LAS VEGAS - People have come here from around the world to watch television. And there's a lot to watch at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.
There's the Battle of the Big Screens, of course - the annual contest to show off the biggest TV ever. Japan's Sharp Corp. delivered a 108-incher that's the world's biggest liquid-crystal or LCD screen; Matsushita Electric Industrial showed up with the largest plasma TV ever built, measuring 150 inches.
But the show's most interesting video offerings stressed technical savvy and elegant design over size, and they included some of the crispest images and slimmest screens ever offered.
With its 11-inch screen and $2,500 price tag, the new Sony XEL-1 isn't home theater material. But visitors crowded three deep at the Las Vegas Convention Center to get a closer look at its wafer-thin profile and brilliant color.
The XEL-1 will be the first TV sold in the United States to feature a technology called organic light-emitting diode, or OLED. Till now, OLED displays were mainly found on cellphones, because they're so difficult and expensive to make. But engineers loved their thinness and sharp colors. Besides, OLEDs, unlike LCDs, generate their own light. There's no need for a costly, power-hungry fluorescent backlight, making OLED screens very energy efficient.
One of the toughest challenges for an LCD is depicting the color black, because some of its backlight will usually leak through the darkened areas of the screen. Sony spokesman Jim Arvanitis said OLED's lack of a backlight lets it render black almost perfectly, resulting in sharp contrasts which help intensify the other colors on screen.
Even early adopters with deep pockets might hesitate to invest in an 11-inch set, but Sony also showed off a 27-inch prototype, and Arvanitis said the company is confident it will soon find a way to mass-produce large OLED screens. "We wouldn't be pursuing this if we couldn't push the button and crank these out," he said.
Three miles away, at the Palms Hotel, Mitsubishi Electric unwrapped a 65-inch set that uses lasers instead of ordinary light to draw pictures on the screen. The new set uses the digital light processing or DLP technology created by Texas Instruments Inc. DLP uses chips covered with millions of tiny mirrors to project bright white light through color filters and onto the video screen. DLP screens have faced tough competition from LCD TVs, which are thinner and more attractive, and which have also been declining in price.
Mitsubishi officials say that substituting lasers for ordinary white lights results in a DLP picture that's much sharper and brighter than before. The new laser set is also thinner than other DLP TVs and can more easily be mounted on a wall. Mitsubishi said its laser sets will begin showing up at US retailers this year. The firm won't reveal the price, but says it'll be comparable to the same size LCD set, or more than $10,000.
At a small hotel near the convention center, Microvision Inc. of Redmond, Wash., showed off a laser video system of its own, a projector, about the size of a large iPod. Indeed, company officials showed it off by plugging the projector into a video iPod and displaying short movies on a wall.
The image quality is unimpressive; colors are dull, and the laser gives the scenes a speckled, pixelated look. But the projector is more than good enough for running a PowerPoint presentation at a business meeting. And most people would find it acceptable for watching YouTube videos or TV shows.
Microvision president Alexander Tokman thinks that'll be good enough to get his laser projector imbedded into millions of cellphones and other electronic devices. He said Microvision has already signed a codevelopment contract with Motorola Corp., one of the biggest phone makers. As millions of phones become capable of recording and downloading videos, Tokman is betting that consumers will want the ability to watch that video by projecting it on any nearby wall or ceiling.
Back at the convention center, visitors are gathered around a booth set up by Myvu Corp. of Westwood, maker of video-viewing goggles that don't look like goggles. The Myvu Crystal 701 plugs into a video iPod or other portable viewing source, letting the user watch movies on the go. The $199 device uses LCD technology from Kopin Corp. of Westborough, supplier of miniature display screens to the US military. The image is generated inside the earpieces of the device, then bounced to the viewer's eyes with mirrors. The result is a small but crisp image centered in the field of view. The user can still see the world around him by glancing to the left or right of the image.
It's impossible to get the full benefit of the Crystal while wearing glasses. But for an extra $19.95, Myvu sells clip-on lenses that have been preground to correct the user's vision. If the preground lenses don't work, they throw in a "blank" so the user can have his optometrist grind the lenses to his own prescription.
A number of companies have introduced personal viewing glasses, with limited success. But Myvu chief executive Kenneth Kokinakis thinks the Crystal could be a breakthrough product. It's got a sleek, sculpted look that avoids the bulky nerd appeal of earlier viewing goggles. "They're just close enough to being interesting, and not so far out that they look like a Cyclops," said Kokinakis. Besides, the recent proliferation of video iPods, cellphones, and such means there are now millions of people who watch portable videos, and might appreciate a better way to view them.
"Maybe they won't buy a hundred million," said Kokinakis. "But if they bought a million, I'd be a nice little Boston-based company."
Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.
