Samsung makes small screen debut

Samsung Electronics has unveiled what it claims to be the world’s first three-inch LCD panel with VGA (640 x 480 pixels) resolution that directly meets industry interface standards for digital still cameras.

Executive vice president Yun Jin-hyuk of Samsung Electronics said the LCD panel “will make viewing of digital pictures distinctly more impressive on camera screens, personal multimedia players and other products requiring high image resolution and low power consumption."

Digital camera makers use an interface known as ITU-R601, an international standard for cathode ray tube (CRT) TVs that operates at 30Hz. This standard is incompatible with LCDs, which normally run at 60Hz. Manufacturers have to date had to reconcile the difference either by compressing the images or by manipulating the signal.

However, such approaches will only work with LCDs that have a resolution of qVGA (320 x 240 pixels) or less, but the Samsung LCD operates on 30Hz, allowing VGA images to be obtained from a digital camera without having to create another interface.

The LCD display also incorporates a dot inversion scheme that lowers power consumption while substantially reducing the image flickering that has prevented such an approach in the past.

Samsung will begin commercial production of the new VGA-resolution LCD panel in the first half of 2007.

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