May 16, 2007Woburn, Massachusetts and Brecksville, Ohio – Luminus Devices, Inc. and Global Lighting Technologies (GLT) Inc. today announced that they will demonstrate a prototype of their 52-inch edge-light backlight unit during the Society for Information Display’s (SID) 2007 International Symposium from May 20-25 in Long Beach, California. The PhlatLight™ Edge-Light Unit (ELU) uses Luminus’ PhlatLight LEDs and GLT’s MicroLens™ light guides and is the largest edge-lit backlight unit ever demonstrated.
Current LCD TVs illuminated with LED backlights require hundreds or even thousands of LEDs to obtain adequate brightness and uniformity. The PhlatLight ELU from Luminus and GLT uses only 10 RGB chipsets, simplifying color management and enabling advanced features such as progressive scanning and local dimming. Each PhlatLight chipset contains a single red, green and blue LED, which delivers an extremely high surface brightness with uniform light output, enables an exceptionally thin TV cabinet form factor, and significantly lowers design and production costs. This unique, cost-effective alternative to conventional LED-based lighting solutions is also scalable to any size.
“Having only 10 LEDs to control simplifies system level design by many orders of magnitude, enabling many of the advanced backlighting features that only LEDs can provide,” said John Langevin, vice president of sales and marketing at Luminus. “This allows our customers to increase color gamut, eliminate motion blur, and increase the contrast ratio for LCD TVs up to 52 inches and larger.”
Luminus and GLT formed a partnership in 2006 with the goal of producing modular LED-based edge-lighting assemblies for large-screen LCD TVs. Luminus’ PhlatLight LEDs are an advanced solid state light (SSL) source based on the company’s patented photonic lattice technology and can illuminate any display technology requiring a light source. They are the only LEDs in the world able to edge-light LCD TVs 50 inches or larger.
“Edge-lighting is always preferred over direct LED backlighting. Look at displays in cell phones, portable DVD players, and computer monitors. They all use edge-lighting,” said David DeAgazio, director of sales worldwide at GLT. “Luminus’ super bright PhlatLight LEDs and GLT’s MicroLens color mixing and light spreading technology allow us to extend the benefits of edge-lighting to large BLUs.”
PhlatLight LED chipsets are currently in commercial use in rear projection televisions (RPTV) from Samsung Electronics and NuVision, and are the only commercially available solid state light sources powerful enough to illuminate microdisplay-based RPTVs. PhlatLight chipsets enable displays with brilliant image quality with a wider color gamut, a longer lifetime, lower power consumption, and outstanding reliability.
About Global Lighting Technologies
GLT, founded in 2000 and an innovator in LCD backlighting technology with 100+ patents issued or pending and over 2,000 employees worldwide, developed MicroLens pixel-based light extraction technology. In this proprietary, patented process, micro-optical elements are molded directly into a light guide, and are optimized to deliver more collimated light, which increases the efficiency of the optical system. By using 3-D optical design, proprietary MicroLens pattern development software, precision manufacturing equipment and in-house tooling design and fabrication, GLT is able to develop and produce the world’s most efficient LCD backlights.
About Luminus Devices
Luminus Devices, Inc., headquartered in Woburn, Massachusetts, develops and manufactures high performance solid state light emitting devices and systems. Its PhlatLight (Photonic Lattice) technology, developed by Luminus Devices based on research done at MIT, is the only solid state light source powerful enough to illuminate large screen projection televisions. With PhlatLight chipsets in commercial production, Luminus is leading the industry in designing this new, powerful light source for a variety of applications, including microdisplay projection TVs and other advanced, high-definition displays. Several leading television and consumer electronics companies are currently selling TVs with PhlatLight products. For more information, visit www.luminus.com.
Luminus and GLT will be conducting the demonstration in a private suite at the Westin Long Beach, located in close proximity to the Long Beach Convention Center, from May 22-24. Anyone interested in attending the showing should visit the GLT booth, #1649, for more information or to schedule an appointment.
Editorial contact for Luminus Devices:
Bree Clidence or Jill Colna
SVM Public Relations
760-940-9025 or 401-490-9700
bree.clidence@svmpr.com or jill.colna@svmpr.com
Editorial contact for Global Lighting Technologies:
Charles Birkhead
Macrovision, Inc.
(215) 348-1010
charles@macrovis.com
Note to editors: PhlatLight™ is a trademark of Luminus Devices. MicroLens™ is a trademark of Global Lighting Technologies, Inc.
