy Commission’s TV energy rules was noncommittal Wednesday when asked whether his group would intervene as a co-defendant on CEC’s behalf if CEA sues to block Tier One of the rules from taking effect in January, much like it joined the suit to defend New York City’s e-waste program when CEA sued to block it from taking effect. “CEA doesn’t like regulation of any kind and they have threatened a lawsuit,” NRDC Senior Scientist Noah Horowitz said at the DisplaySearch TV Ecosystems Conference. “There’s rumors they're trying to prevent other states from setting similar regulations. If there’s a lawsuit, we will evaluate it at that point."
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- CEA’s 3D Technologies Working Group (R4 WG16) “unfortunately is working slower than consumers want” to hash out standards on interoperable active-shutter glasses that would work across most brands of 3D TVs, David Chechelashvili, who runs global retail and distribution for glasses supplier Xpand Cinema, told the DisplaySearch TV Ecosystem Conference Wednesday. “At some point, the standards will be in place,” but not for at least a year or two, Chechelashvili said. CEA officials couldn’t be reached by our deadline for comment.
California’s Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC) confirmed that it’s putting its e-waste fraud unit under the watch of a criminal investigator, after the state’s e-waste program was accused of having become a magnet for fraud. The department “is working to ensure that enforcement of e-waste fraud is handled appropriately,” spokeswoman Charlotte Fadipe told us. “We have a team of experts in place and are adding resources as appropriate including a criminal investigator. We know there are many companies out there following the law and it’s not fair to them, or anyone else, that others don’t. We want violators to understand that fraud is a serious offense and that DTSC will work to minimize the opportunities for this to occur.” The Sacramento Bee found that the department had paid recyclers more than $320 million the past five years without accounting for a high volumes of e-waste collected and processed illegally from outside California. But the department hadn’t assigned a single official to investigate the fraud or brought prosecutions, the paper reported. The department has ordered managers to prepare a report by Sept. 1 on how to beef up e-waste fraud enforcement, it said.
CE manufacturers have only until Wednesday to “rebut” in writing Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection market share “determinations” for the state’s new e-waste program that begins in January, the department said. Under state rules that took effect June 1, the department’s market share determinations are “presumed to be correct unless a manufacturer submits information rebutting this determination,” the department said.
Just as how color changed movies and TV, 3D “is driving a fundamental shift in how consumers want to experience cinema and eventually all visual display devices,” RealD CEO Michael Lewis said Monday on his firm’s first earnings call as a public company. “The bottom line,” he said, is that “any visual display is a business opportunity for RealD."
Sujata “Sue” Sachdeva will be sentenced Oct. 22 after pleading guilty to embezzling $34 million from Koss Corp. when she was the company’s vice president of finance, said an order by U.S. District Judge Lynn Adelman in Milwaukee. Under a plea agreement, Sachdeva will serve at least seven years in prison and pay full restitution. She could have gotten 120 years in prison if she had been convicted at trial of the six counts of wire fraud against her. In a separate agreement with prosecutors who are seeking to recover the embezzled money, Sachdeva and her husband, pediatrician Ramesh Sachdeva, promised not to touch their joint personal account at Milwaukee’s Park Bank until investigators are satisfied that the $180,000 in it wasn’t gained through crime. “Upon confirmation that such funds do not constitute criminal proceeds,” the government will let the Sachdevas use the money for “reasonable, necessary and customary expenses,” rather than make them forfeit the cash for restitution, said their agreement.
With only four weeks to go before IFA opens for a six-day run at the Messe Berlin fairgrounds, the show still lacks international keynoters, organizers confirmed Friday. Last year’s show featured six keynoters from the CE and major-appliances industries. One possible keynoter candidate for this year, Pieter Nota, a former chief marketing executive at Nivea, has been named Philips Consumer Lifestyle’s CEO, replacing the departing Andrea Ragnetti, who keynoted the past two IFA shows. But Nota won’t officially start the post until Sept. 1, just as IFA opens. Ragnetti’s predecessors at Philips also keynoted IFA shows year after year. IFA spokeswoman Nicole Jahn acknowledged in an e-mail Friday that show organizers are “usually set” by this point with a roster of keynoters. “However, this year, we are still in the process” of lining up speakers, “and I kindly ask you for a little more patience,” Jahn said.