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IBM Research Enables Flat-Panel CRTs
joescrooge writes: "IBM's got something new to give those LCDs a run for their money." That something new is CRT technology which removes the unsightly humps that take up most of the space of traditional monitors, and directing the electron beams through a magnetic panel about the size of the displayed image. Considering that 15" LCDs are now under $400 at Walmart, even cheaper ones sound like a pleasant fantasy for dual- and triple-headed flat-panel systems.
Basically, the IBM design replaces the single gun with a matrix of them, which sounds like a win
No, that's not what was done. (Ignoring the fact that color displays have three guns, I'll talk about monochrome displays instead...)
There isn't a matrix of guns, there's still just the one, it's just that the cathode size is now huge. With a traditional cathode tube, the cathode is small and it makes a very fine beam which is always on and swept across the display.
This new technology also uses a single cathode, but it's big, and produces a beam as big as the display, so you don't have to sweep it. In both cases you have one gun which is always on.
The power consumption is the same. In the old design you're spitting out N electrons per second and at any given instant in time a single pixel is receiving the entire output of the gun for a very short time. In the new design, you still output N electrons per second, but the electrons received by any given pixel are spread out in time, rather than all arriving at the same time.
This kind of design won't have any need to flicker anything. There is no concept of refresh with a device like this. One moment of time is the same as any other. (Assuming a static image.)
Thank you so much for that link. That picture is easily worth a thousand words, maybe more, in explaining to me how this new CRT differs from conventional ones. If this thing flies it could make a big difference in not just monitors but televisions as well.
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In a color CRT there are trios of phosphor dots (one red, one blue, one green). There are three beams (one for each color) which are deflected simultaneously by the same magnetic fields. Again, those dots are adhered to the inside of the screen and need no further mechanical support.
There is a thing called a shadow mask which is a thin metal sheet with a corresponding hole for each dot trio. This blocks the beams from getting through except during those instants when they are aimed by the deflection fields so as to land exactly on the intended dot instead of somewhere between a couple of them. The Trinitron uses a variation of this scheme that uses rectangular holes instead of round ones, and 2 or 3 thin vertical wires to help support the very thin shadow mask.
In order to get the same brightness out of a phosphor dot you have to hit it with the same amount of energy. If you can do that with more electrons (greater current), but a lower anode voltage (resulting in less acceleration) and a power supply with lower internal resistence so that you can get more current with a lower voltage, you might be able to deliver the same amount of energy with a lower chance of X-radiation, but I'm going to have to drag out several more old books to be sure about that.
That power supply with lower internal resistance will be more expensive, however.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The reason monitors went from digital to analog in the first place was because sending from video card to monitor digitally and then converting to analog inside the monitor meant adding more wires to the cable between the video card and the monitor in order to use more digital bits per pixel.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The electron guns (one for each color) are part of the cathode ray tube. All the stuff inside the cathode ray tube, including any electron guns, are fairly light, being made out of thin pieces of metal. The heavy part of the CRT is the glass. The rest of the heavy part is the metal chassis and the other components outside of the CRT, especially the coils and transformers that *do* have iron cores.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
I did laugh, but really, he didn't say a thing about sticking an axe head in that bundle.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Way back in the day televisions had, in addition to the cathode ray tube with ten or more thousand volts potential on its anode, another tube, the damper diode, that also had an anode voltage in the kiloVolt range, and a law or regulation was made mandating a metal cage around that tube to prevent it from X-radiating the general area.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Only if there is a significant charge built up inside the CRT will it work. It's that charge that attracts and accelerates the electrons toward the front of the tube to bombard the phosphor dots to make them glow. The sheilding is to block X-band radiation generated by those speeding electrons smashing into stuff.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
There's enough weight in the circuitry external to the crt which is in the back part of the monitor to counterbalance the weight of the front of the crt (which is where most of the weight of a crt is).
Admittedly trying to lift some of those puppies may be enough to make you think that there's a lead brick inside.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Just explained it the other day. Go here and begin reading, and it should all be made clear.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The material used as the dielectric in the several electrolytic capacitors can leak out and eat away the copper traces even while the unit is in use so it probably isn't something that you want leaching into the water supply either.
The various nasty chemicals used in the construction of the monitor and the parts that go into it are probably as great an evironmental hazard as is the monitor once it winds up in a landfill.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
They should probably have said spiral or corkscrew instead of spin. This happens in regular CRTs and is done on purpose. At the moment I disremember why, but somewhere I've got an old textbook or two that explain it.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
There are a handful of citations about the patents involved in this innovation at the uspto and at ibm.com.
Beeteson has written a book called Visualizing Magnetic Fields. It got some favorable reviews at amazon.com. Hey, wait a minute, those cheery reviews are by his co-patent-holders, Drs Knox and Lowe. Dude. Might be a page turner, you never know.
I don't care about thinness. When will they come out
with 48-bit monitors at regular CRT prices?????!!!!!
More technical information can be found at the IBM Research display technology site.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
here. Jeez, it's hard to find real information about this.
/* The beatings will continue until morale improves. */
Your sig: The semantic content of XML is equivalent to S-expressions, the core data structure of Lisp --aLispGuru
Perhaps you would considering linking your sig to an implementation of the above that makes this very clear, as well as being a handy way of handling XML in Scheme:
www.lh.com/~oleg/ftp/Scheme/xml.html
Choice of masters is not freedom.
Electrons slamming to a stop produce X-rays. The faster the electrons and the faster the stop, the higher energy the X-rays. Color monitors have a lot of lead in the glass (several pounds of it) to keep your skull from developing a nice monitor burn :-)
-- Alastair
What you said didn't make any sense...
One thing you said that was right: the air pressure differential is the same regardless of how big the vaccuum is. That's not the determinant factor in the glass thickness...it's the structural integrity of a piece of glass large enough for the desired display area when subjected to that differential.
Take a small stick. Bend it until it breaks. Now get a bundle of sticks and apply approximately the same effort in bending. Betcha it doesn't break.
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Nobody ever said it did...the guy you responded to initially was making a blanket statement about 2 things: that CRT glass is thick and therefore heavy, and that as the screen (not depth) size increases, that's going to get significantly heavier. You have to make the glass larger in both area and thickness as the display size grows. You're the one who brought the size of the vaccuum into the discussion...
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
Of course, on those rainy days, big clunky CRTs are great for drying out bike helmets and gloves. There is almost nothing worse than putting on a cold, wet clothing and having to bike home when it's already getting dark out.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
It's only software!
Ummm... There is one. Just browse the topic and see.
As for Borgification of the logo or making other changes to it, I guess some of you haven't been around here long enough to remember this.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
It's only software!
The biggest problem with LCDs is that of fixed resolutions. An LCD screen has a fixed number of pixels, so adjusting the screen resolution is difficult at best and hideously ugly at worst...
Hate to disappoint you, but I don't think these CRTs are going to be any different. These "tubes" accelerate electrons from a cathode the size of the entire screen through a grid of holes with magnets, one hole per pixel. These magnets then redirect the beam slightly, hitting either the red, green or blue phosphors in the front of the screen.
I'd imagine, though that monitors based on this technology would have *much* less flicker than conventional CRT monitors. Since there is essentially one beam per pixel, the speed at which one can accurately scan a single beam around the screen is no longer a limiting factor for refresh rate. The *only* factors should be the bandwidth between monitor and video card, and the latency of the phosphors in the screen.
"Intelligence is the ability to avoid doing work, yet getting the work done".
It's only software!
a giant magnetic coil, to aim a(not so light) elctron gun, and the glass is pretty heavy, the tube does have to deal with some decent pressure
I've been following the progress of Telegen for quite some time. They've been showing their technology on the floor of the Consumer Electronics Show for the past few years.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
And hopefully the weight? 21" is probably a little above what most people want to lug around.
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Well, the weight of the glass grows exponentially with size. Because the inside is a vaccuum, the glass has to hold quite a bit of pressure. As tubes get larger, the walls have to get thicker to maintain structural integrity. Combine that with increased surface area, and that's a lot of glass.
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A normal CRT uses an electromagnetic coil to direct the spray of electrons coming of the (relatively small) cathode at the back of the monitor. The lines of the screen are literally traced out by the stream. This puts hard limits on the requirements for a phosphor -- the phosphor has to be designed to be as bright as possible for the entire length of time it takes to refresh the whole screen, and then fades out as quickly as possible after that interval. This is a difficult requirement and one that can really only be approximated.
This screen, however, uses a large cathode and localized electromagnetic fields (one per pixel) to direct the beam. That means the screen is refreshing all over, all the time, instead of a line at a time. Phosphors for this new monitor, then, need not be designed to stay at full intensity for anywhere near as long as traditional CRT phosphors, which means that they can probably be made to improve the contrast significantly.
I'm no expert on this, so corrections are welcome... but as I understand it, the light0gun model and it's impact on phosphor choices has long been one of the biggest impediments in CRT improvement, and it sure looks to me like this design breaks that problem down very efficiently.
... my main gripe with LCD panels is that they don't handle non-native resolutions gracefully. But if this is true CRT-like technology, we'll finally have the best of both worlds (great support for various resolutions, and the thin form factor!).
It's not clear to me that the CRT is actually variable resolution. The ilustration seemed to show a matrix of holes through one layer. If the beam is steered through those there may be a fixed resolution.
Unfortunately the image is so low-res that I can't make out what's actually going on, and the text isn't particularly helpful either. So we'll have to wait for another article with more info on what's actually going on in the guts.
Even if the resolution is fixed, the cost reduction, viewing angle improvement, potential color rendering improvements, and/or simplified electronics may make it viable.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In a traditional CRT, there is one beam that is shared with all the pixels. So there can't be any mechanical supports anywhere inside the tube that would interfere with the beam. In the flat CRT, each pixel has its own beam. This means there can be mechanical support around each and every pixel. It is still 14 pounds per square inch, but a lot fewer square inches per pixel.
Likewise, in a traditional million pixel monitor, each pixel is only on one one millionth of the time. In the flat screen CRT, each pixel is on all the time, so the beam can be one million times weaker, for the same brightness.
Weaker beams, fewer X-rays.
On power consumption:
Talking out my ass here, but it seems to reason that even though the distance between cathode and anode is smaller (requiring less voltage), there is a wider area from which to draw electrons so the current might even be higher. Also, at first glance, it seems that there are more segments that require power due to a larger number of beams. There's probably some inefficiency there too.
On quality:
Does anybody know how well this would hold out against spot imperfections? One problem I see with LCD is that you can have spot imperfections that accumulate over time. With CRT you get general distortion. I tend to prefer the distortion because it has smooth transitions that the human eye adjusts to (I buy used monitors with warps and spots at a great discount). But a dot stands out and is an irritation (high contrast). It seems to me that the flat-CRT will be just as suseptible to local-imperfections as LCD due to localized damage to anodes.
Conclusions:
Assuming the cost is greater than CRT, then the only thing you get from these monitors is space savings.. If you don't absolutely need it, it probably won't be worth it. I like my used $260 21" Hitachi just fine.
-Michael
The bottleneck is likely to be the connection to the monitor. Unless this is an all digital monitor (which I guess would be possible), then you still have to pass an analog signal which is limited by the quality of the cable (bandwidth) and the performance of the video card.
even if it's digital, there's still the issue of feeding all that info. You can't just have one pin per pixel, so you'll need to scan by some means. I thought that there were several competing techniques to accomplish this with LCD's though I'm not too familiar with what is mostly used.
Point being that there's no garuntee that it has any faster refresh rates than traditional CRTs, nor do we know if there will be as much fading / trailing as in some older laptops.
-Michael
-Michael
What about power, reliability, and safety? From the limited information, it looks like these might be better due on all 3 factors due to the less "leaky" radiation, excess heat, and smaller transformers. But that is highly speculative, and are some of the strongest arguments for LCDs.
My employer recently replaced all the monitors in their "data center" with LCDs because of long term cost advantages (less A/C in the lab, and less power consumption)
No it doesn't. The idea that CRTs are better than LCDs for color is supported by cold hard facts. Even a cheap-o CRT has better delta-E values than the LCDs in that test.
Next thing you know, we'll be saying CRTs have "warmer" color.
No, just considerably more accurate color.
Free Hans!
I don't care how small the CRT is, if it still gives me headaches and sore eyes at even the highest of refresh rates, it still blows compared to LCDs.
On a more serious note, I recently got a Viewsonic 19" monitor on pricewatch for $280. Once you can run 1600x1200 on a decent sized display, it's pretty hard to go back to a 15" one. I don't care if it is flat. If I could get a 19" to 21" monitor in the CRT price range (21" is still a bit pricey for a good one) I'd be very happy. This article is talking about the potential of making projection sized displays! Even better! I'd love to have a data wall!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
That would important if I bought my monitor specifically to avoid power consumption, but I suspect that most people are like me, they choose their monitor for the cost and resolution, the specific areas where LCDs are lacking.
I have an 18" LCD monitor on my desk for one of my servers, and it's great for occasional use, but my 21" CRT is king for everything else.
Remember, a computer peripheral is for the USER.
This is the kind of thing I think we've all been waiting for: a monitor technology that combines the form factor and weight-savings of an LCD (thin = light = easier to carry around = less desk space taken up) with (hopefully, if their tech is any good) the quality of a CRT monitor. The biggest problem with LCDs is that of fixed resolutions. An LCD screen has a fixed number of pixels, so adjusting the screen resolution is difficult at best and hideously ugly at worst (you end up with big unused areas on the screen, or it does a kind of interpolation to stretch a 640x480 image to 1024x768).
:) (2048x1280, anyone?) If this tech is for real, and useful, then we (namely, gamers) may have what we've always wanted: a nice, big, flat, lightweight, thin, good-looking monitor with fast refresh, vibrant colors, and adjustable resolutions!
But a CRT can adjust to almost any resolution within a huge range, 320x200 all the way up to, I dunno, a lot
Sorry, this is more or less just a bit of happy-fun-cheering, no real useful content here, move along, move along kind of post.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I have a number of graphic artists on my LAN. Let me tell ya, those 21" CRT's can really kill your back when you have to move them around! This will be a greatly welcomed change, if they can manage the same color quality that current CRT's have.
I don't want an LCD because it's flat. I want an LCD because it has lower power consumption, no Electromagnetic Radiation, and sharper picture. This is no real improvement on a traditional CRT except for smaller footprint and possibly less weight, and regardless of what they claim, I'm sure it will sell for a premium over an old-fashioned CRT with comparable viewing area.
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Try $900 here
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
Can anyone find a copy of the little informative graphic they have with the story? A version that hasn't been shrunk to 50% size, so we can actually read the comments in it?
The New Scientist had an article about this back in May. They took a slightly different angle on it -- pointing out its "spy-proof" features. Although the article appears to be gone, Google still has a copy of it.
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Don't confuse the technology behind a CRT (The cathode generating an electron beam striking a phosphor) with the implementation (A single beam, steered across the screen by magnetic coils) of a standard CRT. This sounds remarkably similar to FED, ThinCRT, and other similar technologies. While the technology is the same (Cathode generating an electron beam striking a phospher) the implementation will likely be fastly different. In this case, it will be virtually identical to LCD - you have an address decoder that just walks through the horizontal and vertical rows, illuminating one pixel/row of pixels at a time, where each pixel is a defined area on the screen (Like LCDs) not where the beam happens to strike (Like traditional CRTs) In fact, the addressing hardware will probably be virtually identical. The biggest difference is instead of a transistor at each pixel, it just has an anode for the rows, and a cathode for the columns, and where the signals meet is illuminated. (Or vice versa) As to heat.. Most similar technologies use something called cold cathodes.. Due to their much reduced power requirements, they can use slightly different technologies, and do not require being warmed up like traditional CRTs before they operate. Of course, due to IBMs lack of information, this could all be wrong, but it is what it looks like to me. This should beat traditional CRTs for weight, power consumption, and clarity (No focus or convergence problems and simplified geometry management - push button alignment like on LCDs) but still use more power than LCDs and be heavier. I'm still keeping my eye on OLEDs though.
was the world where you`d like to see something which is moving. When i`ve tried playing games on an LCD screen its a bit like playing a scrolling game on the old Gameboy - a big blurry mess.
I couldn't find a current version of this article, but it would appear to be referencing the same technology, but has many more technical details.
Anyway, here's the link.
Check this out.
http://www.candescent.com/
They're a partner of Sony and they've already got demos of 13 inch displays. Why wait for IBM?
There is quite a bit of lead radiation shielding. This is why monitors have to be disposed of as toxic waste if they are not properly recycled.
134340: I am not a number. I am a free planet!
What makes CRTs so heavy anyway? It can't just be the glass. Would something like this reduce the weight, or are they just shifting around whatever it is that makes them so damn heavy?
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Eye strain is one of the biggest problems with CRT screens that LCDs overcome, are they not? It doesn't look like this "flat" CRT technology can overcome that. Along with power consumption and heat, these features might just be what the LCD market needs to advertise -- although most consumers won't care, seeing only the immediate cost savings instead of the long-term ones.
I would much rather have an unattractive LCD base than one that causes my $1500 investment to topple over. Where am I going with this? Well, while this new technology by IBM is exciting, this part worries me:
...and don't tell me it won't happen, because it's bound to.
screens of any size are possible with the same depth, but building a thin vacuum panel big enough for a projection screen might not be practical.
Ack. Think, vacuum panel? Yeah... I'd like to see how that fairs against accidentally being toppled over...
Disclaimer: I haven't read the linked-to stories, so take this with a grain of salt.
I hope this technology makes it out into the consumer market and gives LCD panels a run for the money-- my main gripe with LCD panels is that they don't handle non-native resolutions gracefully. But if this is true CRT-like technology, we'll finally have the best of both worlds (great support for various resolutions, and the thin form factor!).
Plus the other applications for this, high-resolution replacements for television sets, can't be beat. The large plasma displays (which admittedly probably look better than a large CRT would) may have fallen in price, but a large CRT with this new technology would probably be cheaper for the masses.
Kudos to IBM, let's just hope that the fact that they've gotten a patent on this tech doesn't keep others from using it.
All I know about Bush is I had a good job when Clinton was president.
I'm still holding on for my OLED Active Display. I can't remember where, but they do have a 19" one already made, but it's only for research...
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This is gamers' heaven if the technology performs as well as conventional CRTs.
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CRTs are great for cost/image resolution, but LCDs and OLED win on power consumption and temperature. This article was a bit light on details for the new IBM tech, but I doubt a CRT can rival LCD and OLED in these categories.
MacOS, Windows, BeOS, GNOME, KDE: they're all just Xerox copies
Since when did an abundance of choices become a problem. I am thrilled at this. Give me more choices and Damn the 'One Size Fits All' mentality.
If I had a choice between getting a product spoon fed to me or having to maany "confusing options" then give me confusion or give me death.
Choice is good!
Two Towers-Two Worlds.One seeks triumphs and freedom for man.The other deems man unworthy and wrecks them.
I don't like my CRTs flat. I prefer them to have soft curves and buoyancy... wait, what where we talking about again?
Needless to say I'm curious to see these hit our local VARs and at what prices.
-Coach-
Perhaps the world's greatest tragedy is that ignorance is not impotence.
That sounds like it might be akin to CD players vs. turntables. Next thing you know, we'll be saying CRTs have "warmer" color.
They also mentioned (and that's most important), that most companies do have (possibly very) short CRT tubes, but that the heat is the biggest problem. Ever since CRT's started burning (in standby mode e.g.) sporadically, companies are very affraid of bringing new technologies to the market that might have a slight heat problem.
One burning television/ monitor is enough to "kill" a brand, and all the bad publicity that it brought with it is enough to frighten these companies to not sell these CRTs.
These employees didn't actually work for the CRT department, so I can't verify if there really is a risk of "overheating", but the problem seemed plausible.