Audio Video News

Last week, Texas Instruments announced that its Digital Light Processing (DLP) technology has received the "Golden Note" award from The Academy for Advancing High Performance Audio & Video. The award recognizes DLP as "The Most Innovative Video Technology," and was received at the Academy's Award Banquet at the Indianapolis Westin Hotel.

TI notes that the majority of DLP-based projectors have traditionally been used in business applications. The company says that "increasingly, however, DLP-based projectors are being marketed to discerning home-entertainment and home-theater customers." In April and May of this year, TI announced agreements with Hitachi and Mitsubishi, under the terms of which the two companies will develop large-screen, HD-capable home entertainment systems based on DLP technology. TI says that the first products developed under the terms of this agreement are expected to come to market in the second half of 2000.

Sherel Horsley of TI claims that "1999 has been an exciting year in the development of DLP technology. The agreements we have signed with Hitachi and Mitsubishi confirm our belief that DLP can be a significant home-entertainment technology. The public demonstrations of DLP Cinema, featuring Star Wars: Episode 1—The Phantom Menace [see previous story] and Tarzan, confirmed that DLP delivers the best image quality you can get. And the announcement of sub-5-lb. ultraultraportable projectors by Compaq and InFocus confirmed that DLP uniquely enables the development of the industry's lightest, brightest projectors."

According to Texas Instruments, the company supplies DLP subsystems to more than 30 projector manufacturers, who then design, manufacture, and market DLP-based projectors. TI says that since shipments began in early 1996 they have delivered over 185,000 DLP subsystems to customers, and that there are now over 50 DLP-based products on the market. At the heart of TI's DLP technology is the Digital Micromirror Device (DMD), an optical semiconductor chip with 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 full-color image.