The LX9500 will be the company’s first entry into the 3D market, which has currently become filled by Samsung and Panasonic The LX9500 will be available in both a 47-inch and a 55-inch model.

The 1080p sets will have Skype’s TV platform, USB support, HDMI connections, and support for LG’s USB-powered 3D glasses. It is also decorated with a full backlit display, the first 3D set to do so.

According to the blog Ubergizmo, which translated LG’s Korean press release, the set is planned to be released in Korea next month at around the equivalent of a little over $4,000.

The LX9500 will then make its way to the US and Europe by May.

Early adopters in the 3D TV market have proven that there is significant demand. Panasonic’s first set of 3D TVs sold out across the country within just a week, and Samsung’s sets are also selling through at higher rates than analysts were expecting.

“Our doors are open to commercial, industrial and residential consumers who are looking for the best selection of quality LED products to provide energy efficiency and solid state lighting,” says Greg Klepper, CEO of LED Illumination Direct.

LED Illumination Direct’s lights are recyclable, energy efficient and cost effective and emit 90% less heat than a conventional bulb. The LED low emission bulbs can be touched by the human hand, unlike that of incandescent, CFLs, and Fluorescent lights. The showroom is set up where the lights can be touched, held and controlled by anyone present.

“Greg Klepper and LED Illumination Direct produce the highest quality LED products on the market today and are the leaders of the LED lighting industry,” said Anthony Newberg, Senior Vice President Sales & Marketing, Dealers Electrical Supply Company. “Without LED Illumination Direct the lighting industry would not be where it is today.” Dealers Electrical Supply is the authorized distributor in Texas for LED Illumination Direct.

The technologically advanced showroom at LED Illumination Direct displays LED lighting products ranging from LED tube lights, LED high power bulbs and spotlights, LED household lights, LED PAR/Flood lights, LED flexible strips and LED Modules.

LED Lighting Types include:

• High Bay
• High Power Bulb
• Household Bulb
• Low Bay Light
• PAR Light
• Street Lights
• Tube Light
• Bi-Pin Down Light
• Growlights
• Grid Lights
• Wall Washers

Green Mountain Power plans to replace worn-out street lights throughout its service area with energy-efficient, long-lasting LEDs. The LED lights have a life span of more than 25 years, compared to the 5 to 7 years for traditional street lamp bulbs.

LEDs are traditionally used in Christmas tree lights, newer flash lights and basketball scoreboards. They use a different technology from standard incandescent bulbs.

“By reducing the amount of electricity that you use by more than half, it eliminates any environmental effects that will be needed to produce that power,” said Dotty Schnure of GMP. “Also, with the lights they’ll be replacing, mercury lights, those lights have mercury in them and have very specific disposal issues. With LED, we’ll be avoiding all the mercury disposal issues.”

GMP submitted the plan to the Vermont Public Service Board. If approved, the lights could be installed as early as March 1.

The HV9963 utilizes a closed-loop system to control the current going to the LED string, which is an active, real-time system that continuously monitors the LED current via sense resistors. The HV9963 includes a 1.0MHz transconductance amplifier with a tri-state output, which closes feedback loops in the sensing process and provides accurate current control. It can be synchronized in applications requiring multiple LED drivers to prevent the system sub-harmonic oscillations that are often associated with driving multiple driver schemes.

The HV9963 also features hiccup mode protection for both short- and open-circuit conditions, and a high PWM dimming ratio. The IC operates in a constant frequency mode for use in a variety of converter topologies such as buck, boost and SEPIC.

“The HV9963’s closed-loop system enables accurate line and load control of the LED current over its entire operating range,” states Ahmed Masood, Vice President of Marketing for Supertex. “This IC also includes controls that allow PWM dimming at very low duty cycles, resulting in a contrast ratio of up to 5,000:1.”

The HV9963 is available in a 16-lead SOIC package (HV9963NG-G). The part is RoHS compliant. Samples are available from stock. Lead-time for production quantities is 4-6 weeks ARO. Pricing is US$0.85 each for the HV9963NG-G in 1K quantities.

About Supertex Supertex, Inc. is a publicly held mixed signal semiconductor manufacturer, focused in high voltage analog and mixed signal products for use in the medical, LED lighting, imaging, industrial, and telecommunication industries.

First came the LED light bars, unwrapped by Curtis Shaddox, president of Kansas City-based Sunpower Sign. Brian Eliot, manager of the Sign House in south Salina, grabbed a 12-volt power pack from a cordless tool and touched the leads on the light bar to the contacts to make sure it worked.

The permanent power source arrived with Sunpower executive vice president Troy Haefner from Minnesota, who carried a roll of flexible solar film wrapped around each arm.

Like much of the rest of rebuilt Greensburg, the new City Hall sign packs some serious environmentally friendly tech: the LED lights will use a fraction of the power a bank of fluorescent tubes would, and the solar film will power it.

The Sign House has been using LED lighting on some signs for about five years, Eliot said, “But this is our first experience with solar power. It’s very new for the industry and definitely for this area.”

The sign was scheduled to be delivered to Greensburg on Friday, though it won’t be permanently installed until warmer weather, when the concrete base can be poured.

The design calls for a bank of LEDs at the top and bottom of the sign, illuminating the lettering and pushing light through a frosted acrylic layer near the top, causing a “glowing halo” effect, Eliot said.

Shaddox said the LEDs will have a 15-year lifespan, as opposed to about five years for a fluorescent tube — and there’s no ballast to go bad.

Eliot said solar-powered signs will likely become an important part of his company’s business, and he and his employees are having fun learning about the new technology.

The flexible solar panels are also a relatively new technology and are starting to replace older designs, which are heavier, bulkier and more fragile.

And, Shaddox said, the thin film will generate power in almost any light.

“You don’t need full sun, and it doesn’t have to be tilted at 30 degrees south to get the right angle,” he said, explaining those benefits allow for more design possibilities. “Instead of this big panel standing there, we can just apply it to the top of the sign.”

NASA and the military have used flexible solar film for several years, but as more companies start producing it, the price is dropping to where it’s cost-effective.

“The cost per kilowatt is dropping every week,” Shaddox said.

The adhesive-backed solar film has about a 25-year lifespan, Shaddox said, and is much more resistant to damage than more traditional photovoltaic panels.

“You could take a box knife and cut it, and that one area won’t work any more, but the rest of it will,” he said. “And, it’s got a teflon coating, so you can spray-paint it and just clean it off.”

A combination of advances in solar power and LED technology makes such signs possible, Shaddox said; it wouldn’t be practical to try to power a fluorescent-tube sign with solar panels.

Multiple standardization organization are working on defining and implementing testing and performance standards and communicating them to the public. Solid state lighting is progressing niche by niche.  More municipalities are testing LED streetlight and some have already committed to massive retrofits (200,000 street lights in Los Angeles). Adoption in commercial and retails lighting, while still low in volume is progressing fast (announcements from Wall Mart, Starbucks…). While we all have our eyes focused on residential applications, it’s important to realize that homes are the smallest segments (in term of lumens) compared to industrial, commercial and municipal lighting. However, for most, it remains the ultimate frontier.

But even this application now seems within reach and LED replacement bulbs might come to your home faster that you expected. Don’t rush yet though, as low quality products are still flooding the market and might create a negative initial perception of the technology, a risk that the industry is aware off and trying to control by working on performance standard (make sure you get products meeting or exceeding the Energy star criteria for solid state lighting). In Japan, the largest electronic manufacturers are making a strong push with quality products. Toshiba Lighting and Technology introduced a 60W equivalent replacement LED bulb for JPY9,000 in late 2008. The same product now goes for less than JPY4,000. Sharp launched similar offers and the price is now expected to reach  JPY2,000 in 2010. At this pace, most now expect the cost of LED replacement bulbs to reach the $10 for 1000 lumen target commonly accepted as the “magic” number that will trigger massive adoption by 2012.

In the US, Philips released the first LED bulb to participate to LPrize contest organized by the US Department Of Energy to reward the first 60W replacement LED bulb to meet aggressive performance targets.  A lot of credible light bulb replacements could be seen at the recent Strategies In Light conference exhibition floor and CREE is planning to release a retail version of its award winning LR6. The price point at which it will be released will send a strong signal to the industry.

After riding the cell phone keypads and LCD screen backlight wave during the previous decade, the industry is on for a spectacular growth thanks to large LCD backlight applications. While similar in essence to the smaller LCD screens, the larger displays found in laptops and large flat panel TVs were until recently more difficult to illuminate with LEDs because of their large surface. One must give credit to Sony and Lumileds, now a subsidiary of Philips, for pioneering the field in 2005. However, while delivering outstanding performances, the price of those LED backlit TVs were out of reach (>$10,000) for most consumers. A strong push by Apple, Dell and other brands allowed LEDs to start being adopted in laptops in 2007. In 2010, the adoption of LED for the segment should exceed 80%. But until 6-8 months ago, the industry consensus was that broad adoption of LEDs for large displays (20” and above) was still at least a couple years away. Samsung shook the industry in the second half of 2009 by bringing into the market a flurry of breakthrough products at affordable prices. Thanks to various engineering breakthrough and a strong marketing push (LED TVs anyone??), the unexpected success of the product put large LCD TV 2 years ahead of the initial roadmap and rescued the LED industry from what was going to be its first year ever of negative growth in 2009 (2001 was a flat year).

Since then, All TV manufacturers have jumped into the bandwagons, and LG, Sony, Sharp, Vizio, Toshiba all lined up an impressive series of new LED backlit LCD TV for 2010 with aggressive pricing. The cost of LED backlit TV remains marginally higher than “old fashion” cold cathode fluorescence lamp (CCFL) TV. However the price gap is shrinking and the consumers are falling for those ultra-slim TV with high contrast ratio and in some cases, improved color gamut and reduced motion blur. However, because of the engineering tradeoffs necessary to keep cost under controls however, not all the potential benefits of LED backlit TVs are offered on every set.  But, as technology improves, LED cost decrease and economy of scale become significant, the adoption rate of LEDs in LCD TV is expected to jump from 2-3% in 2009 to more than 20% in 2010 with the most optimistic forecasting 39 millions LED TV sets for the year. The adoption rate should further increase to 70% by 2013 and volumes exceed 150 millions. The exact impact on the LED industry is difficult to quantify though: because of the mix of panel size and the variety of design options (edge lit vs. backlit, white LEDs vs. RGB), estimating the exact number of LED chip per TV set is challenging (it varies from 250 to more than 1,000 on certain models). The one sure thing however, is that LCD TV will carry the LED industry through what analysts call it second growth cycle, possibly slightly restrained by tensions on the Sapphire substrate market and the ability of equipment manufacturers to deliver the record amount of MOCVD reactors to be shipped in 2010 and of the chip manufacturer to install and qualify them on time (it takes3 months to start production on a new reactors and in some cases another 4-6 months is needed get the chips from the new reactor validated by the final customer).

So what about the next big thing for LED: General Illumination? The main barriers to a broad and immediate adoption are still here. Those are essentially:
- Energy efficiency.
- Reliability.
- Color consistency and stability.
- Lack of standardization.
- Confusing supply chain.
- Upfront cost.

LED (light emitting diode) backlit TVs were heavily featured at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this month, as manufacturers announced products intended to emulate the success seen by Samsung in 2009.

Samsung, which has 80 per cent of the US market for LED TVs, aims to quadruple global sales in 2010 to more than 10m.

But manufacturers such as LG, another Korean player, say Samsung will not have things all its own way as LED-backlit TVs become available at entry-level as well as premium prices. LG will offer cheaper edge-lit LED technology, which requires fewer arrays of diodes, on its entry-level TVs and full LED backlights on premium models.

LEDs have graduated from use in mobile phone screens to backlights for notebooks, PCs and now TVs and monitors.

They offer better brightness and contrast, energy savings and slimmer screens than those using the established cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) now used for backlighting.

LED technology was first introduced in 1962, beginning with a low-intensity red light. Semiconductor-based diodes or valves produce light from the excitation of electrons as they are moved over a “light” bridge by a direct electrical current. LEDs differ from traditional incandescent light bulbs, which produce their light from heat generation.

Over the years, white LEDs have been developed by combining chips that produce different colours into a single package, or by adding a yellow phosphor layer. Improvements in light intensity and cost reductions are now resulting in wider adoption of LEDs.

Pete Moran of the DCM venture capital firm says LEDs have advantages such as longer life and greater efficiency compared with both incandescents and the energy-saving compact fluorescents with which consumers are currently replacing them.

As well as the green argument, there are manpower savings from LED’s longevity. Cities such as San Francisco, San Jose, New York and Minneapolis are testing LED street lamps that will not need regular bulb replacement by lighting crews. In retail, Walmart and Starbucks are replacing lighting in their US stores with LED bulbs to cut energy consumption.

But as big semiconductor makers such as Samsung and Micron begin to take an interest in the LED industry, it could eventually take on the same characteristics as the DRAM, or flash memory, industries, according to analyst Daniel Amir.

The LED industry will then become cyclical, with a period of oversupply as early as the second half of 2011, according to Lazard, although demand should still be growing at rates of 20 to 30 per cent a year.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

CPSC alerts product liability lawyers- Rockler Companies Inc. announced voluntary recall of LED light kits.

Washington, D.C.—Rockler Companies, Inc., of Medina, Minnesota and the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) have announced a voluntary recalled of LED light kits. Nearly 2,200 LED light kits were recalled on January 12, 2010, as reported by the CPSC.

The CPSC has urged consumers to stop using the recalled LED light kits immediately unless otherwise instructed after the discovery of defective wiring in the light kits. The defective wiring can cause the battery pack to overheat and explode, which poses a risk of burn and fire. At this time no injuries and/or instances have been reported. This recalled product is described as Rockler LED lights with either an interchangeable spotlight head, or a magnifying head. The recalled product models have stock numbers 26429 (spotlight or 27017 (magnifying). The stock numbers are printed on the products packaging. The LED light kits were sold at Rockler Woodworking and Hardware and other specialty stores across the country from March 2009 through October 2009 for the retail price of $60. All consumers who have purchased the product can contact Rockler Companies at (800) 260-9663 to receive a fee repair kit and installation instructions.

Take for example the work showcased at CES by Nanosys, a company that has developed a method to add nanomaterials to blue LEDs that improves the appearance of LED lighting. Their efforts have created an LED light that combines the energy efficiency of a blue LED; with a nanotechnology layer that alters its blue appearance into a warm white light that is better than standard LED lighting.

The benefits of the added nanotech material not only means improving the quality of the emitted light for backlit LED displays
, but doing so while still maintaining a low power profile. Plus Nanosys claims, the process can be added to a company’s assembly line for electronic products without the need for major retooling.

So expect to see better looking LED lighting in the near future as Nanosys nanotechnology starts to appear in televisions and other lighting products beginning later this year.