Slashdot Mirror
Light-Emitting Polymer Displays
BlackSol writes "Yahoo is covering a very cool piece on the development of roll-up screens. Possible uses from home televisions, to tele-watches, and military uses such as real-time satalite fed maps in the field."
Will this open the possibility for 3D tv using multiple transparant layers?
:)
Or perhaps the multi-channel edition where you have a book with 100 pages: every page is another chanel. Nice and convenient during the commecial breaks
--
"People are talking about weaving displays into clothing. Will there ever be a mass market for that? I doubt it. But it will probably be seized on by someone." :)
Well, as long as it's a touch screen, I'm happy
{and slowly a song from the Who sets in: See me, feel me, touch me...}
I wonder if these can get high enough res. to be useful for laptop/handheld displays? That would sure be handy...
-Zordok
the obnoxious ceareal box animations...
There are many uses for this in areas with political instability. Now instead of having to go through the problem of making new flags and banners every time an area changes hands, you can just have one of these up each flag pole, and just change the image as the situation warrents. I can see applications for this on the west bank / parts of Africa already.
"Roll-up televisions will allow viewers of the future to flip their sets out of sight like projector screens and will come with a similar price tag to bulkier boxes."
Does anyone else find this a little silly? The plastic film costs maybe a few dollars, the printing process probably no more than $25 for a moderately sized set, and then another $50 (retail) for an acceptable interface/controller module.
Alright, who wants to pay $1000 for a 48" screen that probably cost almost exactly the same to make as a 12" screen (for only $150)?
Karma: \Kar"ma\, n. [Skr.] (Buddhism) One's acts considered as fixing one's lot in the future existence.
Weave this bad boy into a full body suit, mount micro cameras throughout, project the image seen behind.
Voila! Predator. From twenty feet or so, anyway.
If your bitterest enemies are people who hack the heads off civilians, then I would say you're doing something right.
Salesperson - We have this lovely floral design...
Spork - Digital.
Salesperson - This one comes in great pastel colors.
Spork - Digital.
Salesperson - Damn it! The morons in electronics get the commisions for digital wallpaper! Buy the damn Pastel!
Spork backs slowly away.
With my dying breath, I curse Zoidberg!
Make a pair of pants out of this stuff, and you can have the pants flash cliff-notes during exams.
Well, I am scrapping plans for #2 Linux pencils to focus on the pants now.
Table-ized A.I.
. . . military uses such as real-time satellite fed maps in the field.
Better make sure those satellite connections are really secure:
"All right, men, the enemy stronghold is dead ahead. Charge!"
[ten minutes later] "Uh, Sarge, we must have gotten turned around somehow, now it's directly behind us."
[fifteen minutes later] "Now it's saying we're in South-Central L.A. Stick together, men."
fuck that d00d, gimmie some movie-poster sized versions of that stuff to tack on my wall. or maybe i could stick some underneath my partially transparent tibook's keyboard! then i could finally see the damn keys in the dark... displaying porn on my keyboard would be nifty though :)
probably a cheaper solution....they have indeglo watches...they have indeglo "nightlights....do they make poster-sized versions of the stuff? or is there a maximum size as to how larger it gets before you can't run current safely across the stuff (some sort of gas mixture i would assume)
moox. for a new generation.
according to this (rather old (2001)) paper, lifetime of polymer dislpays is around 10.000 hours against usual TFTs living around 50.000 hours.
Let's assume they doubled it since 2001, its 20.000 hours.
Unless they produce them for the half of the costs of usual TFTs, I wouldn't like to throw away my TV every 2 1/3 years...
that most geeks being blinded by doing some other thing... :)
Just add a roll-up keyboard and you almost have one. Not sure about the mouse or CPU...
Alas, Babylon.
No need to have separate Desert/Jungle Camo suites, just turn a dial, and it becomes the one you need. Or, if the power requirements are to much for a personal version us it on buildings, vehicles, tents, etc.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
...for this technology.
Cheap HUDs for autos (Heads Up Display) and bike helmets is an obvious application.
Televisions everywhere. (Okay, this could really suck; who wants to see ads for Cheer everywhere you go.)
And the big one: Wrap-around, full vision wearble displays. Granted, I'm stretching here, but one can dream, eh?
If this technology really works well, it could solve a great many problems associated with computer displays (size, heat generation, cost, etc.)
Lot's of really cool technology coming soon, makes the current despond somewhat more tolerable.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
Imagine seeing a cityscape where every inch of every skyscraper is a billboard. Sound far-fetched? Read the article -- this is about printing televisions. These things are going to be cheap. Look at the end result of a technology such as the printing press becoming widely available -- we now have reams of printed matter everywhere we look. An active display technology that is so convenient to use and cheap to produce has just as much potential, if not more, for becoming pervasive and used everywhere.
I think the biggest question for widespread use of these things, on a commodity level rather than an appliance level (toilet paper, not PDAs), is power. I don't think anything on the market today is truly a satisfactory answer to the question of how to power ubiquitous flexible displays like these, but we're close. See a very recent slashdot post (no link, so lazy...) about flexible solar cells being developed. Also, there is an incredible push for greatly improved battery technology, and great steps are being made there.
Ultimately, there will be two kinds of uses for this technology. The first one we'll see will be the sort that is more or less permanently installed, and can therefore be plugged into the wall all or some of the time. Even the skyscraper-as-television fits into this category. But at some point you'll need batteries or solar cells or some other power source (some wacky nanotech?) to power more "disposable" applications like animated handbills, greeting cards, movie posters, etc.
End result: advertising is about to get a lot more annoying. Let's just hope they haven't got paper-thin speakers to go with this.
My deviantArt site
I doubt that a roll-up tv screen or monitor will ever be practical. Firstly, every pixel will have to be driven and that requires an electical connection. A 1024 X 768 will require atleast 786,433 electical contections, and wires made of metal. I expect serious problems with metal-fatigue induced conductor fractures, for roll-up displays. I'll admit that the ribbon cable inside a printer goes through a lot but it doesn't have a quarter of a million conductors either.
This has a lot of cool potential applications, but roll-up displayed will not be marketable
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
I think I'd like one of a Penguin stomping on MS HQ...
Better still, if the material could be made thin enough and safe to implant under the skin you could have animated tattoos you could reprogram at will.
(I'd go for a penguin stomping on MS HQ again)
From my Autobiography - "Lifestyles of the Sad and Desperate"...
One of the other pretty cool technologies being developed by the guys at Plastic Logic (a spin off company created by the same people from Cambridge University who formed CDT) is the ability to create full electronic devices by using an inkjet printer loaded with a cartridge of these conductive polymers. It would be pretty cool to be able to see a useful device on a web page, download the circuit, print it out of your inkjet and then have the working device straight away.
I can't seem to find anything about what kind of refresh speeds they can get from this, or energy consumption. Has anyone seen any current figures released by these people?
Regardless of how cool this could be, it'll be a dud unless it makes laptops last longer and has at least equal moving image quality compared with LCD screens.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Screen burn, or bad pixels,
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
"I think we'll see a lot of innovation," said Fyfe. "People are talking about weaving displays into clothing. Will there ever be a mass market for that? I doubt it. But it will probably be seized on by someone."
So I'll finally get to shag someone in an AOL-style video-minidress - mmm, ohh...
Chuck Norris: Socialism == a thousand years of darkness.
This could be cool... change your clothes with the push of a button. Wear a new face (probably not a very realistic-looking one until the technology matures, but we're dreaming here...). Wear the skin of your favorite porn star. With adaptive padding it could modify the underlying shape as well.
My deviantArt site
Someone illuminates the whole area with a light that blinks at such a frequence, that you suit(due to the latency) is out of phase. : )
FRA: STFU GTFO
This is Cambrige Display Technology's white paper on how Light Emitting Polymers function.
Cambridge Display Technologies has a nice article
describing the underlying physics and some technical issues involved with developing the material.
--LP
I've been dreaming of my ultimate portable for some time, and this - roll-up screens - was all that was missing. I have a roll-up waterproof keyboard that works quite well. Imagine the guts of a notebook PC (no CD, keyboard, screen), a kind of brick the size of a stack of CDs. Fits into your pocket. You can add a flat battery underneath for portable use. You can plug in a roll-up screen and keyboard when you're on the road. At the office you dock it into your main notebook or desktop - synchronizing all your data, updating your email, etc.
My blog
It's not just the individual pixels which are made with polymers. It's the individual traces also. In fact, the whole field of polymer semiconducters is starting to ripen and bear fruit. The sheets of plastic they print won't only have light emitting portions, it can include power traces and even decoding logic! There might be a copper ribbon cable to connect the entire display to whatever external source provides data and power. But the entire display will be made from polymers.
This really is amazing technology. The circuitry is basically printed out using ink jet style heads. Actually, one of the article says that it actually plots the traces out ala a good old fasioned plotter as opposed to line-by-line like a printer. It's not hard to imagine that this stuff will lead to a rebirth of the homebrew electronics hobbyist. Even if you couldn't afford to buy your own plotter, a prototyping shop which owned one should be able to produce custom circuits to your own design in an extremely fast and cheap manner. Imagine a semi-conductor Kinkos! Could be cool stuff.
Many of the ideas mentioned here require optics to work properly.
My first quibble is that nothing in the article suggests that this display is transparent. Most of the posts here assume plastic = transparent. Not necessarily.
Secondly, the optics are always going to be a problem, until we have some form of holographic display.
For example, a HUD is only useful if it's focused well out ahead of you - near infinity - and the ONLY way to do this is with substantial, and large, optics. I've BUILT a HUD before - I know what I'm talking about. A transparent display simply won't do any good for you. And to do a DECENT HUD, you have to have a very bright display - able to be seen in bright daylight, brighter than the background material. Finally, the optics of the primary lens MUST be as large as the viewable area - because the rays are parallel to appear focused at infinity, the width/height of the area where your eyes can see the image is exactly the same as the size of the lens. So you can see that a cheap display won't help a lot, and a transparent display is pointless.
Also, a wearable display is a neat idea - but only if you focus it so your eyes can see it. Again, the transparency is no good if it's too close for your eyes to focus. Take a photographic slide, for example, and mount it three inches from your eye. Should be great, right? Super high resolution, bright clear colors, transparent... NOPE. You can't even see the image; it's just a dark blur obscuring your vision. You MUST have some optics to focus the image where your eye can focus on it.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Get real. Aside from the power cord, *MY* TV has two conductors for input. Okay, I'll give you a hint. It's called RF. Not good enough? What about ethernet, 8 pins. Want true video instead of digital data? How about the 15 or so pins on a VGA display? If the decoding electronics are embedded, you don't need lots of connectors.
If you can afford the millions of transistors for the display electronics, you can afford a million more for the decoding too.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Most of the posts here assume plastic = transparent. Yeah, that would be nice. But it's not necessarily the case here. Nothing in the article suggests that this display is transparent.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
A number of the comments here about advertising and the proliferation of displays reminded me of Minority Report. Everywhere the characters went were advertising displays - wrapped around the walls of stores and malls, moving billboards, even animated cereal boxes (John Anderton angrily tosses one aside after being bothered by the distraction at one point). Obviously Spielberg has the same vision of the future as many of you.
--Brandon / Split Infinity Music
Anyone agree?
Technoli
Ah, crap. I pulled that link out of my bookmarks, and it's out of date now. For the datasheet, go here: http://www.onsemi.com/pub/Collateral/MC33441-D.PDF
I want to be able to go into a store and say 'I'd like a screen 120" wide by 67" tall', and have them print it for me there on the spot, laminate it together, then just sell me a little re-usable "connection" module that clips on the edge of the screen to power/activate it.
If you want a different size screen, you just toss out the old one, keep the module and get a new one printed up.
And it's starting to sound very, very possible...
"Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence." - Charles de Gaulle
The issue isn't signal delivery, it's pixel addressing. To get the right charges to the right place for production of the image.
CRT's (TV's and Monitors) fire a magnetically redirected electron beam for its addressing. This makes it a very analoque device when you break it down, albeit a very high precission one.
LCD's are addressed via a crosshatch scheme and do have actual pixels for a change.
Unless that crosshatch or something similar can be reproduced, then yes it will take a high wire:pixel ration to get the job done.
Any spoon would be too big.
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/f lat_speakers010418.html
They've been working on them for a while now.
It'll be really interesting when they manage to bundle the paper thin speakers, the paper thin monitor, embedded solar cells, and wireless networking all together into a single paper-thin sheet. Then you basically have a multimedia device that you can take and hang just about anywhere. And you thought telephone poles in the major cities were bad now... Just wait till they all play slide shows and video footage of someone's missing animal while playing sad music to tug on your heartstrings, beamed from said person's house nearby...
I've read a number of articles on these and other flat, flexible displays such as "digital paper". It's amusing that all of this life-changing display technology is just months from everyday use... and has been for the past six or seven years.
The technology stems from the discovery in 1989 of the compound p-phenylenevinylene which glows greeny-yellow when given an electric charge.
...
A little tweaking over the following decade produced compounds to emit blue and red light: the roll-up TV was born.
Makes sense to focus on those specific wavelengths.
With the flick of a switch the display could convert to infra-red
I know you can't mix RGB to get infra-red.
Is this LEP Vapourware?
-... ---
Imagine seeing a cityscape where every inch of every skyscraper is a billboard.
Haven't been to Tokyo have you?
If you don't want to repeat the past, stop living in it.
roll-up stuff is fine and good until you have to carry something around -- i believe a very important aspect of this technology is its portability. however, if i decided to carry my 42" roll up screen around (say, on a road trip), it would still not fit into my briefcase because when it's rolled up it will be a large tube around 30 inches long.
however, if such technology can be made so that the material can be folded (like paper) and does not cause distortions of the pixels at the edges of where i fold -- i am all for it. fine, everywhere i look there will probabbly be billboards because of this technology. but then, i can carry around my own and display stuff i want to see instead.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
I'd love to have something like that .
Play video clips, etc.
Jesus used to be my co-pilot, but we crashed in the mountains and I had to eat him.
I did a lay report on this subject a few years ago for a university project. Have a read; I wrote it with a view to be easily digestible for the general masses :)
w illiamson/index.html
http://www.chemsoc.org/exemplarchem/entries/2001/
You will need a Chime plugin for viewing the 3D molecules.
http://www.mdlchime.com/chime/
regards,
Mark
Don't have to - just go to Times Square and look at the videotron.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
"War makes me sad." - Me
I'd love to buy a roll of TV, change the channel to WB, and then use it as TP.
Who knows? that could displace Nielson ratings!
Um, that would be Chile. There are a whole bunch of internationally sponsored telescopes built on the crests of mountains on the coast of Chile. The prevailing winds have blown all the way across the Pacific Ocean, so it is has had lots of room for the turbulence to damp down. Hawaii is the second choice for constructing new optical light telescopes.
http://www.e4engineering.com/item.asp?id=45870&typ e=news
Why would I want a roll-up TV screen? Ever since I moved my 4 computers out of my living room and into the second bedroom, my living room has appeared empty. Now I'm supposed to roll-up my TV when I'm done watching? Maybe if it's on remote control, but otherwise, forget it. I like it the way it is.
I like the "Maps in the field" kinda thing, though. Kinda like Red Planet.
It's kinda cool watching some things from Sci-Fi come to reality. I just wish they'd get working on the damn holodeck. Talk about the ultimate in addictions. I'd never leave.
Change the appearance of large items at will - make your house 'look' scary on Halloween, Waving flags and fireworks on the 4th. Give your house a stone wall, garden, or 'trees'. Make your house 'transparent' or 'invisible' for parties, exhibitionism or to get 'away'! (Screens on both inside and coutside of course.) Change 'wallpaper' at whim, decorate by era, place, or fetish. Make your apartment look like its huge! Play a 'real' game of quake, or nethack!
Your car could be a different color every day, or adapt 'styling features' (camo trucks for hunters or the army) 'fake' turbo for all the Rice-Boys out there.
Put 'windows' to the outside world or made up world in your office or cube. Your 'desktop' could be your desktop! Video conferencing could be far more personal, and body language would become useful.
A VR Holodeck of sorts could be be possible, embed into all surfaces in a room.
One *real book - any book contained within!
Graffitti could become an accepted artform. Leave it there a week and then *poof*
Learn to dance with the 'magic' footprints appearing at the proper times and positions.
The Hoover dam could be the biggest theater in the world!
Of course, by the time this comes to pass, the **AAs will probably have legislated that a user cannot view these screens without pervasive advertising. The Hoover dam will play McDonalds and Disney commercials 7 out of 8 hours, some 'Avatar' will follow you around offering product suggestions every two minutes, and someone will get pissed at you for something and hack your house, car and t-shirt to show goatse.cx at random intervals.
Don't want to think about that on the Hoover dam
Now you can stick a large display on the ceiling, for that simulated mirror on the ceiling effect with the porno actress/actor of your choice! (not responsible for emotional damages in the event Ron Jeremy appears upon your ceiling)
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Okay... imagine walking into a house or building where every squaare inch of ceiling, floor, and wall was covered in this stuff -- put some sort of display on it like one of the more funky visualizations for winamp and you can't tell me that simply being inside such a place wouldn't be a most interesting sensation. :)
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
End result: advertising is about to get a lot more annoying.
If you thought gratuitous Flash animations on the Web were obnoxious, you just wait until the marketing industry sees what they can do with these things.
I mean, forget about blink tags. We'll be able to blink the side of an entire public bus.
What a cracker target that would be for defacing.
Or for stealing. There isn't much use for the LED scrolling banner thingies at home, nor is stealing one of the jumbotron type things in Times Square an option. However, if they have these things everywhere, small poster-sized ones would work nice as a TV at home and wouldn't last too long on the streets.
I'd say that for a billboard, they will use smaller polymer displays which will be cheaper to make than one mondo 24'x32' display. Say 48 -4'x4' screens. Now, there's a tempting target- you might not have much use for a 24'x32' screen, but all those smaller screens, think what you could do with them?
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
"Weave this bad boy into a full body suit..."
TELETUBBIES!
Now you go and take this stuff and combine it with the See-Through, Paper-Thin Speakers and you've got your media where ever you go.
Just makes me wonder how long it's going to be until movies are made from a central perspective, like IMAX in your home.
At the very least it should be a cheaper method for bringing those remaining 34,940 movie theatres into the digital age
Karma: 0 (But I wield a mean +10 Vorpal Apathy)
CDT (Cambridge Display Technology) was touting LEPs as the next LED that is capable of high refresh rates and the ability to see from angles, all because the technology doesn't use a backlight but instead the plastic itself emits light.
Among some of the other advantages I remember highlighted was the ability to create strange pixel configurations, low power usage, and a relatively inexpensive manufacturing process.
We'll have to see what promises it will live up to...
Semiconducting Polymers on Display
"Communism is like having one [local] phone company " - Lenny Bruce
The BBC's Radio channel 'Radio 4' featured CDT in their 'Material World' programme on 11 July. It can be heard here using a Real Audio player. The web-page summarising this transmission is here.
Polymer or otherwise, light-emission sure is a nice feature for a display :-)
No sig to see here. Move along.
for the pr0n industry!
You want to enhance your appearance? You want to "advertise" when out for a night on the town? Why bother with transparent flaps, when you can just put your favourite pr0n star's anatomy in just the right place to catch that cute girl or guy's eye!
I think this technology sounds cool; after all, with a light-emitting display, you could light a room and browse the web with the same piece of equipment. However, I question whether it is a good idea from a safety perspective. I foresee people being blinded by these things. Any thoughts?
I think since it can be printed on clear plastic there is a good chance to replace fluorescent light tube or just place these in powerline-tethered connected squares across the ceiling and do away with single-point light sources entirely.
I personally think that given the nature of this light emitter it would make a fantastic wall-trim light. Print out a long strip, which is stuck to the floor trim on the wall (with a painted over thin metal conducting strip at one end to make the circuit. Just trim and glue to end of the strip to the final conducting spot and plug in to light (but a built-in deal would be more professional looking).
Then when going to another room during the night you'd always have a lighted pathway between the rooms.
"Face it, a nation that maintains a 72% approval rating on George W. Bush is a nation with a very loose grip on reality.
I've been waiting for this technology since I saw Arnold Schwarzenegger's apartment on Mars in Total Recall. This is what convergence is all about, and it's why BG started buying up the rights to digital reproductions of art works a few years back.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
The infra-red that they are talking about is merely a representation in visible wavelengths. Even if it did manage to output IR from RGB signals, it wouldn't be much use. You don't really imagine that people can ACTUALLY see infra-red do you? (or ultra-violet, for that matter)
Ahh - My eye!
The doctor said I'm not supposed to get Slashdot in it!
Uhmm.... Okay... so you have to put it behind something water-tight. That shouldn't _HAVE_ to be glass, should it? I would expect anything waterproof would do. Why couldn't they coat it in something like laminate plastic? (Or some other water-tight and flexible substance)
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'