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Harrods Sells Holographic TV
beuh_dave writes "Harrods is selling a holographic TV, CLARO, for £15,000. The Holoscreen is a revolutionary holographic film which displays any image fed through a projector at a specific angle on to a transparent display. All other light is ignored. The result is a remarkably bright and sharp image quality - even in brightly lit environments."
This isn't really "holographic" in the sense of a 3D image in space, or a perception of a 3D image.
All it is is a screen that hangs in space (or supported by glass as in the site) and only shows images directed on it from a certain angle - from a projector sitting conspicuously on the floor behind it.
It's pretty, but hardly world shattering.
RST
Rear projection onto a transparent screen. Kinda cool but not worth £15000, not by a long shot. It seems to me to be a case of them mixing "can do" up with "should do".
99 bottles of beer in 175 characte
From the article (which is rather lacking in technical details), the display sounds like a holographically-recorded diffractive optical element on a glass substrate. If so, I'm curious how they compensate for the dispersion intrinsic to the diffraction phenomenon (since selling a 15,000 quid monochrome display is probably not a commercially-viable option :-p). Also, since the display claims to be angularly selective (it has to be if it only accepts a specific projection direction), I wonder if it has a similarly selective viewing angle (like early LCD displays, which were only bright and clear at normal incidence).
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I'd like to know how much these devices will cost elsewhere. Harrods have a reputation for inflating prices above and beyond high street level. For example, a toy that costs £10 in every other shop is selling for £25 in Harrods. You are paying for the experience of shopping in the store.