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Technology Stocks : THREE FIVE SYSTEM (TFS) - up from here? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Maurice S. Green who wrote (1155)	3/27/1998 11:55:00 AM
From: Jim Armstrong	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 3247

Yep, most of the display folks are aware of DisplayTech. They are a player. The DislayTech technology is pretty similar to TFS, with one significant difference (at least from from the early TFS/NS devices). DisplayTech devices use ferroelectric LC fluids. They can switch much, much faster than most other LC materials. That means, for example, that you can create a full-color display with a single chip. While most LC materials are doing pretty good to switch fast enough to keep create relatively flicker-free single-color video images, ferroelectric materials can switch fast enough to sequentially display red, green, and blue images in the same time as a single picture frame for the other LCs. The reflective display device doesn't determine the color. The color of the image frame is determined by the color of the light source (LED, for example) flashed while that particular image is loaded on the screen. If these color fields can be flashed through fast enough, you would be unaware of the color-sequential nature of the display. To provide color with slower, more conventional LC materials, you either have to combine the images of three red, green, and blue image sources (three "chips"), or put a color filter mosaic over the device and cut its resolution by a whopping 2/3. So you can see that the ferroelectric speed is a real benefit. However, the FE materials have other kinds of issues. Nothing's simple. Everything has tradeoffs. It's still a competition!! But, since a single chip and no color-combining optics is the least expensive color implementation, it would be pretty hard to believe that any microchip display manufacturer would not be looking at ways to speed their device performance, even if they had to license something. Remember, that TFS has the flexibility of smearing something like a modest royalty payment over a larger value-added assembly than suppliers who are focusing solely on the development and production of the device itself. I have no idea what TFS might be doing with respect to device speed, but I'd be very surprised if they are sitting on their hands! JimA