An Alternative Architecture for High-Performance Display

R. W. Corrigan, B. R. Lang, D. A. LeHoty, P. A. Alioshin

This paper presents an innovative system architecture that leverages the fast switching speed, nonlinear output response, and high optical flux threshold of the Grating Light Valve (GLV)* technology to create high-performance displays. This architecture creates a high-resolution projected image by optically scanning a linear array of GLV pixels, requiring about two thousand times fewer pixels than a 2-D panel and about one thousand times lower bandwidth than a scanned-spot approach for HDTV display. A 1080p projection display prototype based on this architecture has been developed, which displays 1920 × 1080 resolution, 30-bit color (10 bit/channel RGB) and up to 120-Hz refresh. The system receives 1080p video data at 24 or 30 frames/sec via a standard SMPTE 292M serial digital interface. While leveraging many traditional realtime video-processing techniques, several processing steps that are unique to the scanned linear architecture have been developed, including display mapping, data calibration, row/column transpose, frame rate multiply, and frame dither/refresh. The system is synchronous at 74.25 MHz.

Print ISSN
Published
2000-07
Content type
Original Research
DOI
10.5594/J05295