Taiwan-based LED packaging company Ledtech Electronics received an order for commercial-use LED light bars from Japan, with shipments to begin in September, according to market sources. The order was for NT$12 million and was for a commercial use applications.

Recently, Philips and Sony both unveiled new LCD televisions that use LED backlights at IFA, a major consumer electronic show held in Berlin, Germany on August 29 - September 3. Both companies had new TVs that used the LED backlights to achieve local dimming, while Sony also had a 40-inch LCD TV with LED edge-lighting – almost certainly a first.

The new 42PFL9803 FlatTV from Philips won the “European LCD-TV 2008-2009” award from the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA). According to Philips, its 42-inch set "delivers levels of contrast and motion smoothness never achieved by an LCD before." In its official citation, the EISA judging panel said, “The new 42PFL9803 solves two of the most critical challenges in current LCD TV technology: black level and motion blur. Thanks to its genius LED backlight. The 42PFL9803 is the first LCD TV to feature Philips' "LED LUX" local dimming backlight technology. Local dimming requires the distribution of LEDs across the backplane of the LCD. Unlike a conventional CCFL backlight that can be either on or off, each LED pixel can be individually dimmed to correspond to the brightness of the image.

The LED LUX system comprises a total of 1,152 RGB LEDs, split into 128 segments. Each of the 8 rows contains 16 segments, with 9 LEDs in each segment. These LEDs can be individually dimmed to precisely control the output of each pixel. So, even if a segment contains both bright and dark portions, the pixel values of the dark portions can be dimmed to deliver optimum contrast performance. The set also has the Ambilight Spectra 2 technology, which identifies dominant on-screen colors and then uses LED lighting to generate accurately-matched ambient lighting from both sides of the screen onto a rear wall.

Sony's new Bravia KDL-55X4500 is a 55-inch 1080p Full HD TV that uses local dimming of the RGB dynamic LED backlight to achieve a contrast ratio of over 1,000,000:1. The arrangement of the LEDs is likely to be broadly similar to the Philips TV i.e. multiple RGB devices distributed across the backplane.

Using a completely different approach to LED backlighting, the new ZX1 Series is a 40-inch display that is only 9.9mm thick at its slimmest point. As with ultra-thin notebook computers such as the MacBook Air, the secret is edge-lighting using white LEDs.

White LED edge-lighting is used in smaller LCD screens, from mobile phones all the way through to notebooks and some smaller monitors. But we're not aware of any screen this large that has used this technology. One major problem is that when the light sources are at the edges of the screen, it is difficult to achieve sufficiently high brightness and uniformity across the entire display. As you can see from this YouTube clip, Sony has clearly solved this problem.

Recently, Cree, Inc., a market leader in LED lighting, and the City of Welland, Ontario, Canada, announced that Welland has joined the LED City initiative, an international program that promotes the deployment of energy-efficient LED lighting. The city has converted many of its lighting applications to LEDs, including streetlights and traffic signals, and has additional projects underway. Welland has also amended its municipal standards to facilitate LED lighting for all future streetlight installations.

Welland has installed 50 LED streetlights along the revitalized area of Fitch Street and is formalizing plans for the installation of 50 additional street and pedestrian lights. The city's growing use of LEDs is targeted to help decrease the CAN$550,000 per year cost of operating its streetlights. The city plans to eventually retrofit all streetlights with LEDs, which could yield a savings of $253,980 per year.

Mayor Damian Goulbourne said "Welland is committed to high-quality LED lighting that reduces energy and maintenance costs, it has been immersed in the testing of LED street lighting and aspires to become a green community, improving life for our residents. We look forward to promoting the benefits of our installations and sharing our experiences within the LED City program, helping to build a global municipal community committed to energy-efficient lighting."

According to Deb Lovig, Cree's LED City program manager, cree welcome Welland into the LED City community. Welland city officials have carefully evaluated LED lighting options and are responsibly deploying LED lighting to provide better light while reducing energy and maintenance costs, Welland is joining the LED lighting revolution and taking a leadership role in helping other cities learn the benefits of LED lighting in their own communities.

About LED City

The LED City is an expanding community of government and industry parties working to evaluate deploy and promote LED lighting technology across the full range of municipal infrastructure to: Save energy; Protect the environment; Reduce maintenance costs; Provide better light quality for improved visibility and safety.

About Cree

Cree is leading the LED lighting revolution and setting the stage to obsolete the incandescent light bulb through the use of energy-efficient, environmentally friendly LED lighting. Cree is a market-leading innovator of lighting-class LEDs, LED lighting retrofit solutions, and semiconductor solutions for backlighting, wireless and power applications. Cree's product families include LED recessed down lights, lighting-class power LEDs, high brightness LEDs, blue and green LED chips, power-switching devices and radio-frequency/wireless devices. Cree solutions are driving improvements in applications such as general illumination, backlighting, electronic signs and signals, variable-speed motors, and wireless communications.

It’s reported that the sales of Taiwan's LED makers rose 16.1 percent in the first half of this year from the same period a year earlier. This is helped by the Beijing Olympics and higher energy prices that are encouraging the use of lower-cost lighting. According to information the companies provided to the Taiwan Stock Exchange, the companies' first-half 2008 sales rose to NT$24.2 billion from NT$20.8 billion in the same period a year earlier, The LED market is expanding, and demand attributable to the Beijing Olympics is boosting sales.

Ivan Lin, an analyst with market researcher LEDinside in Taipei, said "New applications are increasing, LEDs are increasingly used as backlights for notebook computers, in street lights and for factory lighting." According to LEDinside, Taiwan has the world's second largest LED industry with a 20 percent share of the global market, Japan has the world's largest LED industry with a 37 percent share of the world market. LEDinside forecasts that Taiwan will have a 30 percent share of the market by 2010 as many of Taiwan's flat-panel display makers prepare to enter the business.

People are switching to LEDs to save energy and cut electricity bills with these lights, originally familiar to most people as decorations on Christmas trees. LEDs reduce energy consumption by emitting light from a chip rather than an incandescent filament in a light bulb or charged gases in a fluorescent light tube. LEDs use about a tenth of the energy of an incandescent bulb and can last a decade or longer. They also produce almost no heat, thereby reducing fire potential.

Taiwan LED makers have been among the first to enter the high-brightness (HB) segment. HB LEDs are a new generation of lights bright enough for car lights, interior and architectural lighting, projection, flat-panel display backlighting and signage. The organizers of the Beijing Olympics used LEDs to illuminate the stage at the opening ceremony for the games with 44,000 of the lamps in a 147 meter x 36 meter screen at the venue. At least 36,000 LED lamps illuminated the translucent exterior of the gigantic Water Cube where the swimming competitions took place. The Olympics venue also had a gigantic LED screen measuring 30 meters x 200 meters. Opto Tech Corp. of Taiwan supplied LEDs for the screen, according to LEDinside. The Taiwan supplier also won a contract from the Suzhou city government to supply the lamps for a gigantic screen,

Taiwan's government aims to boost the domestic industry by replacing all the island's incandescent-type traffic lights with LED lamps in three years. Traffic signals that use LEDs consume 80-90 percent less energy and generally last 5-7 years, compared to just a year for a comparable incandescent light signal. In 2001, the city of Portland, Oregon replaced nearly all its red and green incandescent traffic signals with new lights using LEDs. The project resulted in annual energy and maintenance savings totaling $400,000 and net payback in less than three years. The Chinese government aims to exploit various green technologies including LED and solar energy to help it reach the goal of trimming 10% of electricity consumption nationwide by 2010.

LEDinside said "despite the downturn in the global economy, Taiwan LED packaging company Ledtech Electronics continues to explore markets for new products, citing industry sources. The company is planning to work with international partners to develop low-cost LED lamps and reading lights for underdeveloped countries, citing market sources."