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Diguang Electronics Offers $200 LED Backlight for 32-inch LCD-TVs

In a meeting with Insight Media analysts and representatives in Shenzhen recently, Diguang (DG) Electronics ( Shenzhen, China) President Henry Song provided some startling news. He announced that in August, DG will begin sampling a 32-inch LED backlight unit (BLU) for LCD television applications for $200 – a price that is only slightly higher than the $170 typically charged for an equivalent BLU based on the traditional cold-cathode fluorescent lamp (CCFL) technology. This is a potentially important breakthrough as LED backlights have so far been much more expensive than CCFL versions.

Production of the new BLU, which begins sampling next month, will ramp up in 3Q’05, Song said. Manufacturing capacity in 2006 will be 500K units per month from its 40K-square-meter factory located about a one-hour drive from Shenzhen in DongGuan City. In addition, DG has acquired land that would permit the construction of a factory three times the size of the current DongGuan plant. “We are prepared to build that plant as soon as it is justified by demand,” said Song.

Today’s 32-inch LED BLUs cost roughly $1,000. Song attributes the dramatic pricing of the new BLU to multiple cost-downs made possible by DG’s extensive experience in producing nearly 3000 different models of LED and CCFL backlights since the company’s founding in 1996.

The structure of the new BLU is similar to that announced by CREE at the SID Symposium held in Boston in May, in that the LED chips are mounted directly on a heat-conducting circuit board. However, Song said, whereas CREE’s structure only conducts heat to the board through the bottom surface of the LED, DG uses a heat-conducting encapsulate to conduct heat to the board through the sides of the chip as well. This allows the chips to be driven harder for more luminance, or to be run with a larger operating margin.

DG uses small 0.35mm LED die in their BLU design, and obtains a luminous efficiency of 90 lumens per Watt. The 32-inch unit consumes 70 Watts of power, and provides the same luminous output as an equivalent CCFL backlight. The LEDs in the BLU are arranged in a RGGB format, with a total of 1120 LEDs (280 x 4). But this number can be reduced by half in the future, Song said. Lifetime of the BLU is 50K hours to half luminance.

DG does not yet have customers for the new backlight, but we’re certain the development will create excited interest. The company has been around for a while, and our assessment of the company and technology was quite positive. In addition, we talked with CREE at SID, which is also claiming the ability to offer BLUs at a 25% premium over CCFL versions, adding further validation to DG’s claims. Good stuff.

Contact:
Insight Media
Annmarie Gabisch, 203-831-8564
annmarie@insightmedia.info