JVC Solidifies D-ILA Strategy

Icia infocomm international expo2000 show daily, june 15-17, anaheim, ca

From left, JVC executives Jack Faiman, Robert Mueller, Bill Bleha unveiled a new generation of

D-ILA-based projectors, and details of the merging of the former Hughes-JVC staff into a new

Management structure.

JVC has ended months of speculation, following the dissolution of Hughes-JVC last December, by announcing plans for a new generation of D-ILA-based projectors and providing details of the merging of the former Hughes-JVC staff into a new management structure under the JVC Professional banner.

In a press conference yesterday evening, JVC executives announced that the merged unit’s U.S. operations will be based in Wayne, NJ, while a product design and R&D office will be based in Japan. In addition, an advanced development lab is located in Carlsbad, CA.

The former ILA (image Light amplification) technology has now been subsumed by the new D-ILA (digital image light amplification) product line.

“JVC decided to take engineering and sales talent of Hughes-JVC and merged it with JVC Professional to create one entity and not confuse our dealers and customers,” said Jack Faiman, Vice President, Visual Systems Division.

“The Hughes Aircraft Company and JVC joined in the early days to exploit the ILA technology,” explained Faiman to the press on the eve of the show. We created world-class resolution and color brightness, but the projectors were not plug and play. As the matrix technologies evolved, we have now adapted the ILA technology to direct-drive or digital.”

At the new product line unveiling, JVC Professional demos its new DLA-G3010Z multimedia projector, said to be the smallest, lightest D-ILA projector capable of providing true S-XGA resolution.

Set to hit the market this August, the 14.3-pound projector delivers a resolution as high as 1,365 x 1,024 pixels and, says JVC, can display an S-XGA-like image without scaling or loss of quality. It generates 1.300 ANSI lumens and will carry a list price of $8,995.

The DLA-G3010Z uses JVC’s exclusive D-ILA technology, based on a LCOS (Liquid Crystal on Silicon) display device. It has 1.4 million pixels packed onto a 0.9-inch chip, making the system fully compatible with S-XGA resolution.

The projector’s Color Enhancer compensates for color contours for crisper and sharper video pictures, and is compatible with DTV formats (4801, 480p, 720p and 1081i).

“JVC’s DLA-G3010Z stands out in a very large and crowded portable projector market, uniquely offering S-XGA performance in the world’s most economical and lightweight package ever,” said Masashi Nakamura, marketing manager of Visual Systems Division. “We believe that the superb performance of the unique D-ILA projector will change the minds of many prospective buyers struggling between so many ‘me-too’ projectors which offer a lower (or inferior) performance.

Also at the INFOCOMM conference on Wednesday, JVC announced plans to market a new QXGA projector, slated to hit the market in late 2000 or early 2001.

This isn’t a laboratory demonstration, this QXGA projector is going into mass production next year, offering 2,024 x 1,536 pixels of resolution,” added Faiman.