Texas Instruments Booth At CES Features Numerous ""Firsts""

DLPô Technology Continuing To Thrive As Technology Of Choice For Home Entertainment Projection/Display Solutions

24-Jan-01

The Texas Instruments (TI) booth at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) featured a number of ""firsts."" TI is provided a first public preview of an exciting new project - the show gave visitors the first ever opportunity to view top-of-the-range HD home entertainment systems, enabled by DLPô technology from Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Panasonic, InFocus - the North American market leader in business projectors -showcased its first home entertainment projector to use DLP technology in the TI booth, and Sharp Electronics previewed its latest development utilizing DLP technology. Scheduled for first shipments in the third quarter, the XV-Z9000U is the first front projection product announced to utilize the 16:9, 1280 x 720 (HD) DMDô - a development long awaited by many home theatre enthusiasts. ""You just have to look around the booth to see the exciting progress we're making with DLP technology in home entertainment applications,"" said Dale Zimmerman, Business Manager for DLP Home Entertainment Systems. ""This time last year, we had a vision, some signed contracts and a growing reputation - today, you can see how that vision is becoming a reality, how those contracts have turned into real products that are shipping, and how that reputation is leading to increasing numbers of companies turning to DLP technology for their home entertainment solutions."" The ""vision"" - of a world of home entertainment in which the worlds of broadcast programming and Web-based entertainment combine seamlessly to produce a highly interactive, immersive experience - becomes a reality in a groundbreaking project designed to test consumer reaction to the opportunities offered by the convergence of digital broadcasting and Internet-based entertainment. The project is a joint effort between WRAL TV of Raleigh, North Carolina, and TI, and will see twenty families equipped with large screen, rear projection, HD-capable home entertainment systems using DLP technology, a tightly-integrated personal computer allowing HD digital broadcast, data casting using WRAL's DTV Plus technology, and broadband Internet access. The project is expected to go live on March 15. The ""contracts"" were those signed by Hitachi, Mitsubishi and Panasonic to develop large screen, rear projection, HD-capable home entertainment systems using DLP technology. All three companies are now shipping the first products to result from the agreement - CES provided the opportunity to view all three systems in the TI booth. ""These products are particularly exciting,"" continued Zimmerman, ""because our vision of home entertainment centers around the concept of an entertainment-rich, highly personalized experience which will draw from a variety of sources and which will require larger screen sizes. DLP technology is unique in its ability to support the simultaneous display of both HD video and high resolution graphics, and in its ability to support the development of smaller, lighter, more elegant enclosures which, we think, will remove an important barrier to widespread adoption of large screens."" The ""potential"" of DLP technology to become pervasive in home entertainment applications was evident on a few booths at CES, but this year, no fewer than twelve companies - including Davis, DreamVision, DWIN, Hitachi, Marantz, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, PLUS, SIM2 Multimedia (Seleco), Runco, Sharp and Zenith - will feature projectors enabled by DLP technology. Significantly, InFocus - which has a commanding position in the North American market for business projectors - has elected to use DLP technology for its first product designed specifically for home entertainment. ""This will be an exciting year,"" concluded Zimmerman, ""as we continue to develop DLP technology for home entertainment applications, and as increasing numbers of companies adopt it as their technology of choice to satisfy the demands of today's increasingly sophisticated consumers."" Today, TI supplies DLP subsystems to more than thirty of the world's top projector manufacturers, who then design, manufacture and market projectors based on DLP technology. There are now over fifty products based on DLP technology in the market. Since early 1996, over 500,000 DLP subsystems have been shipped. Over the past four years, DLP technology-based projectors have consistently won some of the audio-visual industry's most prestigious awards, including, in June 1998, an EmmyÆ Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. At the heart of TI's Digital Light Processingô technology is the Digital Micromirror Deviceô optical semiconductor chip. The DMD switch has an array of up to 1,310,000 hinged, microscopic mirrors which operate as optical switches to create a high resolution, full color image. More information on TI's DLP technology can be found on the Web at www.dlp.com.

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