They may be spending more time than usual keeping a nervous eye on what's going on just north of their Paju display factory at the moment, but that hasn't stopped LG's TV engineers coming up with a couple of serious technological breakthroughs of late.
Not only has the company developed the world's thinnest LCD TV panel – the 42in and 47in screens are just 5.9mm thick – but it's also been showing an enhanced 3D display, claiming twice the brightness of existing screens.
The new super-thin panels (above) are made possible by the company's LED edge-lighting system, along with propietary Light Guide Sheet technology.
This enables the Light Guide Plate in the screens to be halved in thickness, and of course means that the screens are much thinner than conventional LCDs lit by cold cathode fluorescent lamps.
A further benefit is that the display panels are around half the weight of conventional CCFL-backlight devices: the 42in weighs 6.1kg, and the 47in 7.3kg.
Meanwhile on the 3D front, LG has developed a Full HD LCD panel with twice the brightness of devices to date – in fact, it's said to be the world's brightest.
It's a 23in model, and gets over many of the existing problems with 3D displays. Usually, the time-sequential processing required to deliver alternate images for left and right eyes, thus creating the 3D effect, is either in an external processing box or special viewing glasses with LCD shutters.
However LG has embedded most of the 3D technology directly in the panel, which makes 3D viewing both brighter, and possible with low-priced polarised glasses.
