SlashGear Exclusive: Video Demo of Coherent Laser TV tech

In an exclusive video interview with Coherent, the goggle-eyed boffins behind the laser TV gave SlashGear a brief run-down of just why the future of big-screen entertainment might leave lamps behind. With a spread of visible colour roughly double that of traditional lamp-based backlighting, using their a high-powered solid-state laser array of green, blue and red means they can fit far greater performance into a form-factor equal to or smaller than a standard mercury arc lamp. Watch the videos and then read on to find out more…

As screens get bigger and consumers wiser to the all-important trio of colour, contrast and lifespan, many different technologies are holding their hands up and squealing “me! me!” in an attempt to get noticed. If there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s that CRT - long the mainstay of the average home - is steadily dropping in popularity as micro-display panel based screens grow in favour.

And just what the Simon & Garfunkel are “micro-display panels”, I hear you grumble; well, they’re the panels inside a front or rear-projection system that organise whether the red, green or blue light gets through. Systems such as LCD, DLP, Liquid Crystal On Silicon (LCOS) and Sony’s new GLV are all examples of micro-display panels; light that has been split into the three core colours is projected through them and onto the screen.

So where do lasers come in? Well, up until now the primary light source that provides those three core RGB colours has been either a metal-halide or xenon arc lamp; that’s mainly because of the relative bulk and expense of commercially-available blue lasers pricing the technology out of the market. Coherent, however, have developed a so-called Optically Pumped Semiconductor (OPS) laser which can be readily tuned to the green and blue wavelengths necessary, in an affordable and relatively compact format that relies on very few parts.

Keep reading about these advanced laser backlighting systems on page 2…