Novalux Wins Award at CES

Novalux Wins Award at CES

NOVALUX WINS INSIGHT MEDIA “BEST BUZZ” AWARD AT CONSUMER ELECTRONICS SHOW

NECSEL™ Light Sources for Projection Display Named “Best New Enabling Technology”

Novalux Wins Insight Media “Best Buzz” Award at Consumer Electronics Show

NECSEL™ Light Sources for Projection Display Named “Best New Enabling Technology”

SUNNYVALE, Calif., February [16], 2006 – Novalux, Inc., developer of Novalux Extended Cavity Surface Emitting Laser (NECSEL™) technology, has won a “Best Buzz” award from Insight Media, a leading source of intelligence about the display industry. The award is for “best new enabling technology” shown during the 2006 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, Nevada. Insight Media selected Novalux based on the company’s NECSEL illumination sources for projection displays. Novalux demonstrated its NECSEL technology at CES in two rear-projection TVs (RPTVs) along with a concept “pico-projector.”

“We give our ‘Best Buzz’ awards to companies that present something especially cool or exciting at CES—things that we end up going home and really talking about,” said Chris Chinnock, Insight Media president and founder. “Laser TV is something people have been dreaming about for a long time. With their RPTV demos, Novalux has put a very nice stake in the ground toward that goal. When you show lasers that are starting to get to the power levels and price points that can enable this technology it gets people’s attention—that’s the buzz.”

Novalux’s CES demo centered on two laser-based RPTVs based on its prototype 1.5W NECSEL light sources. One unit featured 3LCD technology while another was DLP™-based. The RPTVs showed the expanded color gamut and simplified, lower cost light engine architecture that laser technology provides over conventional UHP lamp-based systems. Specifically, with DLP™ systems, NECSEL technology eliminates the need for a color wheel, light tunnel and relay optics. For 3LCD engines, it eliminates the polarizers, color filters, turning mirrors and fly’s eye lenses.

Novalux also featured a concept demonstration “pico-projector” developed by a partner company that is a leading supplier of innovative scanned beam technologies [Ed. -- that's us, gang!]. The concept unit outputs approximately 25 lumens from a light engine measuring just 100 cubic centimeters. The initial demo projection engine houses red, green and blue lasers, the laser driver, beam-combining optics and a 2D MEMS scanner. It uses a NECSEL prototype single-emitter for its green source and edge emitters for blue and red. According to Greg Niven, Novalux vice president of marketing, “In the past, laser-based projectors have been limited by the constraints of green lasers—typically the only green option was a diode-pumped solid-state unit. With NECSEL technology, we can now produce an inexpensive, compact green source ideal for this application.”

“We are excited about the positive response to our NECSEL technology during CES,” said Jean-Michel Pelaprat, Novalux chairman and CEO. “Our initial NECSEL-based rear-projection TVs show our ability to dramatically increase display performance and facilitate simpler, compact, lower-cost light engines. We also believe that NECSEL technology could enable a host of other new projection devices. The concept ‘pico-projector’ shown at our demo is a good example—the concept unit produces substantial light output from a package a fraction of the size of today’s LED-based pocket projectors.”

To date, Novalux has shipped samples of its 1.5W green and blue NECSEL devices to consumer electronics partners. The devices are housed in a revolutionary package smaller than a matchbox. All NECSEL light sources produce color-saturated output, allowing them to reach a larger color space than competitive lighting technologies. Moreover, NECSEL sources provide bright, speckle-free output, resulting in clear, vibrant images unattainable by any other lighting technology. Additional advantages include long lifetime, instant-on and low étendue.