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New And Improved LCDs
Ender42 writes "Princeton scientists have created a variety of light-emitting materials that could greatly accelerate the development of flat-panel computer screens and other compact video displays. The discovery, a feat of engineering materials at the level of quantum mechanics, also may yield insights into the basic properties of light-emitting substances. " Practically speaking this means cheaper, higher res, lower power LCD displays.
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Floogle wrote:
Running 1600x1200 on a 15" LCD screen would be unbearable. It's almost too small for my 21" CRT.
You are confusing screen resolution with screen object size. Having a screen that's 1024x768 and then moving to one that's 4096x3072 would be no problem if your new desktop had objects which were four times larger in each dimension, plus you'd have the advantage of sharper, higher resolution screen objects.
Most current desktops have too many things that are hardcoded to a set number of pixels, but fixing this is a simple matter of programming. As screen resolutions outpace physical desk size, I think people will make sure it's less of an issue.
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Open mind, insert foot.
It's doubtful that this will lead to lower end-user costs.
The material is cheaper to produce - thus production costs are lower. So the companies making it aren't paying as much to produce each unit...
End-user pricing, however, is largely based on features, rather than production costs. If these displays are brighter, higher-res, larger physically, etc... there is NO REASON for companies to price them much lower than the current offerings.
If they price 15" versions of these at the same level as current-tech 15" lcd screens, they'll have a boatload of stuff that the current-tech ones don't (higher-res, brighter, lower-power, etc...) -- that's the draw. For $999 which would you buy? This 15" lcd screen that'll do 1024x768, or this new-tech 15" led-based screen that's brighter, clearer, and will go up to 1600x1200? You'd choose the 2nd, based on featureset. It doesn't matter that the company is making a much larger profit off of it -- you're getting a better monitor for the same price.
End result: Better products for the same or slightly higher (b/c it's better) prices, while lining the producer's pockets a bit thicker.
(of course, there's always the possibility that a company would cut prices to undersell competitors, but that's fairly remote considering the profit to be made off these sorts of things)
How about a screen that folds out automatically, similar to those "butterfly" keyboards a while back on those IBM subnotebooks...
Then again, I don't think you'd want a 50 inch screen expanding out of your notebook on a flight in coach...
Interestingly enough, people seem far more likely to accept smaller pixels on an LCD as opposed to a CRT. Why is that? I know the average res for a 15" monitor is 800x600 (sometimes 1024x768), but on a laptop, they go to 1024 at 13" and are sometimes seen with 1280 at 15".
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
You are confusing screen resolution with screen object size
No I'm not - I'm aware of the difference, but in practical uses it doesn't exist because, as you pointed out, most of our desktops are hard-coded. And, until our desktops and apps are built using vector-based graphics (bye bye wild E-themes), you're not likely to see anything like that. Well, not under X11 anyway.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I think a lot depends here on the market they will be aiming at - if they go for the executive large-screen laptop market (ultrathin laptops don't have much battery space, so tend to need frequent recharges) then the price can be astronomical and it will still sell. if they want to compete with traditional desktop monitors, though, they will need to compete on price AND have a low failure rate for individual pixels :+)
I WOULD like to see a nice, flat 21" monitor capable of 1600x though
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-=DaveHowe=-
LED's are just a P/N junction, today we can fit millions of these on a chip. The junction in an LED isn't really that much bigger, so theoretically these things could be built like integrated circuits, including the current-limiting resistors and the latch-and-multiplex circuits sitting at the base of the LED itself. We're only talking 20000 micron technology IC's here, which is hardly difficult by any stretch.
The current problem is the patent on the new high-intensity blue LED if I recall correctly.
Not really, it's up to windows applications to do their own scaling, and they should determine font sizes from the system properties. System controls etc have fonts set to the system's, but it's up to the application, when it does it's own drawing to do the same. If Windows was to take over an application (which it could) you'd have application developers complaining that windows isn't listening to the font or gdi requests.
(IANAP either, but...)
you're absolutely right. What's more: virtually every light-emitting technology we've got doesn't involve chemical reactions. LCD backlights, regular LEDs, neon lights, regular light bulbs...
and apart from the light bulbs all of these emit light because electrons are dropping from a higher energy state to a lower.
"We won't use guns, we won't use bombs, we'll use the one thing we've got more of and that's our minds" - Pulp
How do you become a multibillion dollar multinational coporation by passing the savings onto your customer. I'll bet we start to see ad campaings telling us to pay more for the screen 'cause we'll pay less on our power bill, and not have to get eye surgury.
Oh shit! I forgot to click "Post Anonymously"...
How much cheaper? No average joe is going to put out $900-1000 bucks for a 15" LCD screen. I would rather get a 21" Viewsonic for 600. LCD Might not get very popular if the prices dont go down... same thing with rambus memory. (Besides all the defects in intels design)
-- We should kill all the intolerant people in the world.
Everybody keeps considering these new break throughs to be great for their massive desktop psuedo-supercomputers, I'm wondering why researchers don't develop head mounted displays to a greater extent. I mean seriously, who among us would not awnt to have a wireless unit that pretty much look and feel like sunglasses, but are wirelessly attached to your server at home, and takes input ala Star Trek... But seriously, the products available now, are just too bulky, and hard to deal with, not to mention expensive... anyway... here's a couple sites that sell head units if anyone really wants to see what I mean
Seattle Site Systems
Kaiser Electro-Optics
CGSD -VR
As you can see, a person would have to be seriously disturbed to wear them in their office, let alone the public!
would anybody other than myself prefer to have an eyepiece rather than a monitor?
fart=funny
Here's a link to the company that will be commercializing the technology. Looks like they've already been working with OLEDs for a while.
Running 1600x1200 on a 15" LCD screen would be unbearable. It's almost too small for my 21" CRT... The only answer to that would be to make the laptop screen bigger, but again I ask: why would you want to? Making a laptop screen bigger than 15" makes it awful clumsy. Sure, everyone wants a big screen, but who wants a big laptop? Not me. I'll stick with 1024x768 screens on my laptops, thanks.
Having said all that, this technology could easily help out in bringing flatscreen monitors to the world's desktops.
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"You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."
I use one of the high res SGI flat panels (1600x1024, I think) and I love it, except for one problem, OS support. Believe it or not, the dpi is so high and the screen is so bright, that it gives me eyestrain very easily. Even with the largest fonts on Winbloze, they are still much smaller (but very clear!) than on my crappy 15" 1024x768 monitor at home. I wonder when we are going to see a decent solution to this problem. Not just fonts but true scalability! Window borders, icons, etc would all be the same dimensions relative to the monitor size. It is what is needed next, I wonder how long till we get it?
-- Moondog
For more info about OLED, look on Kodak's site:c ts/specialProducts/OEL/oelIndex.shtm l
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/professional/produ
But here's a product that puts to practice a real breakthrough in flat panel display technology. (though I'm not sure about it's power consumption).
-- kwashiorkor --
Pure speculation gets you nowhere.
-- kwashiorkor --
Leaps in Logic
should not be confused with
Jumping to Conclusions.
That said, this technology does (as the article correctly emphasizes) enable the construction of much lower-power displays than what is currently used. LEDs have very low heat dissipation, which translates into less wasted current, especially when compared to the heat put out by an LCD backlight. Also, without a backlight, you can make the panel somewhat thinner, so the various comments about using this to make headmount or pda/cellphone displays are probably right on track as to where OLEDs will end up being important.
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
This small-molecule organic display business is quite good, and Forrest is a great researcher in this field, but I think the best is yet to come. I work with light-emitting polymers at UCSB, and I just wanted to comment that in terms of processability and general 'toughness' (i.e. resistance to physical damage) polymer displays will be the ones used in your palm pilots and cel phones. Of course, the only polymer displays that I have seen working have been one color devices for cel phones, so full color is still a ways off yet. Another thing to note is that while it is great to see someone from my field make it to slashdot's front page with what appears to be 'industry-ready' technology, no-one has commented on the great drawback of organic displays (both small-molecule and polymer)- they are tremendously air and UV sensitive. If left exposed to air and normal light, these materials can degrade very rapidly, and engineering an protective layer is not as easy as you think (i.e. you can't just coat it in a transparent polymer layer - oxygen can still diffuse through it). Just be patient for a year or so, and then start looking for this stuff commercially. As a side note to all this, light-emitting polymers can be made into solar-cells with a little modification, so keep your eyes peeled for some light and cheap solar cells in the near future!
If you read the article, you can see that this is *NOT* for LCD use. It's an L*E*D display.
LCD displays work by having an optically active (chiral) organic molecule layer (called the liquid crystal) sandwiched bewteeen 2 layers of polarizing filters, set at 90 degrees angle. When a current is applied the orientation of the liquid crystal layer changes, and the light's polarization plane doesn't get rotated the 90 degrees to clear the second filter. (Thus appearing to be dark). Take away the voltage, the crystals returns to ground state, plane polarized light is rotated 90 degrees, and it clears the second filter and appears to be transparent. This is how LCD displays on calculators work; color displays built on this principle and add a backlight on the back (ie, laptop) and by controlling the amount of light that passes thru for each pixel, generates the different colors. Note that the light emmision criteria has nothing to do with the liquid crystals; that's why you can't read your calculator in a dark room, and that's why palm devices have a backlight. Another cool thing to try is to take a polarizing sunglasses and hold it between your eye and the laptop screen and rotate it slowly. The display will get darker (at 90 deg) and brighter again (at a full 180 deg).
Now that we have amused ourselves with LCD technology, let's take a look at what these guys at Princeton actually did:
They found a new material that can be used in light emitting diodes. LEDs are used for indicator lights on the electronics that we all love. Traditionally, LED displays for flat panel applications are problematic for 2 reasons:
A: Making the pixels small enough, on a large display.
B: Finding a materials for blue LEDs.
The problem with blue LEDs was solved a few years back, but as far as I know A is still a limitation. If you ever look at those big "SonyTron" LED displays in stadiums, up close the pixels are about the size of your THUMB.
In order for this to suceed, there needs to be a good commercial process to apply the OLED material onto an (ideally) plastic substrate. Plastic substrates are really the way to go because they are less prone to breakage and don't require massive retooling. Hopefully, since the material is organic in nature, incorporating it onto plastic won't be such a difficult idea.
-=- Terence