Laser TV

Laser color television (in short, Laser TV), or Laser color video display utilizes two or more individually modulated optical (laser) rays of different colors to produce a combined spot that is scanned and projected across the image plane by a polygon-mirror system or less effectively by optoelectronic means to produce a color-television display. The systems work either by scanning the entire picture a dot at a time and modulating the laser directly at high frequency, much like the electron beams in a cathode ray tube, or by optically spreading and then modulating the laser and scanning a line at a time, the line itself being modulated in much the same way as with Digital Light Processing (DLP).

The special case of one ray reduces the system to a monochromatic display as, for example, in black-and-white television. This principle applies to a display as well as to a (front or rear) projection technique with lasers (a laser video projector).

The laser source for television or video display was originally proposed by Helmut K.V. Lotsch in the German Patent 1 193 844. In December 1977 H.K.V. Lotsch and F. Schroeter explained laser color television for conventional as well as projection-type systems and gave examples of potential applications. 18 years later the German-based company Schneider AG presented a functional laser-TV prototype at IFA'95 in Berlin/Germany. Due to bankruptcy of Schneider AG, however, the prototype was never developed further to a market-ready product.

Proposed in 1966, laser illumination technology remained too costly to be used in commercially viable consumer products. At the Las Vegas Consumer Electronics Show in 2006, Novalux Inc., developer of Necsel semiconductor laser technology, demonstrated their laser illumination source for projection displays and a prototype rear-projection "laser" TV. First reports on the development of a commercial Laser TV were published as early as February 16, 2006 with a decision on the large-scale availability of laser televisions expected by early 2008. On January 7, 2008, at an event associated with the Consumer Electronics Show 2008, Mitsubishi Digital Electronics America, a key player in high-performance red-laser and large-screen HDTV markets, unveiled their first commercial Laser TV, a 65" 1080p model. A Popular Science writer was impressed by the color rendering of a Mitsubishi laser video display at CES 2008. Some even described it as being too intense to the point of seeming artificial. This Laser TV, branded "Mitsubishi LaserVue TV", went on sale, November 16, 2008 for $6,999, but Mitsubishi's entire Laser TV project was killed in 2012.

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