Digital television will reach new heights of consumer convenience and image performance later this year when RCA introduces a new breed of super-light, flat-screen television receivers that utilize revolutionary Liquid Crystal On Silicon (LCOS) technology to deliver progressive-scan digital High-Definition television (HDTV) to consumers throughout the country.

Optimized for easy reception of both over-the-air and satellite HDTV signals, the RCA L50000 -- a stunning 50-inch widescreen Liquid Crystal On Silicon HDTV display -- will be available for retail purchase during the summer of 2001.

The new High-Definition display technology is being showcased to electronics dealers this week at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where digital television products are taking center stage.

"Liquid Crystal On Silicon represents a strategic investment on the part of Thomson to develop a new line of display products that are unique in the industry. Our line of LCOS receivers, beginning with the L50000, will be lighter and less expensive than other advanced reflected light displays. This technology has the potential to revolutionize the television industry, because of its new approach to image creation and display. With its widescreen, High- Definition display and unique design, the new RCA Liquid Crystal On Silicon HDTV receiver will interest a new segment of the buying public -- those with an eye for both design and the best possible picture performance," said Michael D. O'Hara, Senior Vice President of Thomson Multimedia, manufacturer and marketer of RCA home entertainment products.

Designed to easily fit into virtually any home environment, the L50000 sheds pounds and inches from the typical big-screen HDTV experience. Even with its panoramic 50-inch wide screen, the new RCA Liquid Crystal On Silicon HDTV weighs only about 100 pounds, or 60% less than a comparably-sized projection TV. And with a cabinet depth of only 18-inches, the new RCA Liquid Crystal HDTV has the same depth as a typical small, tabletop 19-inch television.

The 50-inch display functions either as a sleek tabletop unit or as an entertainment center with its matching stand.

The goal of Thomson's Indianapolis-based design team on the LCOS product is to visually express the excitement and innovation of the LCOS technology in a dynamic new form factor that would redefine the television experience. Because this new Liquid Crystal On Silicon technology is far lighter in weight and smaller in size than today's projection lenses or CRTs, the finished product is not nearly as heavy or as deep as current direct-view or projection TV sets.

"Without the bulky demands of these components, we had a clean sheet of paper to redefine and reinvent the television aesthetic for the first time in a generation. Our design team first identified the key elements of the design language that the product needed to convey. The designers call this language 'neutral edge' and used terms such as light, flat, refined, crisp, technical, and surprising to define it," O'Hara said.

Liquid Crystal on Silicon (LCOS) is a new micro-display imaging technology that utilizes reflective light valves called imagers, assembled with other innovative components to form the heart of the HDTV display -- the Light Engine.

Replacing traditional cathode ray tube (CRT) technology, brilliant HDTV images on the L50000 are created in the Light Engine. White light is first generated by an ultra-high pressure (UHP) lamp, processed into a laser-like beam through a series of integration optics, and separated into red, green, and blue (RGB) components by a sophisticated optical prism.

The three light streams are directed to three color-specific LCOS imagers, each modulated with high-definition video signals. The reflected video components are then recombined within the same prism into a single video stream to provide a cohesive, perfectly-aligned digital picture.

Finally, this output is magnified by an 11-element precision optical lens system and the high-definition image is presented on a flat, high-definition screen. The ultra precision 150 micron pitch, high-contrast screen displays images with three times finer resolution than conventional projection TV screens.

The L50000 will display up to 2.76 million actively lit pixels, through its 3-imager matrix display. High-definition LCOS images are presented without any scanning lines, and the product can deliver HDTV at full, progressive, 1280 x 720 resolution. Like each of Thomson's widescreen High- Definition television products, the new LCOS-powered HDTV will include integrated tuning and decoding capability for over-the-air ATSC 8VSB digital TV broadcasts, analog NTSC tuning, standard DIRECTV satellite service, and High-Definition service from DIRECTV.

The L50000 will ship with a convenient "learning" remote control unit that features a two-line liquid crystal display for confirmation of programming and selectable, all-button backlighting.

The RCA line already includes both traditional widescreen rear-projection and widescreen direct-view HDTV models that will be the centerpiece of many celebrations this month as RCA presents the HDTV network telecasts of the AFC playoff games and the Super Bowl.