LONDON — Samsung Electronics has developed what it says is the first LCD panel that has an image framing rate of 240Hz, almost double that of today's televisions.

The company plans to demonstrate an early 15-inch prototype at next week's Society for Information Displays (SID) congress in Los Angeles, but cautioned that the so-called "Blue Phase" panel technology is unlikely to be in volume production before 2011.

The design incorporates image processing circuitry that will turn an image moving at, for example, 60 frames a second into one that changes 240 times a second. The three extra frames displayed each cycle — instead of one frame there are now four — are generated by interpolating them from the original frame and the one that would otherwise come after it.

The result, Samsung says, is smoother movement and no motion blur.

Samsung Executive Vice President Souk Jun-hyung, the head of LCD Business' Display R&D Center, said: "Our Blue Phase mode is a major evolutionary development beyond conventional liquid crystal modes. Samsung's development of the technology provides a tremendous opportunity to move image quality of LCD screens much closer to that of a real moving image."

The technology does not require liquid crystal alignment layers, unlike today's most widely used LCD modes such as Twisted Nematic, In-Plane Switching or Vertical Alignment. Samsung says the Blue Phase mode can make its own alignment layers, eliminating the need for any mechanical alignment and rubbing processes, and thereby also reducing the number of fabrication processes needed.