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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."
Optimally we would get something that comes in rolls and can be cut to size. Then you just stick a piece of fiber on it anywhere, and have it communicate with you optically. Every pixel should have its own driver circuit, and they should speak to one another with various shortcut buses woven throughout the material. It should also be capable of speaking to other pieces of the material if you make it overlap. This way we could have large (if initially slow) displays. Then you just need a discovery method to determine the properties of the display, and a resolution-independent display method.
In the meantime; I don't want an empty box. If I have a MEMS-based display, it had better be painting the image directly onto my retina, which is much more useful anyway. I'm willing to put on goggles, though that shouldn't be necessary; within a certain (smallish) range of motion it should be able to track me just fine.
If we DO use a MEMS mirror-based display, we should be using a large number of mirrors to minimize the depth of the thing and also to maximize refresh rates.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The cable giants and the MPAA will love retinal displays because that means they can finally charge "Pay Per Viewer." No more of those digital pirates bringing 30 friends over to watch the latest boxing match. Now every pair of eyeballs can be individually billed. Of course that would also mean the death of movie theaters because Hollywood will be able to charge you at home for each one of your little urchins when Harry Potter X comes out.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
Its quite a reasonable inference actually. The reason that Moore's law holds is that smaller and smaller diameter fabrication processes are developed, so that an integrated circuit can be made smaller, and thus also cheaper, and furthermore reduce power consumption, heat production, and speed. Now, the MEMS projection chip does not have to be any particular size, so as process technology becomes more advanced, the cost to produce these will go down with everything else. But a conventional LCD, in order to be useful, has to be a certain size, and, for any given resolution, has to have a certain number of pixels. Of course, technology advances do help LCD's, but its no use to the user if 10 years from now you can get a 5mm desktop LCD display for $10 with the same resolution as the 15" display you want now.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Or, being able to profit from their invention instead of going out of business, this company will be able to fund research and devlopment to eventually sell MEMS at $40, and soonafter the patents will expire.
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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.
And it's not even vaporware. These things are already being made and bought and used. It's just a matter of waiting for the price to drop to a level where consumers can afford the technology.