Mitsubishi builds television with laser backlight

The Japanese technology company Mitsubishi has developed a television that uses red lasers as a light source for the backlight. This technique should enable better color reproduction and reduce costs.

The Japanese company previously developed a television with lasers, but then used RGB lasers as the basis for the LaserVue series of rear projection TVs. The latest prototype that the company developed only has red lasers on board, with which, not surprisingly, especially red tones become more intense. Cyan LEDs are used to display other colours; they must account for the green and blue spectrum. By using only one type of LED, instead of using separate green and blue LEDs, the colors should be displayed more evenly. The TV is said to have a wider color gamut than TVs with white backlight LEDs.

The red laser, with a wavelength of 638 nanometers, was developed by Mitsubishi’s own Electric division and was chosen because it was said to be more efficient than the RGB laser. The 46″ LCD prototype contains “a few dozen” red lasers and a few hundred cyan LEDs. Mitsubishi had to adapt the light guides, which distribute the backlight over the screen surface, to the different angles at which the LEDs and lasers radiate. the company’s brightness, contrast, and power consumption are comparable to regular LED-backlit televisions, and the company plans to release the red laser televisions in Japan this fiscal year, which ends at the end of March 2012.

On the left the new LCD TV with red lasers, on the right a normal LCD with white LEDs as backlight