Aris Silzard

The Goodness Asymptotes… As usual, the airport rental-car bus driver dropped me off in front of the “preferred” customer building and told me that my pre-selected car this time was in space E-12. For me, as a “frequent renter,” this has become a familiar process. Basically, it goes as follows: get in the car, show your driver’s license at the gate, and adjust the seat and mirrors while driving to find the exit from the airport. But on this trip my experience was not quite typical. The car assigned to me was not the usual bland model with cloth interior and cup holder covers that are so flimsy that they most likely broke during the first or second rental. Instead of dull gray cloth, the seats were tan leather, the car was a burgundy red and the layout and quality of the instrument panel was as good as any that I have seen — even on the most prestigious brands. The subsequent driving experience matched this initial impression of a quality product. The car handled precisely. It was well behaved at all speeds available to me. All the control functions were easy to understand and I could operate them without distraction while driving in dense freeway traffic. I soon realized that I was treating this car with the same care and enthusiasm that I would lavish on one that I had purchased. As I observed my own behavior over the next two days, it occurred to me that there really was nothing more that I needed or wanted in a car. Yet this was a model that was not one of the well-known luxury brands. Having driven those as well, I would have to conclude that the differences in features and quality had become so small as to be virtually indistinguishable. Oh sure, those of you who are serious car enthusiasts would be able to tell. The specialized models that sell for well over $50K may corner a bit better or accelerate faster, but when and where can I experience such performance in practice? For the enthusiast, simply owning a certain brand or model may be what is really important. But from a practical standpoint, even as a very demanding customer, the differences between this moderately priced rental vehicle and the top-name brands have indeed become very very small. Over the years, we have seen similar asymptotic evolutions in other product categories. The audio components business is a good example of this. During the late 50’s and into the 60’s there were major improvements in performance. Harmonic and intermodulation distortion levels dropped from the 5% range down to hundredths of a percent. Amplifier power levels increased from a few watts to hundreds of watts. Turntables for playing 33-rpm records improved, with wow and flutter achieving imperceptible levels. CDs then took us to the next level by getting rid of background noise and increasing dynamic range. But somewhere in this process audio equipment — with the exception of speakers — became so close to perfect that we could no longer hear the improvements. This, of course, was seen as a benefit by some enterprising folks who created businesses to sell items such as interconnect cables that presumably allowed the sound to “flow more smoothly” with “clean high frequencies” and “robust base response.” And at $100 per foot, that absolutely has to be true! Of course, we shouldn’t mention that inside that power amplifier the circuit boards are made of the cheapest material available and the interconnect wiring is similarly economical. Thus, it seems that for audio components we have not only approached the asymptote of goodness but exceeded it by some significant margin. Some time ago, I wrote a column that suggested that desktop computer speeds in the 1 GHz range should be sufficient for most applications. Many of the current computers exceed that — but how many of us can really appreciate this increased speed? As a calibration point, consider that I am writing this column on an old laptop computer running with an Intel 486 processor, and using WordPerfect 5.1 as my word processing program. Why? Am I some relic from the past? Well, that may be true, but before you make that your final answer, consider that I have three other computers here in my office. One is a Pentium 4 machine, another a Pentium III, and the third is a two-month-old super-slim laptop with a docking station. So what gives? They can all do this column just fine. What brings me back to this old dog of a machine? The two reasons are that I like the feel of the keyboard and I like the simplicity of the old word processor. That is all that I need to string the words together for this column. I also like that this old processor does not try to “help” me. It lets me make whatever stupid mistakes I chose to make in formatting, spelling, and grammar. Then, when I am ready, I can ask it for some assistance to help me make the fixes that I wish to make. The question then becomes, what should we do to justify the multi-GHz machines now so readily available? The only significant applications I can think of are for image processing, and for real-time video (for playing virtual reality games?). A few of us may also have work-related needs for computation-intensive problem solving such as electron beam or optical ray tracing. But that is a very small fraction of the desktop user population. It seems to me that in computer speed and software features we too are close to the asymptote of goodness. What happens when more and more features are added to products? It seems to me that once the asymptote of goodness is crossed, matters can actually get worse instead of better. From cell phones, to car radios, to VCRs, we have all encountered the multi-level menu-driven functionality that only our teen-aged children can unravel. Yesterday, while sitting in

Choices are Good… Most of us thrive on the excitement of exploring, the stimulation of being surprised, and the freedom to make our own choices. Without some ambiguity and uncertainty, our lives can become boring and stale. Is this a leftover remnant from the survival-driven origins of our species? I think not. It has indeed been with us since our cave-man days, but it is not a transient phenomenon to be solved by technology or by ever more abundant earthly comforts. The very nature of human existence has the built-in uncertainty of a mostly unpredictable ending point. Thus, it behooves us to have as many interesting experiences as we can during our current visit to this planet Earth. What got me into this philosophical mood was a seemingly trivial event during a visit to the local outlet of a large office-supply chain. As I was paying for my replacement toner cartridge, the clerk asked me to provide some personal information that had nothing to do with this purchase. I politely declined — and promptly noted that, as I was leaving the store, my emotional temperature was rapidly rising into the danger zone. To put it bluntly, I was boiling mad! I just wanted to buy my toner cartridge, pay for it, and come home. Why do I need to be “profiled” while I am making a simple purchase? Of course the store’s explanation is so that they can better provide for what their customers may want. However, now our local grocery store chain has introduced “advantage cards” for mostly the same reason. And the local electronics store wants to know my personal information so they can send me the “best promotional materials.” And when I visit a web site, my search habits are recorded so that I can receive specially-selected e-mail spam. Is it possible that we may be reaching a saturation point in all this probing to establish our behaviors? As for me, I have a strong message for all you merchants out there! You will find that I am far too unpredictable to be “profiled.” Yes, I have some basic needs for food, clothing, and shelter. But beyond that, you have no idea what I will do next, or where I will go next. Most of the time, even I don’t know. So please let me do my own searching, and my own selecting. Let me make my own choices, and sometimes even mistakes. For us human beings, browsing is good. An unstructured hour of page turning through the Sunday paper is good. An exploratory walk down a new city street is good. A visit to a newly discovered botanical garden is good. Having the unplanned experience of learning how to repair your overheating boat while out on a lake is also good — although maybe not as pleasant. Being told what we should like was not good when we were children and it is still not good. These attempts by merchants and manufacturers to find the most successful products are really not all that harmful as long as vigorous competition and plentiful choices continue to exist. But if one merchant, manufacturer, or technology becomes too dominant, then we loose our ability to explore and find those unexpected, and often pleasantly surprising, benefits that a new and innovative product can provide. Sometimes it takes someone who, by most people’s standards, is considered in the “near-crackpot” category to bring these new concepts into view. The first introduction of these ideas may not even be a commercial success, but the attempt may stimulate others with a more conventional, and perhaps more practical, bent to modify them into something that we find truly useful. One recent early effort may the dynamically-balanced battery-powered two-wheeled personal transportation vehicle. To me it looks like an impractical version of an electric scooter. Wouldn’t it be more efficient use of sidewalk space to have the wheels in-line rather than side-by-side? But with all the attention this new idea is creating, perhaps some of the broader concepts for personal transportation are now more likely to be explored. Therefore, while the well-developed technologies are meeting our current needs, the new and highly innovative ideas that stretch our thinking and attempt to modify our conventional ways of doing things are tremendously valuable for stimulating the future progress of technology development. As you read this, it will have been a few short months since this year’s SID Symposium in Boston. By all of the typical measures, such as technical-session and seminar attendance, and exhibitor participation, the conference and exhibition were both major successes. The trade press has also been uniformly complimentary of our efforts. The Symposium is now generally recognized as the one event each year where attendees can get the most complete overview of the latest developments in display technologies, as well as the most accurate look into what the future may hold. The display industry is currently undergoing a major transition from a CRT-dominated world to one where flat panels are becoming the displays of choice in more and more applications. While the CRT is far from obsolete and may in fact still have some surprising new developments to offer, (such as the new beam indexing technique proposed by LG/Philips researchers in a paper presented at the Boston Symposium), LCDs are growing in size, performance capability, and popularity. Plasma panels are making major progress by reducing manufacturing cost while also increasing brightness and efficiency. Virtually all of the displays on the exhibition floor were of a quality that I would be happy to use or have in my home. From a sales revenue perspective, CRTs and LCDs are, by a large margin, the dominant display technologies. But plasma panels are expected to increase their penetration into the commercial-usage and television markets. A development that was unexpected just a few years ago is the possible competition that could develop between plasma panels and LCDs. The availability of a 40-inch LCD from Samsung and their plans for even larger

More On Rows and Columns… In the June 2002 issue the subject of this column was the fundamental difference between CRTs and all flat-panel displays — the difference being that all flat-panel displays that exist at this time require row-and-column addressing, while CRTs do not. In describing the various ways of modulating the electron beam that writes the information onto a CRT phosphor screen, I posed the questions “Why do we write the image from left to right? Why not scan back and forth with a triangle waveform?” Well, being the knowledgeable group of readers that you are, I received quite a number of interesting responses. As we discussed this topic via e-mail, it occurred to me that your letters were beginning to form an interesting story all in themselves. Therefore, I have decided to dedicate this month’s column space to your stories. My modest contribution was to arrange the letters in the sequence that seemed to have a logical flow to it. So here we go — with seven of the most interesting letters about how to write images onto a CRT screen. Mr. Silzars,Your question about the reason for using sawtooth raster scanning rather than some other method makes me think that there probably are a multitude of very interesting engineering stories that could be told about the development of what later turned into standards and conventions. In regard to sawtooth raster scanning, it is easy to show in hindsight why some other methods such as triangle wave or sine wave scanning would not work. The question is, who and with what process developed the technique that is now standard? Were there a multitude of experiments or was the technique developed mostly from theory? In addition to sawtooth scanning, how was the decision to use 2:1 interlace made? Why not 3:1 or 4:1? If any of your readers have the real scoop, I hope you can mention it in a future column. Roger Weiseweiser@kaisere.com Hello Aris,You asked, in Information Display 6/02, about scanning in both directions. I recall several papers in SID and IEEE publications over the last 20 years describing efforts to implement scanning in both directions. I don’t have the papers in hand, but I recall that aligning adjacent scan lines was a problem. Maybe others will write with more details. And maybe you are really asking why left to right scan was incorporated into the NTSC standard. Last year you may remember me asking why horizontal scan is used in television instead of vertical scan. I received many answers. However, the Director of the David Sarnoff Library, Dr. Alex Magoun, directed me to the answer in the literature. Donald Fink writes, in Television Standards and Practice (1943) on page 206, “…The Panel 1 outline also recommends the horizontal scan for lines, because horizontal motion is much more common than vertical motion and is more clearly depicted when lines lie in this direction. Vertical motion across the line structure often produces an effect known as optical pairing of the lines, which arises from the persistence of vision in the eye and reduces the apparent detail in that direction…” Roger Casanova Alig, PhDgalig@comcast.net Dear Mr. Silzars,The subject you discuss about why CRT raster is only left to right has captured my interest too. I was not in the display business when the standards were developed but I know of one good reason why they would have difficulty in making a commercial left-to-right and right-to-left scan. Magnetic deflection has hysteresis. That is, the position of the beam on the screen is not only a function of the instantaneous value of the deflection current but the recent history of the current as well. This would vary from yoke to yoke since there could be a different amount or type of ferromagnetic core that is used to produce the magnetic field. This would cause an alternate line misregistration. My interest in this topic is that I am developing electrostatic deflection CRTs for various applications. One advantage is that electrostatic deflection has no hysteresis so reversing the sweep direction does not cause misregistration errors. Michael Retskyelopt@earthlink.net Dear Mr. Silzars,In my limited knowledge of TV, I would assume that the present scanning method dates back to the `Nipkow’ scanning disks and before Farnsworth, etc. I recall back in ’41 when my deceased ex-boss brought Baird British theatre TV rear-projection equipment from New York to Rauland in Chicago, which used an 80-kV polished metal back phosphor screen goose-neck tube. The horizontal deflection system used a pair of simple pancake coils shaped over and under the tube neck. Because the tube neck was on an angle to the phosphor screen the vertical deflection coil was on the bottom of a U-shaped laminated transformer iron yoke between the horizontal coils and the gun end of the tube neck. The arms and two short extensions of the arms could be manipulated in and out to correct for the trapezoidal pattern. Large optical projection lenses were perpendicular to the flat polished-face-tube phosphor screen. The cabinet was lead lined. After Zenith took over, the unit was scrapped. (Curses!) Two other British console TVs had the same deflection system. One of the sets is in the office lobby of Rauland’s Skokie, Illinois manufacturing building. SchmidtyASchm71538@aol.com Dear Mr. Silzars,To my understanding, TV was quite mechanical at the very beginning. Initial “cameras” had mechanical scanner units, e.g. the Nipkow wheel, with a spiral order of holes as a means for sequentially scanning an image. This determined scanning in parallel for all lines and did not allow back and forth (clockwise or counterclockwise would have been equivalent). The display also consisted of such a wheel to control an illumination light path to a screen. This was relatively soon replaced by the CRT, which then had to follow the former mechanical scanning sequence for obvious reasons of compatibility. This also holds again for the later introduction of the electronic camera. All revisions of TV systems mainly changed resolution, aspect ratio and so

The Next Generation Displays – for Work, Home and in Between… As we look ahead to the future prospects for display technologies, we see many excellent opportunities. The rapid increases in computer capabilities and communications bandwidth have accelerated the need for excellent displays. New improved displays are needed to interface all the information that is being created and transmitted at ever greater speeds and in ever growing quantities. The display products that we will see over the next ten years can be quite accurately predicted from the base materials technologies that are currently under development. It takes at least ten years and typically longer for products to become available in significant volumes once a new display technology is discovered. Therefore, by a careful look at the display materials technologies that are currently in the research stages or being developed for use in products, we can quite reasonably ascertain the next ten or more years of display product evolution. However, the understanding of the underlying display technologies only gives us one part of the story. We must also appreciate that new applications are not primarily technology driven. Technology is a facilitator but the final product choices are made by the various users of those technologies. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the needs that will be driving the various market segments is equally important for a complete understanding of the products that we may be using some years from now. Getting the new technologies to market will be just as challenging as the scientific research and engineering development that spawned those new display capabilities. The goal of this column is to explore the technologies that will become available over the coming years and to combine this understanding with an analysis of evolving user needs to predict the trends in the markets that pertain to displays – in the industrial work environment, in the typical home, and during the time that we are in transit between our work environments and home or other locations. Displays for Industrial Equipment –The industrial and professional usage markets typically demand functionality and ruggedness in the displays selected for a given application. These markets often present excellent opportunities for the introduction of new display technologies. This is because performance can be more important than cost and because usage volumes are typically modest. This can allow a new technology to enter a market with low risk and with users to whom new performance features are vitally important. These markets are also characterized by a large variety of display product configurations ranging from simple portable instrument indicator displays to large CRTs or flat-panels with extremely high- resolution demands. Below we address the medical, test and measurement, and factory automation market segments for further analysis. Medical -Several new trends are going to be important for medical displays. The three most important are likely to be displays with higher resolutions, displays that can depict 3-D images, and displays that can be used in head-mounted configurations. The higher resolution and excellent gray scale rendering capabilities are necessary for accurate analysis of images captured by X-ray, MRI, ultrasound, or other non-invasive methods. The need for 3-D rendering will become more important as computer power is combined with these non-invasive diagnostic tools to visualize the information captured. The head mounted display technologies will see increased usage as doctors begin to rely more on real-time diagnostic image capture during surgery and other medical procedures. We can also expect to see new display technologies being applied to help improve various vision deficiencies such as macular degeneration. To meet the needs for higher resolution and accurate gray scale, LCD and CRT technologies are going to dominate. Currently, monochrome CRTs can provide precise high resolution rendering of X-ray images, but LCD panels, of also very high resolution, have recently been introduced by IBM that will pose a serious challenge to the more mature CRT technology. For rendering 3-D images, many of the existing display technologies can provide an adequate solution. The simplest approach for rendering 3-D images is to use a conventional display (a two-dimensional surface) and to create the third dimension artificially by electronically rotating the image. A more sophisticated method is some form of stereoscopic image rendering. The only known techniques that can produce acceptable results for medical applications utilize the presentation of alternate images with electronic switching and/or light polarization. Therefore, for the more critical medical applications, it is likely that active or passive eyeglasses will continue to be necessary for stereoscopic viewing. The evolving need for head-mounted displays will be met by several approaches. These displays will either be based on LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) or Micromechanical (MEMS) Scanners. The first applications will be met with monochrome displays because that is all that the diagnostic capture equipment is capable of creating. However, over time the application of computer generated color will become more important as new information capture and processing capabilities are added. Test and Measurement – The dominant trends in this market segment are going to be directed toward improving the viewability of displays, to more use of head-mounted display products, and to the wider application of touch input and voice interactivity. This market segment is characterized by perhaps more variety than any other. Displays of all sizes and varieties may be suitable. Cost is often a driving criterion for the final selection. That means that this market is very sensitive to the perceived value (performance vs. cost) of a display product or technology. The majority of T&M applications over the next ten years will utilize LCD panels. There will also be some opportunity for the newer OLED and FED technologies for meeting the demands of excellent viewability, higher light conversion efficiency, and ruggedness. For applications where diagnostic information must be transmitted to the user during a servicing or repair operation, head-mounted displays will become more common. The technologies here will be the same as in the medical segment, i.e. LCOS or MEMS scanners. However, this will represent a small segment of the overall

Christmas Presents… Merry Christmas, joyeux Noel, frohliche Weihnachten — my sincere Holiday Season Greetings to all of you in the worldwide Display Community. The tradition of an annual celebration and gift exchange, during the later part of December, has spread far beyond its origins as a festival of light during the darkest winter days in the northern hemisphere, and later the commemoration of the birth of the spiritual leader of the many Christian religions. For children everywhere — and adults also — the idea of receiving and giving lots of presents on a designated day has serious appeal. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Japan during December. The shops were decorated in the same traditional Christmas themes as I had just left behind me in Seattle. One large sign over a store entrance, that especially caught my attention, proclaimed “Happy Merry Christmas”. Well, why not? Mixed in with these religious foundations is the tradition of Santa Claus — or Kriss Kringle, der Weihnachtmann, Pere Noel, and the like. Not only do children receive and grownups exchange presents, this mysterious father figure supposedly sneaks into peoples’ homes and drops off even more stuff. Wasn’t there enough already? Is this Santa Claus entity perhaps the original virtual reality persona? In the spirit of this Holiday Season, it is my prediction that this Santa Claus persona is going to be very good to the worldwide display community this year. The underlying forces that will bring about this goodness have been building for several years and, in the next one to two years, they are going to make our lives interesting, challenging, but also most enjoyable. For you see, finally after years of waiting, the era of the large-screen television has arrived. If you haven’t believed in Santa Claus up to now, you may soon wish to re-assess your belief system. Over the last few years, we have seen the introduction of DVD technology, digital satellite broadcasting, gradual improvements in cable systems, and finally — the availability of television sets that can milk nearly all the information content from an NTSC (or PAL, or SECAM) signal. The improvements in the quality of source material, and how it is made available to the user, have been important contributing factors, but the defining change that brought it all together occurred when television-set manufacturers introduced premium — but affordable — products using variants of line-doubling technology that could show a large-screen picture with no visible scan lines. Previously, line-doubler technology was available only in home-theater systems in the $10,000 and higher price ranges. For a long time, consumers have wanted to create “The Movie Theater” experience in their homes. But the only part of the experience that could be emulated was the non-visible audio. Watching a movie with great surround sound, accompanied by a picture of low resolution on a dim screen, with scan lines clearly visible, was not something that most of us found enjoyable, and therefore, not worth spending our money to acquire. But for this Christmas, that has all changed. I recently had the pleasure of watching the latest (available on DVD) Harry Potter movie on a 57-inch rear-projection system with the images being generated by three 7-inch CRTs. The screen was bright, the sound was great, and the resolution was very close to movie-theater quality. For me, the experience was as good as I could appreciate — without becoming a picky display engineer. And most important, the purchase price of this system was in the mid-$2,000 range. The early adopters of large-screen home systems were wealthy consumers who could afford to install $50,000 home theaters. These nascent systems used laser disks for program source material and utilized separate line doublers to improve the front- or rear-projected images. Now, nearly everyone will be able to afford and enjoy the “big screen” experience. The forces behind this next wave-of-change have been building at an accelerating pace, and this year the big-screen wave is going to come crashing onto our shore. All the technology pieces that make large-screen television attractive and affordable are now in place. The first adopters of this new capability (at least in the USA) will be the enthusiastic followers of professional sports. These are the folks who like to have their neighbors over for parties while watching NFL football every Sunday. The baseball and basketball watchers are not quite as well organized but they will also want to have the best systems on which to enjoy cheering for their favorite teams. In other parts of the world soccer is, of course, the game of choice. And guess what? Once the neighbors see the new large-screen televisions, they will want one also. This growth will not be linear — it will be exponential until the market reaches maturity. For us in the display community, the challenge will be to develop and drive the technologies that will become the most accepted for these large-screen viewing experiences. Will it be rear projection, front projection, plasma panels, or even large direct-view LCDs? And if it is projection, what kind? CRT, LC, LCOS, DLP, or something entirely new? In the US market, prices in the range of $2,000 to $3,000 are likely to define the core market segment. But what about broadcast HDTV? Some years ago, I suggested that HDTV would take a very long time to arrive and that we didn’t need the widespread availability of a digital broadcast system to create a better viewing experience. I am still of that opinion. Eventually, terrestrially broadcast high-definition TV will arrive, and we will have more programs available from this source. But really, that will just be icing on the cake. Santa Claus will have come and gone and will have already left all the large-screen TVs we can enjoy. With DVDs, digital satellites, and reasonable quality NTSC material on cable, we will already have been enjoying the theater-like viewing experience. Christmas 2002 will be the first indication of the changes we are

If at First You Don’t Succeed… The traditional version of this saying has an ending that is intended to be inspirational and to encourage repeated and determined effort — “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again” — presumably until success is achieved. However, I have heard a second version that may at times be more representative of reality — “If at first you don’t succeed, give up, no sense making a fool of yourself!” Recently, there have been a number of new product introductions that seem to fit the second version better than the first. These products fall into a category that some technology prognosticators have described as representative of “technology convergence”. They also often have a direct or indirect effect on the implementation of displays. Let me start with a brief description of three of them. A large Pacific Rim electronics company, well known to us in the display industry, has recently introduced the Internet Digital Refrigerator. In addition to the familiar functions of keeping food cold and spitting out ice cubes on demand, this refrigerator has a 15-inch LC panel connected to a computer running a customized version of Windows 98. This computer can be used for such activities as surfing the net, sending and receiving e-mails, watching TV (with a cable connection), listening to music, recording the dates when items are bought, and leaving electronic notes for other family members. It even has a camera built in for those who prefer to leave video messages. The price of this new combination-technology marvel is currently set at $7,999. This company has also announced plans to introduce other appliances such as microwave ovens that will interact with this refrigerator. The next example of technology convergence comes from a large US-based electronics company that has announced a personal computer that also acts like a television, the first of what they define as “cross-over products” intended to build enthusiasm in the stagnating personal computer market. This computer comes with a remote control, television tuner, and can record and play television shows and digital music. The price of this combination product is $1,400. However, the monitor, on which all of these computer and TV images will need to be displayed, is not included for this price. The third “technology convergence” example is represented by the ongoing efforts of several large companies, both software and hardware, to create a market for the home server. This product is intended to do much more than just connect together several computers or peripherals. It is being developed and touted as the central control unit for the above mentioned digital refrigerator, the yet to be introduced digital furnace, the digital lighting system, the home entertainment center, the digital garage door opener, the digital coffee maker, (the digital toothbrush?), and just about anything else that can be identified as having some kind of switching or control element associated with it. What is going on here? A well known and often stated criteria for building a successful business is “find a need and meet it.” What is the need that these products are meeting or the problem that they are trying to solve — and at what price? Is it maybe that some of us have achieved such wealth that there is virtually no limit to the goods we can acquire, so we go out and buy expensive stuff just for the fun of it? I suppose it wouldn’t be bad to be in that category — but unfortunately most of us I think are not. Why would I want to combine a refrigerator with a computer? Refrigerators are designed to function reliably for at least 20 years. Computers become obsolete in just a few. And by now shouldn’t I be just a bit suspicious of one using a modified version of Windows 98? Is there any reason other than novelty to pay $8,000 for a refrigerator that by itself is certainly not worth more than about $2,000, and a computer that is not worth more than $500? And what happens in a year or two when the computer will need to be upgraded or, in the meantime, catches a virus? (I don’t suppose it can catch a cold sitting in that refrigerator, can it?) Maybe if one has lots of money these are not issues of concern. The combination of a TV and computer is perhaps not quite as difficult to understand. The current price is certainly higher than the sum of buying the two separately. Are there clear advantages to the combination? Perhaps the most interesting one is the ability to store and modify audio and video content. The ability to acquire audio and video material from remote sources at times of ones choosing is a nice cross-over feature. However, the producers of this material are not going to be happy if they are not adequately compensated for these acquisitions. Interactive TV technology is in an early stage with many problems still to be worked out. The idea of surfing the net or reading e-mails while also trying to watch TV has an inherent time management conflict. There is also the emotional conflict between the passive activity of watching television and one that requires thinking and responding. Why are some folks trying so hard to make this unnatural marriage work? I suppose once someone can identify and articulate the needs that are worth meeting, all this will become clearer. So far some of the reasons given by the companies introducing these products are not terribly compelling — “students and people living in small spaces would be top candidates.” Since these products come at a premium price, are such people also among the wealthier segments of our society? Hmmm… Next, we come to the home server. As envisioned by the giant software company located not too far from here, and certain others, this one scares me the most of all. Currently, there are five operating computers in my home. The one I use the

Romancing the Money… The methods of science and engineering are based on careful observation of cause and effect, deductive thinking, analysis of data, and thorough and repeated testing of all conclusions. Any desire or expectation for a particular outcome must be suppressed until the data can unambiguously support the proposed hypothesis. This is all well and good when doing scientific research. Now suppose that by following the above steps you have come up with a new and potentially revolutionary display technology. To try to protect your idea, you have filed the appropriate patent disclosures. Then, after consultation with your significant other, you have decided that this idea is so good it is worth quitting your existing job (which was getting a little shaky anyway), putting together a business plan, and going out to raise money to start your own company. Having found several colleagues who are willing to join you in this new adventure, and using one of the many reference books on how to write really great business plans, you have arrived at that next and most important step — to go out and find investors for your start-up business. Everything up to now has followed a logical and rational process — the technology development, the development of a patent portfolio, the writing of the business plan, and the assembling of a management team. So the next step of raising money should be just as logical, right? Oh my, we engineers surely are a gullible lot! The search for funding may appear to have the trappings of rationality, and the investors will make all the appropriate pretenses of using a logical and scientific approach, but don’t let that fool you. I suggest that you consider this process from an entirely different and highly unscientific viewpoint. What I am going to describe may even seem terribly irrational and perhaps even improper, but trust me: It will get you further in raising your start-up funding than the logical approach. The analogy that I will make is to that most unscientific of human emotions — falling in love. Madly and passionately in love! Have you been there? If so, you will be better prepared to follow along with me as we consider the typical stages of this process. The First Date — For our money raising efforts, the “first date” will be the initial meeting with the investors and the presentation of your business plan. Naturally, you will describe the new display technology you have developed, your IP position, your target markets and customers, your product development strategy, the risk analysis you have so carefully prepared, and conclude with the financial spread sheets which will show the typical losses for the first three years followed by years four and five showing insanely high sales and profits. But since the people you are talking to are knowledgeable investors, don’t you think they haven’t seen all this before? The technology may be what sounds the most interesting to them. But so what? They have passed up many other worthwhile opportunities. Missing another one doesn’t worry them. So why should they continue to talk to you? It will have to be that intangible “chemistry” that makes you and your team stand out. They may like your technology, but do they think that you are someone really special? Can they envision you creating a really great new start-up? Do you appeal to them as a person? Yes, yes! OK then, let’s move on to the next step. The Romance of Due Diligence — This step sounds so logical. However, in reality it is anything but that. Due diligence is the term used for the detailed analysis and testing period. The logical part is that the investors need to evaluate the various aspects of the business plan. As a starting point, they will ask many questions about the technology that are typically not that difficult for us technologists to answer. Then they will want to explore the markets and potential customer interest. Here the process gets less logical. They may ask for “letters of endorsement” from typical customers. Swell! How do you get a letter from a “customer” for a new technology for which a product has not yet been developed? After much head scratching you may come up with a few personal contacts in representative companies who may be willing to write letters expressing their interest in your yet-to-be-developed product. Better yet, you may be able to create more genuine interest if you can come up with a compelling story of how you will solve some critical display needs. You may even be able to get an end user sufficiently excited to write a glowing testimonial. Ah ha, the romance is beginning to take on a more serious tone. Not only are you getting caught up in the process, so are your investors. These latest contacts with end users are beginning to get them seriously excited. And of course, your confident presentation style continues to be a big plus. Who ever thought that “due diligence” could be this exciting. On the other hand, if the due-diligence “dating” period begins to drag on with more and more questions being asked, with days or weeks passing between answers and the next round of questions, you can safely assume that you have been put into the category of “let’s keep dating until we find someone even more exciting.” If you sense that happening, it is time to face reality and move on. The love affair is over. You will never consummate the deal, i.e. get the money. But let’s be positive and assume that all has gone well so far. In which case, we can move on to the next step. The Engagement Ring is Offered — The romance now begins to take on a very serious tone. Both you and the investors seem to be hitting it off. The due-diligence process has progressed better than you or the investors expected. This then leads to the preparation and

Not Enough Time – Limited Resources… The other day, I was talking to an attorney friend. He showed me how dramatically the PC, in combination with the Internet, has changed his way of working in recent years. He has been an attorney for over fifteen years and for him the last two to three years have been the culmination of a changeover that started about ten years ago. Basically, he is now doing all of his extensive reference searches from his laptop computer. No more trips to the legal library. No more ordering of printed documents. No more semi-random searches that result in only a few bits of useful information. Patents are now located by searching on key words. The ones of interest can be instantly downloaded. And within each patent, once again, a search by key words (or even parts of words) will often quickly locate the most interesting information. In depositions and court proceedings, the shorthand symbols being taken by the court reporter are now instantly translated into standard text and shared with every participant via a connection to his or her laptop computer. These too can be searched using key words or phrases. And although more paper than ever is being generated, the methodology for finding and retrieving information has dramatically improved the speed and thoroughness with which these documents can be generated and referenced. And it should not surprise us that attorneys are now also doing much of their written communicating by e-mail rather than by courier or conventional mail – the methods of the recent past. While perhaps not as dramatic, in the engineering community, we too have found ways to improve our effectiveness through the Internet. Today, when we need an electronic component, a new monitor, or perhaps a service provider, most of us go to our computers and start the search there. We may still have a shelf full of catalogs from our favorite vendors, but for comparison of current prices or to check on immediate availability, the Internet has become the best way to do it. For example, yesterday I needed a replacement power transistor of higher current gain than typical. I knew it would not be listed in the electronic parts catalogs that I have on hand. And I knew for sure that it would not be on the shelf at my nearest electronics shop. So off I went on my search, using my computer and the Internet. Within a few minutes I had located a vendor that I had never heard of before on Long Island (near New York) that specializes in fabricating replacements for obsolete transistors. Without the power of the Internet, how else would I have stumbled onto this find? I suppose if I had made enough phone calls, talked to enough people, and looked in enough industry directories, I might have arrived at the same place. But based on similar past experiences, I’m not so sure that I would have found this source – and certainly not as quickly. Over the years in these columns, I have tried to balance some of the more extreme hype about the Internet with a more conservative approach. I have suggested that, while there are going to be some important benefits, the Internet won’t replace everything that we currently do — such as shopping in regular stores, reading books and magazines, or being entertained by movies, plays, and live concerts. I have also suggested that whenever we add a new activity something else must be given up – a “something” that we previously did to fill up our twenty-four hour days. For example, my attorney friend has dramatically reduced his search time at legal libraries and the time he previously spent reading patents looking for those few gems of information. He has replaced that saved time by doing the searches on-line and by compiling far more data, doing it faster, and with more relevance to the matters at hand. While he may still spend as many hours as before in preparation for a trial, his preparation is more thorough and the reference data is more complete. In my own case, I am able to accomplish more work because I can find the needed parts more quickly and I can comparison shop for the best combination of price and delivery. And because of that, I now do not need to spend as much time looking through trade magazines to keep myself informed on which companies provide which products, or bother with sending in “bingo cards” to gather general product information. All this is turning out to be both a “good news” and a “bad news” scenario. The good news I have already shared with you in the paragraphs above. The potentially bad news is that this is beginning to have a major and perhaps even devastating effect on industry trade publications. Have you noticed the page counts recently for the trade magazines you have been getting by simply filling out a subscription request card each year? Some of them are getting mighty thin. Yet others have stopped publishing altogether or have merged with sister publications. These magazines can survive only if companies buy advertising space. When the advertising purchases decrease, the page count must go down and the editorial content must be reduced proportionately. Pretty soon it is no longer viable to pay for the printing and mailing of these ever smaller issues and the publications cease to exist. You and I have only twenty-four hours in each day and only seven days in each week. If we spend increasing amounts of our time on our computers and on the Internet, we are perhaps spending less of it in general reading about our industry. Businesses are beginning to recognize this and are facing some difficult choices. With their limited personnel resources and tight budgets what should they do? Once it becomes obvious that their sales are coming from those of us who find them via the Internet, then the effort must

Not Enough Time – Limited Resources… The other day, I was talking to an attorney friend. He showed me how dramatically the PC, in combination with the Internet, has changed his way of working in recent years. He has been an attorney for over fifteen years and for him the last two to three years have been the culmination of a changeover that started about ten years ago. Basically, he is now doing all of his extensive reference searches from his laptop computer. No more trips to the legal library. No more ordering of printed documents. No more semi-random searches that result in only a few bits of useful information. Patents are now located by searching on key words. The ones of interest can be instantly downloaded. And within each patent, once again, a search by key words (or even parts of words) will often quickly locate the most interesting information. In depositions and court proceedings, the shorthand symbols being taken by the court reporter are now instantly translated into standard text and shared with every participant via a connection to his or her laptop computer. These too can be searched using key words or phrases. And although more paper than ever is being generated, the methodology for finding and retrieving information has dramatically improved the speed and thoroughness with which these documents can be generated and referenced. And it should not surprise us that attorneys are now also doing much of their written communicating by e-mail rather than by courier or conventional mail – the methods of the recent past. While perhaps not as dramatic, in the engineering community, we too have found ways to improve our effectiveness through the Internet. Today, when we need an electronic component, a new monitor, or perhaps a service provider, most of us go to our computers and start the search there. We may still have a shelf full of catalogs from our favorite vendors, but for comparison of current prices or to check on immediate availability, the Internet has become the best way to do it. For example, yesterday I needed a replacement power transistor of higher current gain than typical. I knew it would not be listed in the electronic parts catalogs that I have on hand. And I knew for sure that it would not be on the shelf at my nearest electronics shop. So off I went on my search, using my computer and the Internet. Within a few minutes I had located a vendor that I had never heard of before on Long Island (near New York) that specializes in fabricating replacements for obsolete transistors. Without the power of the Internet, how else would I have stumbled onto this find? I suppose if I had made enough phone calls, talked to enough people, and looked in enough industry directories, I might have arrived at the same place. But based on similar past experiences, I’m not so sure that I would have found this source – and certainly not as quickly. Over the years in these columns, I have tried to balance some of the more extreme hype about the Internet with a more conservative approach. I have suggested that, while there are going to be some important benefits, the Internet won’t replace everything that we currently do — such as shopping in regular stores, reading books and magazines, or being entertained by movies, plays, and live concerts. I have also suggested that whenever we add a new activity something else must be given up – a “something” that we previously did to fill up our twenty-four hour days. For example, my attorney friend has dramatically reduced his search time at legal libraries and the time he previously spent reading patents looking for those few gems of information. He has replaced that saved time by doing the searches on-line and by compiling far more data, doing it faster, and with more relevance to the matters at hand. While he may still spend as many hours as before in preparation for a trial, his preparation is more thorough and the reference data is more complete. In my own case, I am able to accomplish more work because I can find the needed parts more quickly and I can comparison shop for the best combination of price and delivery. And because of that, I now do not need to spend as much time looking through trade magazines to keep myself informed on which companies provide which products, or bother with sending in “bingo cards” to gather general product information. All this is turning out to be both a “good news” and a “bad news” scenario. The good news I have already shared with you in the paragraphs above. The potentially bad news is that this is beginning to have a major and perhaps even devastating effect on industry trade publications. Have you noticed the page counts recently for the trade magazines you have been getting by simply filling out a subscription request card each year? Some of them are getting mighty thin. Yet others have stopped publishing altogether or have merged with sister publications. These magazines can survive only if companies buy advertising space. When the advertising purchases decrease, the page count must go down and the editorial content must be reduced proportionately. Pretty soon it is no longer viable to pay for the printing and mailing of these ever smaller issues and the publications cease to exist. You and I have only twenty-four hours in each day and only seven days in each week. If we spend increasing amounts of our time on our computers and on the Internet, we are perhaps spending less of it in general reading about our industry. Businesses are beginning to recognize this and are facing some difficult choices. With their limited personnel resources and tight budgets what should they do? Once it becomes obvious that their sales are coming from those of us who find them via the Internet, then the effort must

Hundreds of CRTs and One Plasma Panel… Let’s suppose that a large manufacturer of flat panel displays has appointed you to be in charge of their new business development activity. Your assignment is to find one or more new markets of significant size where your company’s broad line of FPDs (both LCDs and Plasma panels) can be successfully introduced. Top management has told you that they do not care if this market is one where CRTs are currently dominant or if it is a completely new application of displays — as long as it is not simply an expansion or extension of existing FPD product markets. Obviously, that eliminates such lucrative growth areas as laptop computers, PDAs, and cell phones. Taking the scientific approach to your challenge, you decide to begin by creating a list of criteria for why someone might choose to use a flat panel display. Then you decide to also consider some less scientific criteria such as recently exemplified by the success that FPD makers have been having in displacing CRTs in the desktop computer monitor market. Even at significantly higher prices and with image quality that is no better than — and sometimes not as good as — a CRT, the market appeal of “these great new flat-panel displays” has been surprisingly strong — an interesting consumer behavior not all that easy to quantify based on purely technical criteria. Clearly, you will somehow have to take into account consumer buying decisions that are made through certain perceptual processes that are not all that easy to uncover, predict, or quantify. Nevertheless, charge ahead you must — even with all this doubt and uncertainty creeping in. Where could there be a new target market for your company’s FPDs? Where could there be that ideal undiscovered environment where FPDs would be the solution of choice? By all measures, the best historic example is the laptop computer. Without an FPD — no matter how modest it’s performance capabilities — the laptop computer could not have come into existence. In fact, as you quickly recall, the first laptops had monochrome displays of limited resolution, and contrast ratios so low that they were barely readable. But at the time, this was the only way you could have a computer that you could take with you. As the years passed, and as the demand for these products grew, virtually every FPD performance problem yielded to at least an adequate solution. This of course served to encourage even broader acceptance. Perhaps it would be too much to expect that you can find another market that has all of these favorable dynamics, so you set your sights on something more modest. Where might there be a new market that contains that ideal set of needs that can best be met by an FPD? After several weeks of frustrating searching, using the typical information sources such as industry market survey reports that have mostly verified what you already knew, you find yourself at breakfast one morning reading the morning paper while having your bowl of cereal and glass of orange juice. An article that catches your eye is describing a University of Michigan survey about why people own Recreational Vehicles — typically known as RVs. According to this survey, nearly one in 12 US vehicle-owning households now owns an RV. That turns out to be nearly 7 million households — a 7.8 percent increase in the past four years and a 42 percent gain over the past 21 years. Now that’s a nice size market, and also a growing one. You begin to wonder if these folks use any kind of displays in their RVs — besides those on the dashboard of course. Apparently, more of these RVs are owned by the “baby boomer” generation (35 to 54 year olds) than any other age group. And most of these families have several children who most likely need to be entertained while traveling. This survey then goes on to state that the approximately 7.2 million RVs on US roads are utilized by approximately 30 million people, including those who may just rent one for a specific vacation trip. With this many potential display-watchers, perhaps you have just found that significant new market that you have been searching for. As you continue reading, you learn that the purpose behind this article is to promote an upcoming RV show at the Seattle Exhibition Center. Bingo! Two days later you are among the first visitors to buy a seven-dollar admission ticket. Wow! The giant exhibition hall is filled with hundreds of these vehicles. They range in size from the very modest, that are more like camping trailers, up to the largest that are the size of cross-country tour busses. The typical size range could be described as that from a small truck up to a moderate size bus or a very large van — with a living area, a kitchen/eating area, a bath, and a sleeping area. And yes, there are displays everywhere. The average size RVs each have one television installed near the roof above the driver’s seat. The larger ones have several — one in the living area and one in the bedroom. The most expensive tour-bus-size one has a total of four. This vehicle has a selling price of over $360,000. And of all these hundreds of displays at this RV show — except for one – there are no flat panels. They are all CRTs. But these CRTs are not even the newer ones with flat screens. The uniformly accepted approach by the manufacturers of these “homes-on-the-road” seems to be to use the most inexpensive TVs available. And what about that one exception of a flat panel display? That one was in the $360,000 “grand-daddy” of all RVs. In addition to three conventional CRT-based televisions, there was a 42-inch plasma panel in the living area. And of the three CRT televisions, one was in a sliding drawer underneath and behind the front wheel-well where is