Texas Instruments to describe how market-leading contrast performance of DLP(tm) technology is achieved

"... doubtful whether liquid crystal display technologies can ever approach these levels of contrast performance..."

Dallas, Texas - May 22nd 2002: At the annual International Symposium, Seminar and Exhibition of the Society for Information Display (SID) (May 19th - 24th: Hynes Convention Center, Boston, Massachusetts), Scott Dewald of Texas Instruments (TI) (NYSE: TXN) will describe recent developments in DLP(tm) technology that have significantly increased the contrast ratio it is capable of delivering. He will point to the astonishing 1,800:1 contrast ratio featured in the recently-announced Hewlett-Packard Digital Projectors xb31 and sb21 as evidence that DLP(tm) technology has established an unassailable competitive lead in this key image quality metric, together with the fact that DLP(tm) technology is rapidly becoming the technology of choice for manufacturers of displays, projectors and large screen TVs for home entertainment applications.

"There are many characteristics that contribute to the quality of a projected image," said Dewald, Manager of DLP(tm) Optics Research and Development at TI's DLP(tm) Products division, "but, in video applications - given appropriate sharpness and brightness - perhaps none is more significant than contrast ratio, which allows detail to be seen that makes an image come alive. Our experience with DLP Cinema technology and with television has shown that contrast and resolution are interrelated components of perceived image quality, and that high resolution by itself does not make a better image."

In his paper - to be delivered at 2:00pm on May 23rd and entitled "Advances in Contrast Enhancement for DLP(tm) Projection Displays"- Dewald will emphasize how significant increases in DLP(tm) system contrast have been achieved without the need to resort to the exotic material and process development that are required to improve contrast in polarization-based technologies such as polysilicon and LCoS.

Dewald will go on to point out how careful analysis of light paths in the illumination and projection optics, coupled with experimentation in the laboratory, revealed opportunities for substantial system contrast ratio increases with limited sacrifice in system brightness. He will describe how innovative shaped apertures were applied at certain points in the optical path to filter out unwanted stray light. Patents have been applied for. Using these apertures and making certain adjustments to the system optical configuration, contrast improvements of almost 2x can be achieved with very reasonable tradeoff in light throughput.

"In fact," Dewald said, "these apertures uniquely enable contrast improvement in DLP technology based projectors. Because contrast loss mechanisms in liquid crystal based systems are fundamentally different, these system aperturing techniques have little applicability to LCD-based projection systems. As such, it is doubtful whether liquid crystal display technologies can approach these levels of contrast performance."

Although not something that Dewald will discuss in his paper, another important contributor to the contrast performance of DLP(tm) technology is what has become commonly known in the industry as 'DLP(tm) black chip' technology. This allows contrast levels to be increased between 40% and 100%. The 'black chip' technology, coupled with the aperturing techniques and other methods, gives projector designers significant latitude for tailoring the system contrast and brightness to the application. Projectors requiring the finest video quality can emphasize contrast - achieving contrast gains in excess of 100% for brightness tradeoffs of around 20%. Systems emphasizing brightness can achieve lower contrast gains of about 40% with virtually no penalty in brightness.

Many additional improvements at both the DMD and system levels are possible and in work, which will enable practical system contrast ratios to continue to increase.

"What I describe in my paper," concluded Dewald, "demonstrates the systems engineering approach that TI takes to bringing value to our OEM customers for DLP technology. TI engineers embarked on a program to understand the system-level interaction of optics on image quality, the result of which are the techniques described in the paper. Of equal importance is the fact that the team was able to fan out this knowledge to our customer base such that products using such contrast-enhancement techniques appeared on the market within ten weeks. TI will continue to maintain world class competence and expertise in projector design, which allows us to bring innovative, highly differentiated total product solutions to our customers. This is just one more way that TI adds value and competitive advantage to companies featuring DLP technology in their projectors and displays."

Dewald's paper will be posted on the DLP(tm) web site at www.dlp.com on May 23rd. Click on 'News & Resources', click on 'White Papers'.

DLP(tm) technology delivers the clearest, sharpest, brightest, most accurate images in a broad range of projection and display applications including business projectors, home entertainment projectors, large screen tabletop TVs, video walls and projection systems used in commercial entertainment. DLP Cinema(tm) technology, which delivers large screen images tha t are superior in many respects to film, is helping to revolutionize the movie industry. Today, TI supplies DLP(tm) subsystems to almost all the world's top projector manufacturers, who then design, manufacture and market projectors based on DLP(tm) technology. Since early 1996, over 1,000,000 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. For more information, please visit www.dlp.com.

Texas Instruments Incorporated provides innovative DSP and analog technologies to meet our customers' real world signal processing requirements. In addition to Semiconductor, the company's businesses include Sensors & Controls, and Educational & Productivity Solutions. TI is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and has manufacturing, design 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.