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Sony Projector Gets Bright Images From Black Screen
da_foz writes "Sony has developed a new projector that can give a bright, unfaded picture without the need to eliminate ambient light. The secret is that they project onto a black screen instead of a white one. Their screen uses species filters so that white ambient light is absorbed, but the red, green, and blue light from the projector is reflected. Sony sees a possible use in home entertainment systems because of the ability to have a much bigger picture than conventional TVs as well as businesses adopting the projectors for presentations."
Actually, if it only reflect three specific wavelengths
then it's probably the _blackest_ thing you've ever seen.
If it reflects _anything_, it isn't black.
Of course it is. Every black object in the world reflects some light.
You are confusing black bodies, an abstract notion defined by physiscists which does not exist in the real, physical world, and the color black, which our eyes percieve just fine whether or not it is a shiny surface with a lot of reflection, or a matted surface with minimal (but still greater than zero) reflection. The black BMW I had the misfortune of following the other day positively glinted in the midday sun.
With light, black is defined as the abscence of color. With pigment, black is the presenece of all color (analogous to white light).
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'but Sony knows how risky it is to play "exclusive" in the market and make things incomatible from rest of the world'
Err, one word, Memory Stick, well, two words then.
It seems like a feasible variation, at least to me -- keep the mostly-black coating to absorb nuisance ambient light, but allow transmission at narrow RGB wavelengths. Then backlight it with an LED screen, with the diodes tuned to the three transmission frequency ranges.
Don't know whether it's technically possible, but if it is, I bet it's in the works already.
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