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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
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...
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.
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
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?
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
>rm -rf /bin/laden /bin/laden not found
rm:
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.]
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.
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