Hello MEMS, Goodbye Monitors

ftantil writes "In this article Bob Cringely says traditional monitors (CRTs *and* LCDs) will eventually go the way of the Underwood. I've always liked the idea of seeing the image equivalent of a 27" monitor by looking into a slot in my cellphone, but it never occurred to me that these things could replace TVs too."

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[Triskaidekaphobia]

Some better descriptions of how MEMS display work here and here (flash based, but very good)

Microvision

[critter_hunter]

If you go take a look at Microvision's website, you'll see that MEMS can be used in everything and are the best thing ever.
Or so they tell you

More than likely they're just trying to get gobs of money from investors... maybe what Cringely's saying is true, but I can't share his enthusiasm

Re:Microvision

[Oswald]

At their current burn rate, they seem to have enough on hand for about 10 more quarters of operation, though they say that 2002 should see a shift to higher revenues because they will actually have some product for sale. Their 10-k is remarkably free of smoke-up-your-ass; they state quite clearly that they are not now, never have been, and very possibly may never be profitable. There's nothing illegal or immoral about speculating on a tech stock, as long as there's no blue sky bullshit being put out.

I think they mean replace in a different way

[superpeach]

...Like the typewriter described in the article. The TV will still be a big box looking like a TV, but the MEMS thingy will be projecting the image onto the screen... so, it will look like a TV, work like a TV, but the insides will be pretty much empty apart from the MEMS and some tuning electrics.

Oh no, Tom Furness again

[Animats]

This is one of those Tom Furness things from the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology Lab. It's been "Real Soon Now" for the last decade. There's a great book from 1999, "The Visionary Position" about the mess there. Their four startups from the late 1990s all tanked by the time the book came out.

It's not that you can't build wearable displays. Many have been built. It's that wearing a display isn't fun. Wearable displays get tiring fast. Try one some time.

If you really want one of these things, MicroOptical sells a VGA-compatible eyeglass-mounted display for $2500. And here's an article about Linux on a wearable. This guy writes about using EMACS, "awk", and a wrist-mounted keyboard.

Re:Oh no, Tom Furness again

[Animats]

MEMS displayed are not limited to being wearable displays. They can project images large enough to fill a TV screen. Hell, with a strong enough light source, you could even use one as a digital movie projector in a theatre.

The "sweep the laser beam spot across the big screen" approach to image projection doesn't work very well. The effect is something like a laser light show; the strobing effects are visible. And if you crank the spot intensity up to a good level for the whole screen, the beam is dangerous. You're really abusing persistence of vision at that point. Nor do you need MEMS for that; just moving mirrors.

Generating a whole line of image at once (not just one pixel), then scanning that across the other axis, does work. The Scophony system did that in the 1930s, using a very neat technology worth looking up. MIT revived it in the 1980s.

MEMS devices are widely used for digital projectors right now, but there's a tiny moving mirror for every pixel, and no scanning at all. That's why those images look so steady. If you saw Star Wars in digital, you probably saw it on a TI projector using an array of MEMS mirrors.

In addition, MEMS isn't limited to just projecting and capturing optical images. That same MEMS chip can be used as an extremely-fast processor.

Huh? No way. Are you mixing up Drexler-type nanotechnology with microelectromechanical systems? MEMS are electromechanical devices fabbed by photolithography, like ICs. There are some useful devices fabbed that way, most of which are accelerometers for airbag deployment. MEMS are way too big and way too slow to be used as computational elements.

Re:HDTV DOA???

[-tji]

Huh? This is just another display alternative. HDTV is a digital broadcast format, allowing higher resolution material to be displayed.

In fact, many of the new HDTV displays are using MEMS technology. See http://www.dlp.com/

DLP is used both for front projectors, and reap projection HDTV's.

Corrections

[Arjuna Theban]

I'm not one to point out minor mistakes but these ones especially annoyed me:

1) It is micro-electro mechanical systems. Anyone who has ever read a single article about MEMS would know what it really stands for. It is annoying that noone seems to get a 4-letter acronym.

2) MEMS is not a product of the "emerging nanotechnology". It is a product of the long-available microtechnology just like its name suggests. We have a Microtechnology laboratory where 0.5um is out minimum feature size and we routinely build/develop MEMS devices.

Anyone who writes an article about advanced material should study a bit.

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Re:Not quite accurate.

[K8Fan]

The large theater systems from Christie and Barco and the very largest home and business DLP projectors use three DLPs. Most home and small business DLP projectors use a single DLP chip and a rotating color wheel. Personally, the technology behind DLP, an array of mirrors, is more impressive than a single moving mirror.

Coincidentially, TI's design is the result of their attempts to create exactly the single-mirror type of system described. They gave up on that approach because of what they learned about physical behavior at the nano-level. The mirrors tended to stick on one position or the other. So they turned that from a liability to a virtue. Instead of trying to directly analog modulate the light, they decided to use time modulation.

DLP is no less cool because it actually exists, and is in use in thousands of projectors.