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Roll-Up Monitors A Step Closer To Reality
gwernol writes "CNN are covering the merger of two of the leading companies in the field of OLEDs. This brings the dream of flexible plastic monitors and TVs a step closer to fruition.
You can find out more at Cambridge Display Technology who have acquired Opsys. CDT's technology paper on light emitting polymers (in the Research & Technology section of their site) is interesting reading."
I can't wait until this stuff can be put like wall paper and connected to the house backbone. Just a quick calibration so it can map images to it properly and presto. Just imagine all the cool stuff you could do with it. I still think having a camera pointed at the sky out in the middle of the pacific so you could have a truely starry night on your ceiling would be amazing!
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
CDT's technology paper on light emitting polymers
:P
:)
When I first read that, I thought they had invented some way to put OLEDs on paper not written a paper about OLEDs
Well, one can dream, can't that? (Actualy, that can't be to far off. IIRC you can 'print' plastic on paper, and people have made electrically conductive plastic, if they could be merged with OLEDs....)
Hehe, how cool would it be to be able to buy a off-the-shelf ink jet printer and print electrical circuits, with built in OLED displays and all kinds of other craziness
Lonely?
Find love on the internet
Mr. McGuire: I just want to say one word to you - just one word.
Ben: Yes sir.
Mr. McGuire: Are you listening?
Ben: Yes I am.
Mr. McGuire: 'Plastics.'
Ben: Exactly how do you mean?
Mr. McGuire: There's a great future in plastics. Think about it. Will you think about it?
Ben: Yes I will.
Mr. McGuire: Shh! Enough said. That's a deal.
but the article fails to explain why this merger is such an important step in the development of new display technologies.
Tor
Does this remind anyone of Back to the Future 2? I could easily envision this as becoming a "picture window" type device in every home.
$ man woman *
-bash:
This will allow me to get closer to the dream of portable e-books that work like regular books, but it doesn't solve the problem of dog-earing a page to mark it. Dog-earing these simply marks ALL your pages, and that, my friends, is not very useful.....
This signature is a waste of 42 characters
Make an ultra-durable polymer version that I could use as a cutting surface with an X-acto knife.
A semitransparent version for use in tracing.
Clothing - afterall, if you can make a sheet of this stuff, you could conceiveably make a fiber out of it, no?
Just thinking out loud.
tcd004
If I had my own oil company, I would...
If they make these really energy effiecient it will give new meaning to "Rolling a green one".
"...some of whom have just opened factories for the first generation of monochrome OLED displays used in cellphones and razors."
Razors?
Umm.. did I miss something?
So are there any problems with these like the 20-30 year delay that it took to get a decent blue LED???
I'm sure back in the day they were talking about LED TV and it wasn't until the past 5 or so years that the technology was there. Not that I would't mind a high res, super thin, and sexy monitor/tv. It sure would be a killer app for most TV's out there, and a good way to combine a coumputer station and TV...
I can't believe this - my 3rd post to /. in one day. Must be a slow Monday...
:-)
Back in 1994, I attended a demo of the newest Apple hardware: the PowerMac 6100, 7100, and 8100. Those PowerPC 601 processors just blew me away!
As part of the demo, the Apple guys showed us a video of upcoming technology, including a computer that folded like a book. The computer used an "avatar" that the user controlled by speaking naturally, as if to a person.
The Apple guys then asked us what was the missing link preventing anyone from producing the contraption. The answer: "folding glass." Of course, we know now (and probably did then, just we didn't want to admit it) that the CPU's and graphics processors of the time would have choked on the OS needed to pull off the magic.
JA
http://www.johnalex.org/
We hear lots of hype regarding this great new technology. Companies developing the technology start acquiring each other before there is even a deliverable. Stocks soar....
Then, the bubble bursts leaving no real technology, thousands holding worthless stock and a CEO retiring in the Caribbean.
Haven't we seen this before????
as excellent, large and cheap.
Any signs of progress of THAT front?
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
Some electric razors are starting to be built with LCD screens to display bettery life and cutting head life, razor cleaning schedules, etc. While it's an odd thing to mention in the article, it's conceivable that the razor manufacturers would like to do something more complex, similar to the stuff you see on car stereos these days.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Reuters has an article regarding this technology as well:
Reuters Link
Color-changing clothes would be cool, but what do you do when your battery pack dies and your clothes go off? :)
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
Even though most folks think that LCD monitors are the paramount devices through which to interact and view data on computer machinery, they're wrong.
;-) rips), much enhanced durability, and lighter, to boot!
This isn't bad, however, because the up-and-coming OLEDs (as detailed in the introduction to this particle story) are much cheaper to produce and should mature faster than LCDs did in the 1990s, which was their early testing period.
With OLEDs, one also finds a much-increased video brightness, faster response times (no ghosts while gaming or watching DivX
Finally, these run much hotter but are much less prone to being affected by temperature fluctuations. This means it could easily serve as a server monitor in a 100 degree PowerEdge server closet or as the primary video output terminal at a physics laboratory in Iceland (where I study in the summer).
Department of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax, N.S., Canada, B3H 3J5
Check out the image at the lower left.
They used to have a movie of this screen being flexed while an animation played on it. Really awesome. Clicking on the link now leads to a much less impressive movie...
http://www.universaldisplay.com/foled.php
Although it sounds like this may be several years off, this could revoultionize LAN parties!!
... Hopefully better than a LCD does ....
Just think, no more strained backs while carrying you're 21" rolled up monitor to your buddies garage!
I also wonder how these things will deal with creases, fading, glare, etc
HallmarkOrnaments.Com
Fold up and edible! I could watch Beverly Hillbillies reruns on a bean burrito! Play Quake on a Hot Pocket! Quick -- somebody get me a DARPA grant...
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Before I can build a predator suit out of OLED's?
I imagine you can see it from different angles. If it only shined light out in one direction, it would be fully coherent light, and OLEDs would make great lasers. It owuld also make a fairly worthless screen, because you could only see a few pixels per eye at any moment - it would be hard to read.
I think the "one direction" refers to back and front as opposed to side to side.
But then, maybe I'm ill-informed.
That what was all this school was for... to teach us how to solve our own problems. -- janeowit
No, really! The OLEDs are supposedly nontoxic, and capable of being printed onto edible substrates, like rice
paper or fruit leather. Edible gold foil could be used for the wiring. The battery and control chips would of course need to be in a separate module, clearly labelled "Do Not Eat."
<;K
>;k
Consolidation doesn't mean progress is happening, or that consumer products will make it to store shelves, nor does the fact that they're making very cool, very usable products. History is littered with companies that were about to produce amazing things that never came to fruition and imploded.
What consolidation often means is that noone is investing in the idea, or that one of the companies couldn't survive long enough to get an actual product out the door.
Can I put one of these on one of those old fashion window shades? You know, the kind that rolls up real fast and spins for a few seconds. Very popular in old cartoons.
Ah, just like in Back to the Future 2?
Ed Wedig
Graphic design services
docbrown.net
I notice that the /. crowd has already taken up the call for wall-sized monitors. I hasten to direct anyone with such notions to the Ray Bradbury classic "Fahrenheit 451". It is a disturbing work on many levels, and you can Google a lot of analytical treatments of the themes in the book.
Particular to the current thread, in the book there are wall-sized display devices used in the predictable fashion; not to view above the sky full of live stars or weather a la Hogwarts in Harry Potter (which sounds delightful) but to take a small room and create a large, totally synthetic environment with an extended synthespian family, all via subscription service. And there you sit all day, listening to their dramatic, interesting lives while your own dull, wasted existance drains away. So if you like, views into a crafted world with fake people, custom made for unneeded people. Homeowners in the book measure themselves successful based on how many walls they own; four walls is just enough.
Entertainment is emmersive enough. Do we really want to be flood with non-reality? Or Unreal Tourny, for that matter? The stars overhead sound good, and so does an "invisible wall" that projects an outside view of your backyard, or anywhere else in the world for that matter (the crater of an active volacanoe sounds nice!) But that's NOT where this is headed, you know. People historically ignore nature and real people and embrace entertainment instead.
=^..^= all your rodent are belong to us
After visiting the Litrix website, I'm impressed by the sheer scale of the hardware involved with making the displays. For an adequate comparison, imagine two 2-drawer filing cabinets side by side. This means something spectacular; Anyone who can purchase the machinery can produce a display, and due to the sheer size, can even produce displays in a store front setting under their own brand stamping.
This opens up a huge boon to the small computer retailer. Want to sell displays? Print 'em! Save a bundle on the costs of shipping heavy glass CRTs, and the risk of shipping fragile TFT displays.
Due to pre and post printing processes, the likelihood of being able to "print your own" display are slim, since more than likely you still would need to test the leads to the polymer substrate, calibrate the individual displays, test for bad pixels, and laminate the whole pile together. In other words, don't expect to save a bundle by buying the fabrication hardware and doing it yourself, at least not until Avery or some other mainstream paper manufacturer comes out with a "EZ LEP" package, complete with inks you could only use once (logically, by the time the display dies, the ink cart will be dried out).
Still, this does a good deal for both online retailers and brick and mortar shops, and opens up a world of possibilities.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
But an electronic book means that you can search the entire text for a phrase. And not only would a proper one allow you to write in the margins, but it would be able to index your annotations.
Do you really need to dog-ear the pages if you can simply do a search on the book for everywhere you wrote 'cool quote'?
Just because it works, doesn't mean it isn't broken.
While I don't expect you to find much support for this idea on Slashdot, I agree completely. Technology will always advance, and the TV you buy to replace your current one when it craps out will doubtlessly be marginally better than today's state-of-the-art. You might even have a wristwatch communicator in a couple years.
But, really, who cares? People still cry. Children go hungry and cold. Murderers roam free, friends betray, dictators massacre. If you want to take a selfish point of view, then consider whether a roll-up monitor will keep you warm as a lover's arms can. There is no love in stuff. Just stuff.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
Do you know what I would do with a flexible plastic monitor? Here's my top ten list:
And remember -- the suggestions above are just the beginning -- with your own flexible plastic monitor or TV the possibilities are endless!
Enjoy responsibly!!!
[1] but the ice cream is poisoned (that's bad). But it comes with your choice of free toppings! (that's good) the toppings are also poisoned. (that's bad.)
The Apple guys then asked us what was the missing link preventing anyone from producing the contraption. The answer: "folding glass." Of course, we know now (and probably did then, just we didn't want to admit it) that the CPU's and graphics processors of the time would have choked on the OS needed to pull off the magic.
What I don't understand is why people think controlling your computer by talking to it is a good idea. Information transfer is more precise and (often) faster via keyboard (and that's ignoring mouse-based tasks that have no easy verbal-command equivalents).
Even on a PDA, I have a hard time believing that verbal commands are faster than stylus gestures. Perhaps as a very limited set of shortcuts...
Remember when touch-screens were going to be the new thing in input devices for desktop computers? Remember how ergonomics rapidly ripped that idea to shreds? Same deal. Use input modes only where they make sense.
[Another ObNitpick: They should have worried more about speech recognition, which is still only a partly-solved problem. A pair of rigid screens is an adequate, if annoying, solution to the folding problem.]
[Last ObNitpick: Good luck getting any computer that's not sapient to understand and appropriately react to naturally-spoken English, as opposed to rigidly defined commands.]
Wow. With headlines like "Roll-up TV screens to hit living rooms" and "This brings the dream of flexible plastic monitors and TVs a step closer to fruition", you'd think that these are ready to be rolled off the shelf. Actually, it doesn't. It simply means that instead of fighting with each other, they'll now work together and thus hopefully save some money. However, imagine if you will, that betamax and vhs joined forces before the marketplace was well defined? Who would win? Exactly, it wouldn't matter because the winner would already be decided and we'd all have betamax players. So this is probably not seen as a good thing because a) these companies will no longer compete (something I'm sure all /.ers see as a negative) and b) they will carve up/patent this technology and innovation will stagnate (HDTV) and c) it will ripple to other technologies which may or may not rely on this in the future because they will have a stranglehold on the technology. Finally, when companies merge with similar products and or technologies, the resulting product-lines are often lowest-common denominators of the two. A little research and you'll find business history littered with just such examples.....
"This isn't a study in computer science, its a study in human behavior"
Whoa!
To hell with folding laptop monitors!
With this, you could make electric silly-putty!
-- Terry
Finally, I'll be able to shove porn down my pants!!! Super-sweet!!
XML causes global warming.
You mean this:
Takes out his pen. Opens it. Unrolls the OLED display inside. Connects it to the 15 LB desktop computer he was carrying. Watches some mpegs.
The computer technology is still bulky. You still need a power source to run it on. If you want fast internet access, you need a wire. Want to type a quick email? You still need a keyboard!
The future is when ALL of these needs are eliminated.
Considering that porn drives technology, it'll probably be among the FIRST applications for this new technology.
Some things I learned about displays in Psych 342 at Cornell: Display quality can be primarily measured by luminence, resolution, refresh rate, color gamut, and contrast ratio. While it is relatively easy to produce the necessary refresh rate to fool the human eye and display resolution is improving (also depends on how far from display you are), the rest are hard. DLP probably does the best job of current displays, and it maxes out at about 1000:1 contrast ratio, but it doesn't really count since it operates by reflecting light, and this thread is about flat-panel displays. I forget the exact values for daylight-level luminence and contrast ratio, but they are at least two orders of magnitude larger than what is currently available in CRTs or LCDs.
but to take a small room and create a large, totally synthetic environment with an extended synthespian family, all via subscription service. And there you sit all day, listening to their dramatic, interesting lives while your own dull, wasted existance drains away.
It'd be an interesting exercise with the Sims. Watch them walk around and interact with each other... see sims from the neighbour's house come over.
you've been doing it for over 5 years now..
= 19 97-08-05
or did you all miss the fact that their first press release - which reads amazingly similar to their latest ones (without the patent listings) came out in 1997?
http://www.universaldisplay.com/newsroom.php?pr
until i can buy a monitor based on this technology, i'm putting it up there with 10 GB sugarcube sized holoraphic memory, a actual Windows/Mac desktop-replacement Linux, and 3G.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
Dude I can fit a 21inch CRT in my pants with all the weight loss from being laid off :P
A "predator suit" would need to reflect differently to different angles, which no pixel system can do.
You could use some form of sensor ($5 webcam mounted on a helmet) to detect the location of a single viewer and match the image to their location based upon the current shape of the suit, but you couldn't match the image to more than one viewpoint with this technology.
Adjusting the image to account for viewer focus would be another design consideration.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
a condom. to give you the penis of her desires?
If a screen only lasts a year or two with the current OLED technology, why is that a big deal?
Make the screens replaceable. I mean, this technology makes it sound like they're pretty cheap to make since they are built using a modified (granted, more complex) inkjet technolgy. You've also now got a whole new after-market for laptop screens.
Don't need super-hgh rez - get a cheaper one.
Want to have a tri-fold-out screen at the office, and a lighter, energy efficient one for on the plane?
So what if the screen goes out if you can just buy a new screen for a few benjamins?
If i could get a lot more battery life, have a much more rugged screen, and it was mch brighter - i'd pay $200 for a newer screen(with higher rez, of course) every year and a half.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
This sounds almost like it could be incorporated into clothing.
Great business idea: instead of logo'ed clothing, how about clothing with annoying flashing, pulsating, scrolling advertisements on the back and front!
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
Where do you propose the old ones go? At least with CRT the environmental nightmare is on a ~5 year life-cycle. With this it may be just as toxic (not to mention the mfg process used) but it would be on a much faster life-cycle.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
The road runner and using this to plaster a fake image of a tunnel enterance over a some brick wall, in hopes that some poor schelp will try running through it...
(And it'll probably be a terrorist too!)
[Now, I'm off to lift my le... Um, visit... at another place.]
not if you had one of these babies!
The head of technology and strategic planning spoke. Despite the hype-ticle on CNN, it was clear from what he said that you shouldn't expect flexible displays any time soon - probably not inside 10 years. I don't get a T-shirt with space invaders on it any time soon. You can expect conformable displays within a few years - i.e. rigid, shaped screens. However it's likely that you will see other companies building these; CDT is an IP company. They hold fundamental patents on light emmiting polymers. They aren't just a holding company; they do develop technology, but their basic strategy is to licence to others. They will have bought Opsys to strengthen their patent portfolio.
If you are currently building hardware that needs small mono screens you should definitely check out CDT. Their displays have superb characteristics - an almost 180 degree viewing angle, bright even in sunlight, and very low power requirements. The examples of the technology that he showed were very 'version 1.0', but show brilliant promise.
Next CHASE meeting - 12 Nov - Invisible Networks are building community broadband networks in rural villages around Cambridge. Currently using 802.11.
Jeff Veit
www.tanasity.com and www.tangledtime.com
The good ol' days of the pr0n centerfold return.
Never thought the pages of my monitor would get mysteriously "glued" together, but once again, technology has an answer.
...a monitor I can roll up and put in my pocket. That will be SO much more convenient to carry around than a PDA, huh?
"Is that a Pentium in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?"
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
Edna: You've cut back on everything: salaries, supplies, the food -- [takes a bite] -- I don't care what you say, I can taste the newspaper.
Skinner: Posh. Shredded newspapers add much-needed ruffage and essential inks.
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
I can't help but notice that, in all the articles that I've seen on this over the past year, including the 3 links listed by /., there is not a single photo or computer-generated example of this so-called "roll-up TV".
I'm suspiciouse of any physical product that get's this kind of press, but still cannot show some sort of demo, hell, even some FakeWare cardboard cutout or something! I mean, my God... it's a TV -- show it to me. You'd think if they were making real progress that they would be all over showing people the future, rather than talking about it.
If Slashdot is where the spelling-challenged go when they die, I'm in heaven.
i was struck, when watching Lain for the first time, just how much the creators must have loved Scully-era Apple dreams of the future. ("Navi" stood for "Knowledge Navigator", and ran something futuristic called "Copland OS", i.e. what was going to be Apple's new modern OS before they canned the project and bought NExT, begetting OS X)
The machines in Lain are surprisingly close to the newest Palm handhelds, and Copland OS looks a lot like OS X (ok, maybe a bit more 3-D).
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
Ehmm. can anybody tell me why I would like to roll up my screen? My laptop has a big rigid part, and the screen fits right along the top. My worstation has a flat screen sitting on top of the desk. Now if the screen would be higher quality than either, I can see myself rolling it up and taking it home. But for me to be rolling up screens they have to be cheap. You don't just do that with an expensive screen, do you? But if they are cheap I'll just buy one for at home and one for at work.
I just don't see a combination of cheap/expensive and usefulness that would make the "able to roll it up" feature essential.
Now there are a bunch of geeky things you can do with a rolable screen. But that's just geeky. Nothing really very useful.
If these things would become very, very cheap, then maybe. However, as they are going to have to have adressable pixels, you will have to have per-pixel electronics, and even when the price of those drops below 0.01 cents per pixel, you still want more than a million of them. And it's not pretty if there is a "dead" one. On a digital camera, you can map the dead pixels out. Nobody is going to notice. But on a screen there is not much you can do about a dead pixel.... Getting a million pixels "just right" is going to stay tricky and expensive.
Roger.
When was the last time you said to yourself, "I would really like to roll up my display and carry it with me."
... that's uber cool (: I've always wanted a wall that I could change the decore of on a regular and effortless basis (:
Do we roll up paper work now? The only thing I can think of is newspapers and large prints that go through the mail. Everything is layed flat and secured as such.
Now, covering a wall or ceiling in these things
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!