You’ve been wandering for months, even years, through the magnificent world of CE (that’s for Consumer Electronics, silly) just to discover the beauty of LCoS, CRT, DLP, LCD, PDP and the like… and that’s about the TV market only. I’ll spare you the rest…
Then you’ve realised that, as slowly as the PCs, that's to say with a rate of obsolescence that is counted in weeks, not even months, TVs have become "biiig", to the point where your proud, early adopter of a friend has showed off with his last flat screen monster that is soo large and soo close that you could have counted the number of pixel points on the screen, and that your eyes needed a collyrium pretty quickly… Odd! Your eyes, but also your wallet also soon realised that going big was meaning throwing big bucks as well. It’s the only way they can keep prices up (see all stats around the world and several articles on this website).
The increase in screen size has been a continuous trend since TVs first appeared in the households and started to damage our brain cells in the fifties. Yet, the last five years have seen what simply is a pure explosion, mad-like drift, with the coming of Plasmas (that’s what PDP means), Liquid Crystal Displays (that’s what LCD means), or Micro Display Rear Projection TVs (that’s what MDRP TV means) which are gradually killing our old Cathode Ray Tube TVs (that’s what CRT TV means). They are as large as the Flemish paintings that hang in museums for the crowds to admire; some manufacturers even offer to frame them like the said paintings…
There’s a concern, though, about such sizes, and this one is not about technology and lack of industry skills –there is not a single week without one or another manufacturer unveiling the 50-, 60+-inches in its field of competence. Actually three main factors may determine the future in this large display segment, and they are:
You: for you, it is more about living space, and we’re talking here about the space that is available in most homes. After all, not everyone has a 1000 Sq feet living room, and not everyone in the world has an American-like, super-size-oriented mind. Have a look at most European and Asian average homes or flat surfaces, and you will understand what I mean. The industry, i.e. chip makers, and manufacturers who discover that there may not be such a big market for such big things after all Within the industry itself, the problematic, which tends to become more and more complex, and less and less manageable, of competing technologies that are often developed inside companies' departments or divisions, before even reaching the marketplace.Intel's projected LCoS chip
An example is that of Rear Projection TVs (RPTVs): they are close to take an entire wall, and were meant, according to the "consensus" only one year or so ago, to win our hearts… provided that there is enough distance between your eyes and the device to avoid the distortion that is inevitable when one is sitting too close. It was particularly true, among these big things, of the so-called Liquid Crystal on Silicon TVS (that's what LCoS means) that were, together with the competing Digital Light Processing technology (that's what DLP means) targeting the 40+ to 50 inches and above segment, just a question of time, let the market become mature, volumes, hence return, will follow...
Sure, but other factors may have changed their future. Gradually, some big industry players have thrown the towel on such technology. It first started with Intel (NASDA:INTC) and Philips (NL:00953), no less, then the Japanese Toshiba (TSE:6104). But we hear from various sources that other players, like LGE, might well end up taking the same decision, on fears of cannibalism between competing technologies, such as LCDs, that have been gradually gaining in size. One of the reasons is that, in order to keep prices up, most brands tend to propose larger and larger devices, up to the limit of the consumer demand.
That was, apparently, one of the key motives when Intel dropped the LCoS chip in 2004. Their initial intention was to go for the full HDTV –the two mega-pixel 1920X1080 resolution, when the competing DLP chip from Texas Instrument was targeting the “basic” one mega-pixel 1280X768 resolution; and it was said that Intel’s primary technical choices led to the above 50-in size range, when DLP is more in the 40- to 50-in.
There’s no obvious, or automatic link between resolution and screen size, but statistically the more resolution you provide, the larger the screen… and industry players, who have all capacities to monitor consumer behaviour and market trends at hand, cannot simply ignore all the abovementioned limitations and factors, such as… average room volume, screen size, and money. All of a sudden, they discover that they're trapping themselves in “niche” markets, i.e. low volumes. So that the terms of the equation (and that was probably one major one at Intel’s HQs when they took their final decision) change into: is the market big enough for my investments to get any reasonable return? The same question has obviously been looming around, and not only in Santa Clara, as the late rumour about LGE seems to demonstrate (if it’s true…).
large screens /large resolution: too big for industry ROI?
Obviously the decision of Intel, Toshiba and Philips will not kill the LCoS market, but these big gorillas might have been able to push prices down. In addition to the technical challenge that consist in constructing huge crystal panels, the interruption has more to do with marketing concerns than crystal manufacturing –after all, these are very high tech Cos, with a ton load of expertise and skills aboard:
DLP has been continuously better than LCoS in the 40-/50-in segment, and this segment is precisely critical, because it’s attracting a greater number of consumers around the world who have more limited home space and money ; Intel’s response to the challenge of DLP was, as it seems, to go up-market in bigger sizes, where they finally found out there are no big volumes after all; However, had Intel and others have continued the LCoS experience, prices WOULD have come down anyway… so that it may be not about prices (look back at the first available plasmas… they sold), but about screen size, and 50-in might be a maxium, with rare exceptions –big house, dedicated AV room etc; The CE markets are now driven more by Asian –with Japan early adopting, and others following- or European consumers spaces, where the average available per capita surface is smaller than in the US Large LCoS and DLP screens, although gaining market shares, seem to remain a tiny part of the market.All in all, the above-50 inches market prospects are more those of a luxury or special needs niche market segment -think of sport bars and pubs displaying live sports all day- even if statistics and surveys indicate that the 35- to 40+ inches are gaining ground... But that is to say, mainly over the Cathode Ray Tube TV.
Too big may not look so beautiful after all…