HDTV Forum 2004 Gathers TV Performance Experts

12-Aug-04

Almost everyone is thrilled by the experience of watching high-definition images from carefully chosen sources on a large plasma, LCD or rear-view projection screen. But how well would this experience be reproduced in a brightly illuminated family room? How well will standard definition images look on an HDTV set? Picture quality on a TV depends on the source of the image, the method of transmission and the room lighting conditions, as well as the on quality of the set. This is one of the issues that will be explored in a Session at the upcoming HDTV Forum 2004. The three-day event will take place at the luxurious Westin Century Plaza on August 24-26, 2004 in Los Angeles and is hosted by Insight Media-the leading source for information on the microdisplay industry, and DisplaySearch-the worldwide leader in flat panel display (FPD) market research and consulting. Session 14, entitled Quantifying and Comparing TV Performance will take place on Day 3 on Thursday, August 26, 2004 at 3:10 pm and will feature the following experts in the area of TV display performance and analysis: Mike Wilson, Product Manager, Westar Display Technologies Loyd Case, Technical Director, PC Magazine Displays and Graphics, Ziff Davis Media Marc Fleischmann, Senior VP Engineering, Pixelworks Norman Bardsley, Director of Display Technology, DisplaySearchThese speakers bring very different perspectives to the topic. Westar Display Technologies has many years of experience in the supply of optical measurement equipment to the FPD industry, with products for microdisplays and direct view panels. They recently set up an internal laboratory to provide independent tests of display performance. In their first report, The Flat Panel TV Performance Evaluation Report, performed in conjunction with DisplaySearch, Westar carried out a broad suite of tests on six 30-32-inch LCD-TVs. These were manufactured in three countries, but were purchased at local retail outlets, so that the sets were not specially selected by the supplier nor were prototypes of TVs not yet on sale. Mike Wilson will describe the test methodology and report the highlights of the results in his talk. While Westar's customers are industry professionals, Ziff Davis Media provides evaluations of computer monitors and HDTVs for consumers, based on tests made in their own laboratories. The evaluations are published on line, through www.extremetech.com, and in print, through PC Magazine (with over 5M readers) and the new ExtremeTech magazine, which will debut in October. Loyd Case will describe how the measurements made in Ziff Davis laboratories are designed to meet the varied needs of their many subscribers. Pixelworks is a leading producer of the image processing and display controller chips that go into computer monitors, digital projectors and TVs. Digital electronics has the potential to do far more than eliminating noise and other aberrations from the displayed images. Well designed decoders and image processing chips can match the particular TV to the characteristics of the camera that recorded the image and can correct many of the effects of the intermediate transmission, storage or processing. They can also allow the set to be optimized for use with other image sources, such as a DVD player or digital camera. Marc Fleischmann will discuss how Pixelworks chips analyze the incoming video signals, assess the quality of the image that will be created on the screen, and optimize that image. Norman Bardsley, Director of Display Technology at DisplaySearch, will help place these three talks in context, by showing how quantitative testing can help drive the development of all digital TVs, and can confirm the progress being made by each technology and by individual manufacturers. The current strengths and weaknesses of LCDs, PDPs and microdisplay-based projection TVs will be summarized and distinctions made between temporary problems and fundamental difficulties. He will show how further improvements in digital electronics will help maintain the excitement in the consumer entertainment industry well beyond the time when HDTV is widely adopted. For a full conference agenda, please visit www.insightmedia.info/HDTVConference/HDTV04AGENDA.htm.

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