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Startup's prototype to get demo run at DisplaySearch conference
BOSTON - A startup named SCRAM Technologies Inc. this week will demonstrate a projection screen technology that it claims will enhance projector quality while lowering cost. One analyst called the technology, which has already been licensed to Samsung, potentially "a breakthrough innovation."
The Dunkirk, Md., company, which holds an exclusive license to technology developed at Brookhaven National Laboratory, will give its first public demo of a 50-inch-diagonal prototype display at the DisplaySearch FPD Conference & High Resolution Symposium in Austin, Texas. Samsung (Seoul, South Korea) will demonstrate a 50-inch display based on the scheme at the CeBIT trade show, which convenes March 22 in Hannover, Germany.
"The contrast, color saturation and viewing angles were better than any other TV image I've seen on a large screen, said DisplaySearch analyst Mark Film, who viewed an early prototype late lastyear. "The SCRAM screen has the potential to be a breakthrough innovation."
The Austin event also promises to showcase the headway developers of electronic projectors have made in recentyears in reducing size, weight and price while increasing brightness and pixel count. Among the exhibitors looking to further that trend are Analog Devices Inc. (Norwood, Mass.), which will take the wraps off a chip that it says will lead to smaller and cheaper projectors.
Product manager Ed Spence said ADI worked closely for about four years with a polysilicon-LCD and projector maker, which he declined to name, to develop a specialized driver chip that incorporates a digitalto-analog converter to address one difficulty posed by what is perhaps polysilicon's biggest virtue: integrated drivers.
Designated the AD8380, it "dramatically reduces the power, area and cost of driving small LCD displays," claimed Spence.
Rear-projection screens are the focus of 1998 startup SCRAM Technologies, which spent the past year and a half "refining the technology" and establishing a patent portfolio, according to chief executive officer Ray Kwong.
"We've been reluctant to fully disclose our lens and screen design until the intellectualproperty situation was more solid," he said.
Kwong said the company now has "eight patents issued, probably 12...