DLP Cinema Technology By Texas Instruments Featured By Disney In All-Digital Showings Of 'Toy Story 2'

Texas Instruments (TI) (NYSE: TXN) Friday announced that its innovative DLP Cinemaô technology will be featured by The Walt Disney Company in an all-digital showing of Disney/Pixar's all-new computer-animated adventure 'Toy Story 2' at six locations throughout North America. 'Toy Story 2' will be the first ever major studio feature to be released simultaneously in both a digital and a traditional film format. The six DLP Cinema playdates will commence November 24th.""We are delighted by this invitation from Disney for two reasons,"" said Bob England, Senior Vice President and Manager of TI's Digital Imaging group. ""First, we believe that this is a significant honor for DLP Cinema technology. Second, it gives us a further opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of DLP Cinema technology to an even wider audience, and to gain further experience in deploying it in real-world situations.""The locations announced for the all-digital showings of 'Toy Story 2' are:Hollywood, CA: Disney El CapitanIrvine, CA: Edwards SpectrumBurbank, CA: AMC Media Center 8Orlando, FL: AMC Pleasure Island 24San Francisco, CA: AMC 1000 Van NessPlano, TX: Cinemark at LegacyThe all-digital showings of 'Toy Story 2' will open at the historic El Capitan Theatre on November 19th, and at the other locations from November 24th. The Plano, TX location has been selected as Plano is the home of DLP Cinema technology.These all-digital showings of 'Toy Story 2' mark a further milestone in the short history of digital cinema: 'Toy Story 2' is a truly remarkable accomplishment in that it was created, produced, and delivered in digital images and digital sound, and will be presented without film using DLP Cinema technology.""Our purpose in working with Disney on this exciting project,"" said Paul Breedlove, DLP Cinema Program Director for TI's Digital Imaging division, ""is to demonstrate the advanced state of readiness and the superiority of DLP Cinema technology for theatrical applications and to promote the development of a digital cinema delivery system based on open standards and non-proprietary hardware. We believe it represents another important step towards the day when all movies will be shown digitally.""DLP Cinema projection technology is the version of TI's Digital Light Processingô (DLPô) technology specifically developed in collaboration with the movie industry to meet the exacting image quality demands of theatrical exhibitions of first run movies. By comparison with the industry-leading large venue DLP-based projectors on which it is based, it features even higher contrast, together with color processing designed to replicate the visual experience of film: commercial DLP-based projectors are designed primarily for video and graphics applications. DLP Cinema technology was previously featured in all-digital showings of Disney's 'Tarzan' and of Lucasfilm's 'Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace.'""With each successive new challenge - such as the one presented by multiple all-digital screenings,"" said Doug Darrow, Marketing and Business Development Manager for TI's DLP Cinema program, ""the reality of digital cinema moves another step closer. Not only can we demonstrate that the projection technology to support digital cinema is ready today but, by increasing the number of movie patrons who see it, we believe we'll create considerable public demand for the consistently pristine kind of images made possible by DLP Cinema.""Today, TI supplies DLP subsystems to more than thirty of the world's top projector manufacturers, who then design, manufacture and market DLP-based projectors. Since shipments began in early 1996, TI has delivered over 245,000 DLP subsystems to its customers. There are now over fifty DLP-based products in the market.At the heart of TI's Digital Light Processing technology is the Digital Micromirror Deviceô (DMDô), an optical semiconductor chip that has an array of 480,000 (SVGA), 786,000 (XGA) or 1,310,000 (SXGA) hinged, microscopic mirrors mounted on a standard logic device. These tiny mirrors operate as optical switches to create a high resolution, full color image.