Texas Instruments vies to make digital mark on world of film, TV.

Rich Templeton, who helped build Texas Instruments Inc. into the world's largest maker of mobile-phone chips, now has his sights on Hollywood.

Templeton, who takes over from Chief Executive Thomas Engibous on May 1, is planning to exploit what he says will be the next step in cinema: digital movies. He's pitching Texas Instruments' trademarked digital light-processing projectors and televisions to Hollywood studios such as Warner Bros. and theater chains including AMC Entertainment Inc.

"We will find the customers and give them what they want," Templeton said in an interview. Engibous, 50, will remain chairman.

Templeton, 45, wants digital light processing, or DLP, to be as ubiquitous as Dolby sound in movie theaters. Texas Instruments claims movie projectors and TVs with DLP have longer lamp life and richer colors than competing products such as plasma screens.

The push to consumer electronics will help Texas Instruments record its highest quarterly sales in more than three years in the first quarter. The company has said demand for chips going into everything from cell phones to digital TVs, projectors and cameras will boost sales to as much as $2.95 billion.

"Their chips are showing up everywhere," said Matt Kelmon, who helps manage $500 million at Kelmoore Investment Co. in Palo Alto. "I spend a lot of time going to Best Buy and I'm seeing them in more and more products.

With DLP, Texas Instruments is harkening back to another consumer success. Fourteen years ago the company popularized the graphing calculator, used for calculus, that now dominates America's high schools. It's seeking to do the same with DLP TVs and other products.

Texas Instruments is making a push in Tinseltown alongside directors George Lucas and Steven Soderbergh, both of whom are prodding studios to make and distribute more digital movies. Lucas's 1999 "Star Wars: Episode 1--The Phantom Menace," was the first commercial digital movie made. More than 55 movies have been made in the format since then, Texas Instruments said.

The position is an unlikely one for a company used to burying its chips in other companies' products, Templeton said. "We're a technology-oriented company and most of us are engineers," he said. "Our customers in the cell phone business don't have an interest in our brand."