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Multimedia Windowpanes
prostoalex writes "Washington Post talks about recent innovations in the world of windows (yes, lowercase). A Minnesota company is offering windows that double as entertainment centers, being used as projection screens for home entertainment systems and DVD players. A Yale professor is quoted to be excited about new product: 'One minute you're looking out your bay window at your neighbor's back yard, and the next you're watching Tom Cruise and 'Top Gun''."
Anyhow, I have a really hard time seeing this going anywhere. The problem with any sort of serious home automation or nifty built-in gadgets is that ten years down the line they're either a tangle of useless, unsupported wires and circuit boards from extint companies or laughably outdated (or both). I remember seeing a new item about a guy who sued Bob Vila and "This Old House" for pushing him to install a computer-heavy home control system for everything from the heat to the garage door a few years back -- the company tanked and now he has to rip the malfunctioning POS out and put in new stuff (which is obviously expensive).
So, I'll pass. Besides, the last thing I need is an incentive to get even less daylight.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
...does this look like from the outside? Can anyone who's outside your house see what you're watching? I don't see what the real benefit of this is, other than the "gee whiz!" factor. Not to mention what happens when your kids playing catch in the house break your window *and* TV at the same time!
- Faz
I'm just kinda wondering what the optimal performance conditions are for this product?
My guess is that the light has to be greater on the inside than on the outside, much like seeing a reflection using a mirror. Also there is the problem of temperature. Most electronics don't particularly enjoy being used at extreme temps. I'm also guessing that this thing has some type of current running through it causing an extreme temp change in the glass.
So how long until the first "projection window" explodes during the winter?
Maybe if they could just darken completely so you wouldn't have to see your neighors, yeah, I'd buy (plain old polarizing film, that is). Or maybe if they could give houses in California a view of something besides the side of the neighbor's house 8 feet away it would work. If they could just maybe make the house next door even 20 feet away it would sell.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
In all seriousness, human eyes can't focus that close. Does anybody know of a technology that would allow to display images on a contact lens with a focal point a few feet into the air in front of said contact lens? Something like an LCD hologram or something? I'd be curious to know if that is possible at all.
of his SF home. I think when the doorbell rings, the door goes transparent so you can see who's outside. Also, cars can be fitted with these windows which keep the car cool (or the contents invisible) when the windows are opaque. Both use LCD films on the glass.
The technology is similar to LCD displays, and has been around for years. I could have bought windows like this ten years ago and put a projection TV in front of them. The side windows as speakers, that's new. I mean, electrostatic speakers are old, but I'm pretty sure using glass in them is new.
For those that haven't read the article, the windows turn opaque white when no current is running throught them. They make a perfect big white screen to shine a projector on. They aren't making a huge LCD monitor into a window and displaying a picture by shining light through it, they are projecting a picture onto it.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Half-right. From the FA:
The article doesn't mention the underlying technology by name, but it's probably simply an LCD panel similar to that in a notebook display. Whether the relaxed liquid crystal strands uncurl with (white, transparent) or against (black, opaque) the plane of the polarisation filter is always just a manufacturing choice. In notebooks it can be a matter of saving power by minimising the amount of screen you need to change from the default, on average. A white-on-black character display should probably relax to black, while a black-on-white Mac-style windowed display might better relax to white. Of course I'm not claiming they always use that much logic in the decision (Apple maybe since they seem to put a lot of thought into powersaving, but more likely they just buy what's cheapest like everyone else).
The tendency of the windows in the article to relax to opacity could be thought of as a privacy feature, I suppose. It does seem odd when the device is being sold as a window that can be used as a screen, though (as opposed to the converse).
This technology has been around for a while now, but it's very expensive. The use is not for windows that face outside, but for inner windows.
I've heard of corporate conference rooms that use windows like this. When the meeting becomes "closed door" all of the windows can be frosted.
I live in a small apartment, but it seems bigger than it is because of many internal windows between rooms. The problem is privacy. Shades and blinds are ugly. Instant frosting is what I've been looking for. If the prices come down, I'll buy.
Er, they never said the window goes black, they just said it goes 'opaque'. Most likely it goes white.
This tech is nothing new. An art house exists in Europe that uses solar power and is full of windows like this. It's lcd-embedded glass. The house itself is on rails and rotates to face the sun (it's a circular house on tracks).
One cool feature the house has is everchanging antique mirrors. You know those old mirrors with random black patterns in them? These actually MOVE and change over time. There's a thin layer of bacteria that eat the substrate and move from place to place. Crazy, but interesting.
> I'm not trying to imply that you can't break this glass, because you can. However you can beat a patio door with a sledge hammer and not be sure of it breaking.
.177 cal air rifle. The bullets just flattened and bounced off. I'm in the city so the 9mm wasn't an option. I finally taped an auto body pick hammer to a long pole and standing to one side started beating on them. It took a few whacks but when they finally went they broke into a million little 1/4" square pieces. Then I had to deal with sweeping up about 200 lbs of broken safety glass off the driveway. Just a story presented FYI.
Very true. I replaced my patio door a few years ago and tried to bust up the old ones to throw in the trash. I stood them up against a closed garage door and hit them with a few different sizes of hammers as hard as I dared and they didn't even think of breaking. Threw a 12 lb sledge at it and only succeeded in knocking the door to the ground without breaking.
Since I didn't want to be too close when a 3'x7' double pane of glass exploded I stood back and fired several shots at it with a