Back At HQ, Normal Posts Resuming As Jetlag Dissipates

November 4, 2024 by Dave Haynes

Back at World HQ after three flights and changing 12 time zones Saturday, which meant Sunday I was even more of an incoherent mess than my normal public presence.

It is interesting to go from post-typhoon humidity walking into Taipei airport and waiting for a ride at the other end in Halifax and thinking I should  have packed a down jacket.

As I have been hinting at, I am researching and writing a big special report about current and emerging display tech, to come out in January. Over the last two weeks I spoke with: StandardVision, Peerless-AV, Ventana, Dynascan, Proto, AUO, E Ink, Raffar, Harvatek, PlayNitride, Innolux, HannStar, IAdea, Omdia, Sander, PanelSemi and some others I am undoubtedly forgetting (apologies, I felt 166 years old yesterday after being up for 30 hours – I can’t sleep on planes).

Huge thanks to Lynn Wang of i5LED who used her contacts and Mandarin to set up some of the Taiwan meetings, and to her boss George Pappas, who tag-teamed with me on the Taiwan meetings. Sometimes it was stuff where I led and others (like discussions on IC drivers that just put me in rapid eye-blink mode) that he handled.

I learned a bunch from George, and he’s still over there, though in Shenzhen now. We ate too much, but hard not to between the hospitality and quality. The people in Taiwan were, as always, relentlessly nice.

Happy to be home and I finally got a big sleep in. Still more interviews to do, but feeling somewhat in control of this beast – which started as maybe a dozen stories but will probably be more like four dozen. It will be a free download – my efforts and big travel costs supported by a small set of sponsors.

I had earlier done trips to see Praevar, VueReal, Obsidian and Christie in Canada and TSI Touch and LG in the US.

A warning to all the display manufacturers calling their LEDs microLED, when they’re just not. My bullshit filter is now HEPA grade after this trip. I know what stuff like sapphire means, so there!   🙂

This pic up top, by the way, is genuine microLED – 0.9mm pixel pitch. I forget the LED die size, but sub 50 microns. Allows for DEEP blacks.

This is what greeted me when I showed up Friday at Dynascan, which in its parent company’s gorgeous suburban Taipei office tower that also, remarkably, houses a lot of R&D and production of high bright displays.

Made me laugh when the car pulled up …