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New LCD Flatscreen Concept: A Wedge of Plastic
SimianOverlord writes "The Register reports on an innovation in the field of flat panel LCD screens that promises cheaper screens with the same quality using existing manufacturing technology. A Flat Projection Display is created by bouncing light into a thin wedge of plastic from the bottom of the screen, at just the correct angle to allow the rebounded light to escape at the correct pixel. "We have to play around with the image to make sure that the pixels don't bunch up" explained Prof. Travis, the inventor. "If you don't do that the image can appear a little like an image reflected off water" The new technology has already attracted interest from a major TV maker, but don't expect them in your laptop until projector minaturization catches up."
The video on their website is crap. Don't try it...
If projection tech needs to catch up so we can use this in a TV or laptop, it'll have to catch up even more to allow it to be used in glasses. But a bigger problem is that the light exits the wedge vertically (or horizontally, if the wedge is sideways), so the diffusing coating they use to make it visible in front or behind would affect transparency.
Paul "Say no to feeping creaturism"
From the article, it sounds like they correct for this in software. You'd need to calibrate the firmware specially for each new display, but it's doable and can be automated.
Are you sure? This guy is my maths professor, it sounds like he's been working on it longer than you - and he has it working!
The idea may be simple (even I thought of it when I was about 13) but there are problems to be overcome, such as the pixels bunching due to the rays coming out at different angles, and black spaces between pixels due to the same problem. (Both overcome using a screen placed at a critical distance) He's also written completely new raytracing software (as you'd know if you'd read the website/attended his lectures) as standard raytracers model total internal reflection as a reflection off of a metal surface - which is not accurate for these purposes.
A quote (probably from star trek -- i forget): "History is written by the victors"
A Maths Professor? Did you mean Mathematics? Certainly math would enter into the equation. But I would think someone specializing in the physics of optics would be a better start. But that is not important. Say for instance, you take a buttload(technical term) of fiber optic elements and fuse them in a sequemce at one end, then move them up a surface(call it a screen) at intervals allowing each fiber to be a "pixel" on the "screen". Then you "shine" red, blue and green lasers into the base fibers(which are ordered to correspond with placement on the "screen" to enable a picture to form. Then further suppose that you designed a control program to coordinate the color display based upon video information. you can grab a bunch of fiber optic strands and do this yourself, using your garden variety of light to see how this could work. Using computer generated bending techniques, you could position the fibers into a screen usable as a display. It would be relatively heavy, but "solid state" stuff like this would be. Pump the colored laser impulses into the base of the device and you would have a "LightBrite" that was actually useful.
This would eliminate "pixel bunching". Controlling the thickness of the fibers would control the resolution of the display. Displays could even be "grown" from a substrate using current 3-d modeling.
> 1.) That's 1,920,000 individual pixels you want to work perfectly from a source
> that produces millions of displays. It's hard to do. Life sucks, sorry.
Throwing in high numbers isnt really a convincing counter-argument. After all
you also return defective 512MB DIMMs, although they contain 536,870,912 individual
bits. Or defective 160GB harddrives which contain, let me see, how many bits?
I know that its difficult to produce such a large panel without any error. But
OTOH there are ways to fix the problem:
a) panels can be binned. Actually the ISO standard suggests this, but manufacturers
simply dont do it. If they were to sell zero-defect panels as such, all non-
zero-defect panel would have to have at least 1 defect. Currently manufacturers
prefer to sell "0-5 defects" instead of "0 defects" and "1-5 defects".
b) panels can be repaired. The most visible types of defect are stuck-on pixels,
and stuck sub-pixels (which change the color of the intended pixel). With laser
technology any pixel can be "burned away" and be turned into less annoying
stuck-off pixels. While this doesnt make the panel "zero-defect", it certainly
would combine well with suggestion a), because getting a "1-5 defects" item at
lower price would only mean 1-5 dark pixels. Which is more tolerable than todays
surprise-bouquet of colored pixels.
c) panels can be designed fault-tolerant. It would perfectly be possible to use
redundancy to tolerate the loss of pixels. If, eg, 2 transistors were used
instead of one, with separate control wiring, the loss of one wouldnt matter.
Only when both were to be damaged (both of any one pixel), the pixel would
actually be unusable. This method costs panel space to implement, of course.
You wouldnt be able to fit the highest resolution into lowest dimension anymore,
or would have to improve the process resolution. This is the price to be paid
for higher yield.
Unless customers start to vote with money, things wont change. Today people complain
about defective pixels, but only few actually go out and get a "zero defects
guaranteed" product. Most just hope the best, and some try to return the bad ones
with a made-up excuse.
Marc