Spiff,
What? You want a direct quote? And who is this guy Adrien Biffen? Did he attend the show? If he did, he coudn't have missed the Toshiba story. It was big news. And in his chart of pros and cons of various TV technologies, he fails to note the so-so contrast ratio of LCD flat-panel and LCD projection sets, although he does mention the limited contrast of LCoS.
Here's the story from the CES Daily, published at the show by TWICE (This Week in Consumer Electronics), Jan. 10th, '04, edition:
TOSHIBA EMBRACES DLP RPTVs, DROPS LCoS
by Greg Tarr
LAS VEGAS -- Toshiba America Consumer Products television marketing VP Scott Ramirez announced here Wednesday that the company has officially stepped away from rear-projection TVs based on LCoS micro devices in favor of the popular and more available DLP chips from Texas Instruments.
For the past two years, the company has touted LCoS televisions as the flagship products in its digital TV offerings, but chip shortages prevented Toshiba from delivering its 2003 models to market. For 2004, Toshiba plans to embrace DLP in a big way, Ramirez said.
He said Toshiba will introduce later this year an expansive DLP lineup using TI's HD2+ hi-def TV chip and a light engine system completely designed and built by Toshiba. . .Ramirez said Toshiba intends to use DLP to take "a top three" market share position . . ."
The story goes on to explain that Toshiba is reportedly planning to offer 10 DLP models in 2004.
In the press room at the show, I also heard that the expense of getting the factory "yield" (the ratio of good to bad LCoS chips) to a satisfactory level was a major impediment to the evolution of LCoS and one of the reasons Toshiba dropped the technology.
Regards,
