Liquid Crystal Displays

Japan's electronics industry, with government help, is pouring huge sums into liquid crystal displays, the flat screens that are used in digital watches and laptop computers. The companies are betting that they can overcome formidable technical barriers to develop large displays with high picture quality, allowing LCDs to be incorporated in full-size televisions, desktop computers and other products.

You weren't imagining those killer deals on televisions over the Black Friday shopping weekend. The research firm ISuppli said Monday that LCD television prices dropped 22% for the day-after-Thanksgiving sales. But that wasn't on just occasional deals -- that was the average discount. Some sizes offered even steeper drops, especially in smaller-sized TVs. The 26-inch models were down almost 35% to an average price of $250, compared with $384 before Black Friday, according to ISuppli.

Canon Inc., the Japanese office equipment maker, said Tuesday it has developed a liquid crystal display computer screen that uses a new technology that could eliminate the problems plaguing conventional LCDs. LCDs are popular on laptops computers because of their light weight and low energy consumption. But the technologies used in today's laptops have limitations for other applications envisioned by the industry.

Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea, the world's largest maker of liquid-crystal display televisions, may be barred from selling TVs and computer monitors in the U.S. after losing a patent case filed by Japanese rival Sharp Corp. The U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington said Wednesday that Samsung violated Sharp's patent rights and ordered both sides to submit arguments on whether an import ban should be imposed. In a notice on its website, the agency said it wanted to consider the effect of a ban on "competitive conditions in the U.S. economy."

Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. said Monday that Toshiba Corp. has invested more than $350 million in a production facility that will help pave the way for a new generation of large-sized liquid crystal displays. The Irvine engineering and manufacturing company said in a press release that the facility, in Fukaya, north of Tokyo, will produce 25,000 larger LCDs a month starting next year.

Packard-Hughes Interconnect Inc. said it has signed an agreement with a Japanese company to develop and market flexible electronic circuits that will be used to test the integrity of liquid crystal displays, known as LCDs. The Irvine company, which is developing a series of testing products, said late last week that Nippon Avionics Co. in Tokyo will help to get the LCD test probes in the hands of manufacturers across the Far East. LCDs are used in computers and a host of other electronic gear.

We've heard it all before: Headsets with tiny display screens that will allow us freedom of movement while viewing high-resolution images. But most of the headsets we've seen in the marketplace are awkward to wear, provide disappointing images and eat batteries for breakfast. That's about to change, according to major players in the imaging field.

What do the U.S. Treasury and Indian jewelry makers have in common? A problem with counterfeiting. And both now have a possible solution in the form of a technology developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Don Burns. As part of its nuclear waste management efforts, the lab has been honing a tool called near-infrared spectroscopy for analyzing plastics and rubber in radioactive waste.

Does it matter if it's made in America? The question has been debated for years, and now it is being asked again following the Defense Department's recent announcement that it will spend $580 million in the next five years to support U.S. development of flat-panel display screens. Flat-panel displays are the computer screens on electronic weapons, which are the wave of the future in warfare.

It's a scene repeated over and over at any computer store: dreamers standing in front of the latest laptop computer, marveling at the clarity of the screen and sobbing over the price. There's a reason laptops are still priced high above comparable desktop computers. Those liquid crystal screens are costly to manufacture, and a large flat-panel display can cost several times as much as a typical monitor with a cathode ray tube.

TELEVISIONS in recent years have taken over living rooms. Now, they're almost as big as one. At the annual Consumer Electronics Show here this week, manufacturers showed off ever-bigger TVs in a size race that showed no signs of slowing. Panasonic this year bragged that billionaire Mark Cuban owns one of its wall-filling, 103-inch plasma displays, which retail for about $70,000.

Samsung Electronics Co. said Friday that its first-quarter net income rose 26% from a year earlier amid strong demand for large flat-screen televisions. South Korea's largest company earned 1.88 trillion won ($1.95 billion) in the period ended March 31, the company said, also citing equity gains from the performance of overseas subsidiaries. The result was better than expected. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires forecast a 17% increase in profit to 1.

We've heard it all before: Headsets with tiny display screens that will allow us freedom of movement while viewing high-resolution images. But most of the headsets we've seen in the marketplace are awkward to wear, provide disappointing images and eat batteries for breakfast. That's about to change, according to major players in the imaging field.

Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. said Monday that Toshiba Corp. has invested more than $350 million in a production facility that will help pave the way for a new generation of large-sized liquid crystal displays. The Irvine engineering and manufacturing company said in a press release that the facility, in Fukaya, north of Tokyo, will produce 25,000 larger LCDs a month starting next year.

It's a scene repeated over and over at any computer store: dreamers standing in front of the latest laptop computer, marveling at the clarity of the screen and sobbing over the price. There's a reason laptops are still priced high above comparable desktop computers. Those liquid crystal screens are costly to manufacture, and a large flat-panel display can cost several times as much as a typical monitor with a cathode ray tube.

When it comes to chutzpah, it's hard to beat Harry Marshall. As chief executive of Silicon Valley start-up Candescent Technologies Corp., Marshall has raised $150 million from the likes of Hewlett-Packard Co., Compaq Computer Corp. and the U.S. government by insisting that in the year 2000 he will have a product worth $1 billion in sales. Here's the catch: The product, a new form of flat-panel computer display, won't be ready until 1998.

When it comes to chutzpah, it's hard to beat Harry Marshall. As chief executive of Silicon Valley start-up Candescent Technologies Corp., Marshall has raised $150 million from the likes of Hewlett-Packard Co., Compaq Computer Corp. and the U.S. government by insisting that in the year 2000 he will have a product worth $1 billion in sales. Here's the catch: The product, a new form of flat-panel computer display, won't be ready until 1998.

You weren't imagining those killer deals on televisions over the Black Friday shopping weekend. The research firm ISuppli said Monday that LCD television prices dropped 22% for the day-after-Thanksgiving sales. But that wasn't on just occasional deals -- that was the average discount. Some sizes offered even steeper drops, especially in smaller-sized TVs. The 26-inch models were down almost 35% to an average price of $250, compared with $384 before Black Friday, according to ISuppli.

What do the U.S. Treasury and Indian jewelry makers have in common? A problem with counterfeiting. And both now have a possible solution in the form of a technology developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory researcher Don Burns. As part of its nuclear waste management efforts, the lab has been honing a tool called near-infrared spectroscopy for analyzing plastics and rubber in radioactive waste.

Does it matter if it's made in America? The question has been debated for years, and now it is being asked again following the Defense Department's recent announcement that it will spend $580 million in the next five years to support U.S. development of flat-panel display screens. Flat-panel displays are the computer screens on electronic weapons, which are the wave of the future in warfare.