LCD Screens Almost Paper-thin

DarklordSatin writes "Nature.com has an article up about new LCDs that are thin enough to roll up and can display black and white at 96 dpi. More coverage by Wired and Scientific American. Thanks go to Arstechnica for the heads up." Wow. Let the speculation for new uses begin! Update: 05/10 14:59 GMT by CN : Whoops, this is really a dupe of an older story that slipped through because I only searched for LCDs. Ah well, it's still cool.

Comments

Cool

[Hadur]

Not a flame here, but I would rther see the price of LCD screens go down than their size.

Re:Cool

[Chicane-UK]

Agreed..

I work in a job as a Computer Technician, and people keep saying to me they really want to get an LCD screen 'because it looks cool' - fair enough I suppose, but why pay for a 17" mid range LCD screen over a 21" Natural Flat top of the line CRT monitor? Ok, it saves on some desk space..

Its a no brainer for me.. i'd still put my money on CRT every time.

Re:Cool

[targo]

why pay for a 17" mid range LCD screen over a 21" Natural Flat top of the line CRT monitor?

The ratio might come down once US manufacturers also start figuring the cost of recycling into the price. In Europe it is mandatory for computer makers to take back their old stuff, and recycle it in a reasonable way, as opposed to the US where most old computers end up in basements or landfills. Of course, it makes prices higher but in the end, everybody wins.
And recycling a CRT is much more expensive than recycling an LCD, so the price difference is smaller.

Uses

[brejc8]

Let the speculation for new uses begin!
I always wanted to wallpaper my house with something that I could change at a flick of a swich.
At night it would turn into little moons and stars.
In the morning it would reflect what the weather is like.
During the day I could watch tv or browse the web on any wall in the house.
Or even implant cameras in the other rooms so it would look like you have see through walls.

Ah well back to the reals world.

Re:Uses

[DJPenguin]

At night it would turn into little moons and stars.
In the morning it would reflect what the weather is like.

Hmmm... that already happens in my room! OH! My mistake, I left the curtains open.

That's just great.

[grub]

Now I'll have to wear my glasses when I go to the can or I might accidently wipe my arse with my LCD display.

Uses

[darkov]

At a refresh rate of 4Hz, it's not much use as a monitor, I think they currently use this stuff for signage displays and the like. It might be useful for a e-book sort of thing, where it's unlikely you'll be reading faster than four pages a second.

The big question is how much does it cost and how durable/stable is it?

Obvious...?

[m00nun1t]

"Let the speculation for new uses begin!"

Isn't the first use for every new technology a new way of accessing, displaying or making pr0n?

This is not LCD.

[warlock]

A quick glance at the linked article would be sufficient to figure out they're not LCD. I'd be very surprised if they made LCD displays that could be rolled like that!

Is it just me?

[alwsn]

Maybe it's just me, but I've been visiting slashdot for 3+ years now, and I keep seeing articles about new, paper thing, cheap displays that will revolutionize everything, and really small, cheap, huge(storage capacity), solid state storage devices.

I look forward to new stuff as much as anyone, but in those 3 years, hard drive storage and monitors keep making slower (in comparison to what is mentioned in articles such as these), but steady process.

I no longer trust articles saying 'everything will be different in a year.' From my experience, it won't be different and revolutionary, it will just be slightly better.

Re:yeah coool

[Anonymous Coward]

How about a wireless pocket sized computer, something like that that Personal Server Intel touted a while back. You could use a thin-film flexible circuit and transceiver to "talk" to it. Super-thin touchscreens won't be too far off either. Then you can add wireless broadband 'net access to the Personal Server, and you've effective got the world in your pocket.

A cool use...

[Flounder]

Walls covered with these displays on the inside that can display anything. No need for windows, just make the displays show what's outside. The appearance of glass walls without the privacy issues. The only thing missing will be natural sunlight and opening a window for a breeze. But you can make any s**thole apartment seem to be a cabin in the woods, or beachfront property, or floating 150 miles above the planet's surface.

finally...technology in the bathroom

[thomas_klopf]

We know we're finally in an information age when we can start leaving technology in the bathroom...

Why not an electronic newspaper?

[Oculus Habent]

Sure, you can't fold it, but you could roll it up in to a 1" tube that contains batteries, communications, etc. Carry a 1-foot long 1" diameter tube that rolls out into a 19" screen. And it could be much smaller if you wanted.

This would be perfect for "paperback" e-books. Even with the quarter-second refresh time on the screen it would acceptable for "turning the page". Or you could produce a book of the screens, and have the pages fill in with whatever you are reading.

How about electronic blueprints? Dynamic wall art that you can move around easily? Status displays on pillars in the airport?

If they can reduce the refresh time it would be incredible. Imagine a roll-up 19" screen for crowded server closets.

My Use for This...

[naelurec]

I am a musician (pianist) ... Currently I play at a church and for each service, I have to pull music from 5 different books + sheet music, etc..etc..

Needless to say, first, its a pain to carry around those books with me, flipping through them during a service, finding particular songs, etc...

So back in 1999 when I bought my Visor Deluxe PDA, I thought it would be cool to scan in all of that sheet music and have the PDA hooked up to some e-paper sheets (probably two of them) and then use a foot switch to "turn the pages" ..

The setup would be very cool, small and portable. Before a service, I'd simply download the lineup into the system and everything would be ready to go. No carrying around the books, no page flipping, etc.. Heck .. given the way I play the piano (music laying flat on top of the piano), it could possibly make it look like I memorized all the music to the congregation :-)

Of course, I heard about e-paper back then as well.. and so far, no products.. so by the time it *IS* released, i might already use something like a tablet PC ....

Dupe

[x mani x]

This is a dupe of a recent story. At least the articles it points to are different. Same product, though.

-Mani

Clothes as displays?

[vidnet]

Similar technology could even make clothes that double as video screens.

I hope they add an alpha channel to those!

Cheap enough to use as?

[unfortunateson]

The two goals, which in my mind are separate directions, are speed and independence from wires.

If I can 'print' an e-book, I don't care about refresh rate. But is a 300-page e-paperback cheaper than buying, say 50 paperbacks? 20 paperbacks? Or is it silly to even think of having 300 pages of this stuff, and I'd just 'leaf' through pages like I do on my PDA currently? Maybe I'm old, but I still like the page-flipping aspect of books, especially if I want to flip back to find when a character that just stepped out of the wings first showed up.

If this stuff is as durable, and as cheap, power-friendly and fast as LCDs, I'd be happy to drop a fair chunk of my PDA's weight. Cell-phone screens sound like another perfect application.

Now for the more far-out stuff:
How about rewritable MTG cards?
Medical 'patches' that tell you when they need replacing, or can monitor glucose or other body functions.
Devices when you need to measure bend

Not LCD....

[WareW01f]

Here is what the display is made of... And here is the last ./ story. Come on guys! Don't get my hopes up like that!

As a side note, I was at Epcot and got to see Xerox's Gyricon (now marketed as 'SmartPaper') up close and personal. The only issue was that the person at the booth barely knew how the stuff worked and did not have so much as a magnet to show it change. Someday...

Folding, bending.

[j1mmy]

The point of these displays (as stated in the article) is to create a one-page newspaper. They can currently roll it up pretty well, but it can't be folded. What I want to know is why you would fold it.

If it's a one-page newspaper, you've only got one page. It can be the size of an 8.5x11 piece of paper. It's an entirely different presentation medium and they're still thinking in terms of traditional papers. The biggest failure of the traditional newspaper (as an interface) is that you have to do all the folding and whatnot. Most papers can't be held with one hand without folding them up a bit. It's a hassle, plain and simple.

If you've got one sheet of electronic paper, of a reasonable size, you can hold it in one hand and just read it.

I can see how folding would be useful for storing the paper, but I don't see that as a critical issue.

Farewell Horizontal

[handy_vandal]

How about programmable animated tattoos using skin-mountable biofoil?

The idea appears in K.W. Jeter's Farewell Horizontal, an engaging novel about motorcycle gang warfare on the outer face of a miles-high cylinder.

Forget the LCDs

[ryanvm]

Forget the LCDs - the real story here is that a Slashdot editor made an attempt to prevent dupes. ;-)