2004 International Consumer Electronics Show Coverage

5. We as consumers get fed a lot of propaganda about how copyright protection is actually good for us. So in the end, we consumers get caught up in a fight with the music and movie industries over who actually gets to control distribution of media. It's not going to be a pretty fight, but it will definitely be interesting to watch. As a physicist would say, we're witnessing an irresistible force (the internet) meeting an immovable object (the media industry).

My money is on the internet winning, but it's still anyone's game. The only thing we know for sure is that there will be a lot of people spending a lot of time telling you how copyright protection is good for you. I'm thinking that it might be a good idea to invest in some earmuffs.

Thomson gets big screens right

Of all the companies showing new large screen products the one that stands out with a solid entry that really offers value-for-money is Thomson. While others have been focusing on producing thin direct view TVs based upon LCD or plasma technology, Thomson has managed to produce an extremely thin rear projection DLP TV that looks great, but is much cheaper than a similar sized plasma unit.

There's a lot of confusion in the large screen market due to the various technologies and the acronym alphabet soup which gets splashed around. The DLP (Digital Light Processing) technology used by Thomson to produce its 50", 61", and 70" televisions is supplied exclusively by Texas Instruments and uses tiny mirrors to reflect light through a colour filter and onto the screen.

The alternative is to shine light through an LCD shutter onto the screen, or to use red, green, and blue CRT projectors to get the same result. The CRT "gun" solution is currently the incumbent rear projection technology that's being replaced, primarily due to imperatives of slimmer design, increased image quality and simpler setup which favours the newer DLP and LCD units. When comparing LCD and DLP solutions it's important to keep in mind that LCDs come from many providers, but EVERY DLP chip on the planet comes from Texas Instruments.

When TI first got into the projection chip business they made a strategic choice to never ship a chip with a defect, so DLPs have the reputation of never having any bad pixels. LCD manufacturers a have differing guidelines for acceptable defects, and 1 or 2 "dead" pixels isn't uncommon for an LCD rear projection device. It isn't that TI's DLP technology is magically impervious to defects, it's just that TI throws out the ones with defects instead of shipping them to customers.

Regardless, Thomson (and their customers) benefit from the quality controls instituted by TI and consumers can look forward to perfect displays with no dead pixel problems. If you don't want to pony up the big bucks for a new plasma display, these new DLP rear projection units offer a high quality half way step that gets you most of the benefits while saving you a LOT of money. List price for the largest version is US$9,999 while you'll pay over US$20,000 for a 60+" plasma TV.

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