October 18, 2005 - Canon’s move on LCDs of the future (which we reported on here) apparently wasn’t fast enough, because Sanyo Epson Imaging Devices is beating them to the punch. Sanyo Epson announced yesterday the development of three new LCDs that use the company’s Photo Fine Chromarich technology. The screens will be available in sizes of 2.2” at 320 x 240 pixels of resolution, and 2.8” and 4.5”, both at 640 x 480 pixels of resolution.
The new LCDs utilize a new backlight and four color filters (red, green, blue, and cyan) to reproduce over 16 million colors in the full NTSC color gamut, including deep greens and blues, which is something that current LCDs can’t match. The LCDs are also “backward compatible” in that their memory requirements are no different than those of previous LCDs and input data is still in RGB format, so that in theory, an LCD on an older digital camera or camera phone could be swapped out for a new one with only minor modifications.
Sanyo Epson also claims in their press release that the new LCDs require less power consumption and have higher aperture ratios, though exact figures and percentages were not given. The full press release, along with more detailed product specifications, can be found here: http://www-org.epson.co.jp/e/newsroom/2005/news_2005_10_17.htm
From October 19 to October 21, the new Chromarich LCDs can be glimpsed at FPD International 2005 in Pacifico Yokohama, Japan. They are expected to go into official production in 2006.
