Widescreen LCDs Pitched As Multimedia Displays

If three introductions make a trend, as some suggest, then the 24-inch-diagonal, 1,920 x 1,200-pixel LCD that Samsung Semiconductor will start sampling this spring 2000 marks the beginning of the trend toward widescreen LCDs with a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio, not the familiar 4:3 ratio. The Samsung display will join the 17-inch, 1,600 x 1,200-pixel LCD that Mitsubishi crafted in late 1998 specifically for a Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI) monitor and the 22-inch, 1,600 x 1,200-pixel LCD from Philips Flat Display Systems that Apple Computer debuted in its Cinema Display monitor last year.The widescreen or ""letterbox"" format has obvious appeal for displays crafted with TV in mind. Indeed, Sharp Electronics is fielding a 20-inch widescreen LCD that's being used for that application. Moreover, many of today's plasma displays are widescreen devices, designed primarily for entertainment. Manufacturers of widescreen displays for desktop monitors, however, have other things in mind beyond video. ""If you look at the awards the SGI monitor has won, it speaks volumes for the credibility of a wide-aspect-ratio display,"" said Dale Maunu, Senior Product Marketing Manager for Flat-Panel-Display Products at Mitsubishi Electronics America Inc.'s Electronic Device Group (Sunnyvale, California). ""Everybody is wondering what the convergence product of the future is going to look like,"" Maunu said. ""You've got the whole set-top-box community, cable TV, HDTV, DTV, DVD players and PCs, so there are tremendous opportunities for wide displays. I'm not going to claim that 17.3 inches is the ideal size for a family to huddle around in the living room,"" added Maunu, ""but it does have an appropriate aspect ratio for content creation and business productivity, and if you're watching DVDs on your computer now, all the better if it's in a wide aspect ratio."" The economies of scale for a widescreen 17.3-inch display are, in any case, excellent for Mitsubishi, which builds its displays at the 2.5-generation fab of Advanced Display Inc., its joint venture with Asahi Glass. The 410 x 520mm glass substrates used there, Maunu explained, ""panelize the same as 15-inch, 4:3-ratio LCDs plus a little extra on the side."" That is to say, Advanced Display can manufacture two displays per substrate of a conventional 15-inch LCD or widescreen 17.3-inch LCD. The widescreen format ""works very well for Apple's audience,"" said Steve Franzese, Vice President of Strategic Marketing at Philips Flat Display Systems (San Jose, California). ""They've positioned it as a cinema display for doing video processing or editing, and they've targeted that segment extremely well."" The very same display, however, would work equally well for document processing, Franzese said. Unquenchable Thirst""If you format things right, it can show two Word documents side by side,"" he said, ""and people respond to it reasonably well. Our research of high-end users shows that they like the aspect ratio and they have an unquenchable thirst for larger and larger displays."" ""Clearly, larger panels have a place, quite simply to get more data on a display,"" said Carl Steudle, Director of Marketing for AM LCDs at Samsung Semiconductor Inc. (San Jose). ""The long-term direction"" for the company's widescreen offering, he said, ""is HDTV or wall-hanging units for presentation or multimedia monitors."" Sharp is not fielding widescreen LCDs now for computer monitors, ""but we are seeing increased interest in that,"" said Joel Pollack, a senior LCD marketer at Sharp Electronics (Camas, Washington). ""It's more in terms of the domestic Japanese market but it's starting in North America as well. When you've got a multimedia display and you're putting video out there, there's increased interest in 16:9 and other variants. Whenever you go beyond just graphics and into cinematography, there's no question that there's interest in wide format, and there's some interest for automotive displays, too."" Chris Connery, Product Line Manager at monitor maker NEC Technologies (Itasca, Illinois), however, issued a warning about widescreen. ""We must be careful not to confuse the consumer,"" he said. ""Since displays are measured on the diagonal, regardless of aspect ratio, the measurement for 16:10 displays can actually sound larger [than they actually are]. A 21-inch, 4:3 aspect ratio display actually has a larger display area than a 22-inch 16:10 display,"" he said.