May 8 2008
Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC), a committed industry leader that collaborates with customers to create breakthrough designs, today announced a new color active-matrix thin-film transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) module product lineup for industrial applications that incorporates long-life light-emitting diode (LED) backlighting systems. Developed by Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology Co., Ltd. (TMD), the modules are designed to satisfy the requirements of a broad range of industrial applications, such as test and measuring equipment, medical equipment, portable handheld computing devices, and more, utilizing the latest LED backlighting technology.
The series includes five new LCD products: 5.7-inch QVGA 320 x 240, 6.5-inch VGA 640 x 480, 8.4-inch SVGA 800 x 600, 8.4-inch 1024 x 768, and 10.4-inch XGA 1024 x 768. All the products have replaceable, long-life, LED-based backlighting systems, and are designed such that a resistive touch panel can be added as an option.
"These new, leading-edge LED-backlit modules are an important addition to our line-up and address a growing demand in a wide variety of industrial LCD applications," said Sean Collins, vice president business development, Display Devices and Components Group, for TAEC. "TMD continues to demonstrate a long history and commitment to the industrial market by providing displays that feature high brightness, wide viewing angles, wide operating temperature ranges, and replaceable backlighting structures. The addition of these new LED long-life product will bring clear and further benefits to industrial system designers."
The LED-based backlighting systems provide an average backlight lifetime of 70,000 hours, or approximately 8 years continuous operation, (to half-brightness of the initial luminance specification), which exceeds that of today's common TFT LCDs for industrial applications utilizing long-life cold cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) backlighting systems. TMD has achieved this by applying long-life LEDs, and by optimizing the thermal design of the industrial-type LED-based backlighting system based on TMD's extensive experience in utilizing LED backlighting for mobile notebook PC TFT displays. The modules have been designed with a replaceable backlight structure to accommodate the product longevity requirements, and the harsh-usage environments, of industrial applications. In addition, TMD has added the LED driver circuitry into the electrical interface for the displays, an added benefit for customers to simplify their design-in time and costs.
Compared to CCFL backlit displays, LED-backlit displays feature superior characteristics such as lighter weight, lower electrical noise, lower power consumption, and offer a wider adjustable luminance range. LED-backlit displays also reduce the environmental impact, in consideration of both material and energy consumption, since they are mercury-free(1) and lower in power consumption. Also, the new LED-backlit displays do not require the high-voltage and high-frequency circuits required to control luminance in CCFL-backlit displays, thus enabling a higher level of flexibility in system design in terms of safety, electro-magnetic interference (EMI) compensation, and system architecture.
These newly developed products will be exhibited by TMD at the 11th Embedded Systems Technology Expo & Conference (ESEC), booth #EAST35-15, to be held at Tokyo Big Sight, Tokyo, Japan, May 14-16, 2008, and by Toshiba America Electronic Components at the 2008 Society for Information Display International Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition, booth #135, to be held at Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles, CA, USA, May 20- 22, 2008.