Slashdot Mirror

E-ink had color flexible e-paper on display years ago.

http://www.eink.com/press/releases/pr86.html

There are a hell of a lot more ways to create e-paper and paper-like displays so it is understandable that there is some confusion about who is doing what first. Next week is the Society for Information Display show, and there will be at least 20 e-paper developers displaying. Almost all of them will have color prototypes at their booth.

http://www.sid.org/conf/sid2007/sid2007.html

But seriously, current LCD, cholesteric LCD, plasma, e-paper, inorganic EL, DLP, LCOS, elecgtrowettting, and EL display tech is so mature and competitive that any new display tech better be f*cking perfect or it will never have a chance.

Hi there I work for LBO and I can confirm that the projector really does work and is currently being shown to interested parties at 3GSM in Barcelona. We will also be demonstrating the projector in action at the big displays conference and exhibition in San Francisco in June (http://www.sid.org/conf/sid2006/sid2006.html). Look forward to seeing you there. ;-)

At the recent Society for Information Display show almost every major player had a flavor of electronic ink prototype at their booth.

You guys need to look around at what else is out there before you get too excited about a flashy news announcement.

And if you're around Orlando Florida, check out the IBM monitor at Epcot center. It's on display at Innoventions!
It's really easy to walk by the display without realizing exactly what the big deal is, I almost did myself. Stop and look for a second and you notice really fine print text, and super-sharp MRI scans from an LCD.

If you want up to date info about displays, check out SID. There's a good article about SID 2004 with lots of juicy info for display buffs here.

The gist of SID 2004 is more flat, more size, more resolution. For people that caught that article when it came out, it verified the rumors of Apple's new 30" display.

b) lifecycle numbers are under bias. FWIW many electrolytic capacitors are also rated for 1000 hr lifecycles, and you don't see many tv sets just blowing up after 6 months. "Lifetime" typically means "this much time until specifications change X%." For capacitors it's typically a 20% change in value, and this change is not linear - the greatest change comes in the first 100 hrs or so and degrades slower after that.

Given "normal" program material and use in a true color display "1000 hrs" absolutely does NOT mean "it dies in 40 days." It means after 1000 hrs under bias any given pixel element will lose 50% of its brightness. In a 1/64 duty cycle system this means you can multiply those 40 days by 64 - about 2500 days, or 7 years.

As someone else has pointed out, the real challenge is getting a reliable means of producing panels with consistent degradation of all pixels over time. If you have 10% of the red oleds fading after 800 hrs and 20% of the green elements fading after 1200 hrs you're going to have a display with splotches of color that, over years, becomes worse and worse.

Still, this is no worse than LCDs that typically require repair after just a couple of years because their backlight (or the inverter driving it) has failed. At best you can hope for a warning as the color gradually turns pink - or maybe you just turn it on one day and find the screen is "dead." Or your projection set - those bulbs are often a couple hundred bucks, and damn few are rated at more than 2000 hrs lifetime. Given all that, this 1000hrs don't seem bad at all.

One of the sublinks from the article is for Wireless Monitors. While I didn't immediately see a practical use for such, it occurred to me that it would be an awesome way to reduce clutter on the desk. I'm there, where do I pay?

Cant blame slashdot but the NYT is lagging a bit as I remember seeing it in an article last september here even has some of the same pictures.
article follows:

HoloTouch Unveils "Controls that Float in Thin Air"

Darien, Connecticut, September 12 - HoloTouch, Inc. announced today that it will introduce its new holographic control technology into operating rooms and other sterile environments. HoloTouch(TM) patented technology enables controls that float in thin air, allowing healthcare personnel to manage a wide variety of electronic devices by simply "touching" 3D holographic images floating at a convenient location.

"Surgeons often need to view footage from the beginning of a medical procedure. With HoloTouch, the controls are contained in holographic images, projected directly in front of the surgeon. The surgeon's hands may be covered in blood, but, since the "button" to be pushed consists only of beams of light, there are no contamination issues," said HoloTouch inventor and President R. Douglas McPheters.

John D. Fisher, M.D., Director of Arrhythmia Services and Professor of Medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, praised the new technology as a significant improvement over existing methods. "During angioplasties, pacemaker implantations, and other cardiac procedures we must be able to quickly see the visual record of the patient's condition at various times since the beginning of the procedure. With HoloTouch, the surgeon is in direct control of this visual record, eliminating the delay and risk of misinterpretation that exists under present systems," Dr. Fisher said.

The company is speaking with several manufacturers interested in licensing HoloTouch for use in high-end audio-visual equipment, car phones, "factory floor" applications, military hardware, and other electronic devices, McPheters said.

You can find the May news stories here.

--

Displaytech has reflective LCDs with 1280x1024 resolution. Originally designed for projection systems, but they are small enough to be used in a HUD system. PDFs can be found off of their products page. They also have developers kits.

Things are really heating up in the microdisplay industry. Especially as there was a conference SID last week San Jose, CA.

I persoanlly want to incorporate a couple of the 1280x1024 displays into a hat to provide a 3D headsup display. Placing the display above the brim with focusing lenses, and a flip down 1 way reflective mirror should provide a good useable display.