Texas Instruments announces enhanced brightness, color saturation for DLP^TM technology

Dallas, Texas - June 7th 2001: At the annual conference of the Society for Information Display (SID) - held at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in San Jose, California - Texas Instruments (TI) (NYSE: TXN) today announced an exciting innovation which will allow projectors featuring DLP^TM technology to deliver images which can be up to 40% brighter than is currently possible or which feature greater color saturation - or a combination of increased brightness and increased color saturation.

In a paper entitled "Sequential Color Recapture and Dynamic Filtering: A Method of Scrolling Color" authored by D. Scott Dewald, Steven M. Penn and Michael Davis of Texas Instruments, an innovative approach to increasing the efficiency of a single modulator display is described.

"The current DLP single-panel technology has only one color present on the surface of the DMD, meaning that, at any one time, one third of the light is used while two thirds of the light is wasted," said Scott Dewald of TI's DLP^TM Products division, who delivered the paper at the conference. "Sequential Color Recapture - SCR - is a technology that allows all three colors to be present simultaneously, such that a single panel DLP system can now be as efficient as - potentially more efficient than - a three panel system, but without the additional parts, size, weight and expense of three panel systems."

"Although many solutions have been proposed to the challenge of maximizing the efficiency of single modulator displays," he continued, "all have exhibited a high degree of mechanical complexity which would make manufacturability a real issue. One of the key virtues of SCR is its simplicity: it is no more complex than what we have today, requiring no additional moving parts."

The implementation of SCR technology requires a change to the color wheel and light integrating element currently employed in single-DMD DLP^TM subsystems, together with changes in the DMD and the drive electronics. The optical capability of SCR has been made possible by advances in dichroic and metal thin-film technologies, the most important of these being the photolithographic patterning of dichroic coatings. The SCR color wheel is created from RGB dichroic coatings arranged in a "spiral of Archimedes" pattern.

"This is a tremendously exciting development for DLP technology," said Dennis Fritsche, Manager for Business Products at TI's DLP^TM Products Division. "It has been a continuing goal to not only increase brightness, but also to increase color saturation - and SCR allows us to do both. On a panel-to-panel basis, DLP technology has always out-performed competing technologies. With this invention, we can now, in all respects, match three-panel modulators with a single DMD, but in the small, lightweight projectors that DLP^TM technology uniquely enables because of its high speed and digitally consistent mirror technology. We are now investigating implementation plans and schedules to bring this revolutionary advancement to the market place."

Today, TI supplies DLP^TM subsystems to more than thirty of the world's top projector manufacturers, who then design, manufacture and market projectors based on DLP^TM technology. There are now over fifty products based on DLP^TM technology in the market. Since early 1996, over 750,000 DLP^TM subsystems have been shipped. Over the past four years, DLP^TM technology-based projectors have consistently won some of the audio-visual industry's most prestigious awards, including, in June 1998, an Emmy Award from the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

At the heart of TI's Digital Light Processing^TM technology is the Digital Micromirror Device optical semiconductor chip. The DMD switch has an array of up to 1,310,000 hinged, microscopic mirrors which operate as optical switches to create a high resolution, full color image.

Texas Instruments Incorporated is the world leader in digital signal processing and analog technologies, the semiconductor engines of the Internet age. The company's businesses also include sensors and controls, and educational and productivity solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas and has manufacturing or sales operations in more than 25 countries.

Texas Instruments is traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol TXN. More information is located on the World Wide Web at www.ti.com

Digital Light Processing, DLP and DLP Cinema are trademarks of Texas Instruments. All other products and names may or may not be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies.

Contacts:
Ian McMurray
Texas Instruments
44-1604-663075
i-mcmurray@ti.com

Matt Godin
Rainier Corporation
(978) 464-5302, x142
matt@rainierco.com