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Motorola Debuts Nano-Emissive Flat Screen
brain1 writes "PhysOrg is reporting that Motorola has developed a 5" flat-screen prototype display that uses carbon nanotubes. The display appears to promise lower costs for a full 40" HDTV screen bringing the price down to $400. The technology uses standard color TV phosphors, has a response time equaling CRTs', all in a package 1/8" thick. The display characteristics meet or exceed CRTs', such as fast response time, wide viewing angle, and wide operation temperature. All these are areas that LCDs are weak in. Is this the breakthrough we needed to finally make HDTV and flat-panel computer displays *really* affordable?"
Looks like it's going to be a race to the finish line on who can bring us the cheapest HDTV and Flat panel technology. I read an article in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend which had quotes from the chief engineer of displays at Sony where he was talking about a break through processing system they are working on which they expect will drop the price by screen as much as 45%. What they weren't sure of is when it will be ready to roll out.
The company I work for (DuPont) is working on a different avenue. We're persusing OLEDs to replace plasma and LCDs. We'll see how things go.
Be better in bed. Wikiafterdark!
Sure, it sounds great. And there's even a working prototype and cost estimate for a 40" model. But how far off is that possibility? No mention in the article.
Why do HD receivers still cost more than the average ones? The cable plans with HD are more than the ones without..Getting the Screen cheaper is great, but there are still a lot of costs associated with HDTV which end up being more than Joe Sixpack can't afford.
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
I'd still say its a bit high to be considered the "low cost necessary to bring HDTV to the masses."
I for could probably see myself paying that much for it, as would a large amount of geeks and/or yuppies. However, I'd say for most people, its not worth paying $400 dollars for a TV of any size or picture quality. Especially when you consider for all intensive purposes, there isn't much on teevee worth watching in HDTV.
Games and DVDs on the other hand...
400 bucks buys a used car...I won't really consider these affordable until they're down to 200 or less.
For just about every piece of technology I've always found that its always overhyped in some way (purely the fault of marketers). I wouldn't hold my breath over an announcement like this, while yes it may be very interesting and perhaps be a forward-moving technology for the industry, I have heard "this will make ___ cheaper, and is better" far too many times to start going "omg, now I must migrate everything over to it!". Time always reveals the winners.
Try this
I'd really like the flat panel technologies to get cheaper, but we've been hearing about it for a long time. I keep reading articles about new display technologies that never actually bear fruit. This new prototype from Motorolla sounds promising...$400 for a 40-inch HDTV sounds like a bargin. I'll buy one as soon as I read about it on my "electronic ink" newspaper. :^)
/impatient
/sorry about the fark slashes
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a)PhysOrg is just a slightly more subtle version of PR Newswire. Note there's no author. Slashdot, please stop linking to crap like this. Manufacturers- if you're going to put out a press release, just call it a #@$!ing press release- and stop insulting our intelligence.
b)Manufactured cost is NOT market cost. Not even close. If a NE display lasts longer than plasma and looks equally nice- you can be damn sure it will cost MORE to the consumer.
c)They claim longer lifetime, but no range/estimate is given, even though they surely know what it is. If it's a year or two more than plasma (which is lucky to last 3-4 years), pardon me while I let out a big 'ol yawn.
d)A five-inch unit was produced because, most likely, they haven't been able to get high enough yield rates to do a 42" display. Call us when you've got something that actually resembles your target application in terms of scale.
Please help metamoderate.
This will *NOT* be a Flat CRT. Which does it's magic with the use of a flyback transformer, and a shadowmask. When done really well with good content you get an image where you cannot distinguish the individual pixels.
This will have similar issues that CRT's have. It will have visible SDE and generally will not have good close-up performance characteristics compared to CRT or LCD.
I do welcome our 400 dollar pricetags, but it looks like it will be a direct race with Plasma which has already dramatically improved the phosphor half-life (to that of as good or better than CRT's), reduced and removed burn-in, and good brightness and viewing angles. LCD's have one last gasp with Lumileds which look to finally improve brightness and color so that TV doesn't look like watching a flourescent tube. I think you will see 42" 16x9 for $1000 next year. I think Plasma wins. FED are going to be too far behind the engineering curves.
But I'm not.
Every new display technology in the last 10 years either:
1. Is so astonishingly far from making it to market that I'll likely be blind before it gets there. (OLED, except for cell phones and the like)
2. Is touted as a quality, affordable solution, then is introduced only at the mid-high end (DLP, I'm looking at you)
3. Is never heard from again. (too many examples to list.)
I want something that's thinner and lighter than a CRT, without plasma burn-in, doesn't suffer from LCD's horrible color gamut, is sharper and cheaper than DLP, and lasts longer than OLED.
Bleh, maybe when I'm dead.
m-
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
A 40" NED panel manufacturing cost at $400 is nothing special. Add in the electronics, packaging, G&A, margins, distribution costs and so on and I bet you are looking at $2000 or more. That is in the same ballpark as what a 40" microdisplay HDTV costs today. It's more than what a 50" CRT RPTV costs.
Maybe the picture quality will be good, but so are current CRT RPTV's.
Well i looked at those screenshots and the quality doesn't seem any better than the screen i'm using now.
The price to consumers isn't going to be the cost plus some small markup. The price to consumers will be whatever the manufacturer figures will maximize their profit, which could be quite high considering the demand. They ain't no charity. That's very cool technology, do you think they would invest in that if they thought they couldn't patent it ? ;-)
They'll keep improving this stuff until we're all wearing XHDTV contacts or retinal implants or having our video directly beamed to the pleasure center ^W^W visual cortex.
Agreed. That's when a shift will be made to improve on mop and wetvac technology
I love how this got moderated "troll". Folks- digital TV is supposedly "mandated" for switchover. Except nobody's making cheap digital TVs- so people aren't buying.
People also aren't buying because current plasma and LCD units just DO NOT LAST! We have a TV in our house that is at least 15 years old, and works just fine (yes, it's got an IR remote, yes, it tunes basic cable, etc). While Motorola's press release hasn't said much about exactly how long the lifetime will be on these, if the TV industry wants consumers to buy 'em in numbers large enough to make the "mandate" possible- they'd better make them a tad more durable.
Please help metamoderate.
Is this the breakthrough we needed to finally make HDTV and flat-panel computer displays *really* affordable?
.... profi ... hang on, look what we've invented!
Not if Motorola has anything to do with it.
MOTOROLA CORPORATE STRATEGY circa 1930 (CONFIDENTIAL)
1. Invent something brilliant.
2. Overprice it.
3. Watch your competitors undercut you with better products
4. Produce a "budget" model to compete with said competitors
5. Get branded the lame duck of the industry
6. Claim to have invented it and therefore have a god-given right to overcharge and underfeature it.
7. Umm
Senior executives' strategies usually outlive technologies. Unfortunately.
"It's not your information. It's information about you" - John Ford, Vice President, Equifax
Another noticeable thing in the article was that LCD electronics are low cost, but what about low power?
If I can get a 40 inch HDTV screen that uses as much energy as a lightbulb, it has a major impact both on heat and power usage.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Wu-Tang Name: Half-Cut Skeleton Get your own Wu-Na
As a few other have hinted at, the original statement is highly misleading. Yes, the cost of the actual parts is a factor in determining the price of a product - but it's only one of many. It's effect on the price is also inversely proportional to how much the item is a 'luxury' item or a 'necessary item.'
So need to worry if you just spent $5k on a plasma which cost the manufacturer $3k to produce. Because if it cost them only $400 to produce it, they would still have charged you $5k...and rightfully so as you were willing to pay that amount in the first place.
So this is definitely exciting news for TV manufacturers as it will serve nicely to increase the profit margin. When will we benefit? When nobody wants to pay as much for a plasma anymore - and, more importantly, doesn't.
Near-infinite brightness [...] infinite sharpness?
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
CRT:
Very Fast Response Time
Perfect Viewing Angles
Massive and Heavy
LCD:
Lower Resolutions
Bad Viewing Angles
Bad Response Times (though recent 8ms panels reduce this immensely)
Expensive
Very Nice Colors
Thin and Light
Doesn't hurt the eye
Plasma:
Dies in 5 years due to gas leakage
Rear-projector:
Yea these suck from the sides or close-up so let's not even mention these
Carbon-nanotube (CNT) based Motorola Display:
Because it uses phosphors like in CRTs, good brightness
Fast response time
Good viewing angle
Thin and light
Cheap
DOESNT NEED BACKLIGHT (no more washed-out colors in sunlight)
Longevity compared to plasmas
Though this is a 5" prototype, it is a 5" section of a larger 42" CNT grid for a large HD display, so stop bitching about this being 5 inches
Other notes: Since CNTs are small and the phosphor technology is the same as in CRTs (excite phosphor atoms to give off photons by making appropriate electrical connections using switches...in this case, CNT's) I am assuming that we can actually get large high-resolution monitors (this one is 1280 x 720) perhaps just like the crazy CRTs with 2XXX by 1XXX resolution.
Yeah kinda like those old DVD comercials that were on VHS tapes.
wiction.org
LCD gamut is not poor because it is digitally driven. It's poor because LCD is a backlit technology.
When an LCD screen tries to show "black" a large portion of the backlight is still showing through. Moreover, this varies across the screen.
This is an emissive technology using the same phosphors as a CRT. Banding might be a problem, but it's insignificant compared to the color range problems on LCDs. Banding is tolerable in many applications. Shimmering and lack of contrast is not. Most LCD manufacturers don't push to avoid banding because the contrast problem makes the LCD unsuitable for color sensitive work anyway.
In fact, this should get *better* range than a CRT, because any cell can turn completely off. Any but the highest quality CRT has a problem with rise time and such. The brightness level of parts of the image affect other parts.
Trust me, you will not see the price reduction that you hope. Even if it only costs $10 to produce, they will still sell it at $4-6k for a 40-50" screen simply because it is better then everything else. As a result of it being better then products that cost 4-5x its cost to make, its sale price will still be the same price as competing products, maybe undercutting them 5-10%, but not much more. The last thing they want it to drop the floor value of the market, which is what would happen if they actually produced and sold their own products costs. You price a product as to what the market can withstand to maximize profits, not to maximize market share. Simple macro-economics will tell you that if people are willing to pay that much for a product, then you sell it at that price point even if your product isn't that expensive. Why should you ever want to NOT take the extra money the consumers are willing to pay.
We will not see a major drop in price of HDTV's until everyone is producing these panels. Why start a price war in a market that offers you chances to make a 500% profit? Until there are at least 2 or 3 companies with similar products, we will not see a drop in prices. As a monopoly on the technology, (which you are if you are the first and only one to market), you can set your prices to whatever you feel consumers will pay.
Take this comparison. Did the price of albums drop when CD's were introduced? Heck no. We all know that it costs pennies to make the actual medium and put the data on that medium, vs dollars for tape with the same music. But you will typically pay $5-6 more for a CD then a tape, why, because the quality is better and the market can afford the price (well one could argue this, but this is the music industry's feeling). The same will be with this TV technology. It is much cheaper to make, but since it is technologically better then the others available, it will sport a higher price.
Back to the subject of my topic, Toshiba already has been demo'ing this for several months now, it debued last September/October at all the trade shows. It is pretty much the exact same idea, just with a different element used instead of carbon nanotubes for the electron stream emmitter array. Has pretty much same exact bonuses as this technology does, thin, brighter screen, much higher contrast ration (10,000:1 is quoted and measured from working screen!), full color support, refresh times faster then CRT's, less power consumption then LCD, weight about the same as LCD's, as high a pixel count as the best LCD's. In otherwords, take the best benefits of all the current TV standard technologies (plasma, LCD, CRT) and combine then best characteristics of each into one TV without any of the particular drawbacks of the different technologies (i.e. no poor contrast ratio and pixel count of Plasma's, poor contrast ratio and refresh times of LCD's, bulky size, weight and power usage of CRT's).
What this all means is if you are planning on buying a HDTV now or the near future, you absolutely are stupid if you purchase something right now and do not wait the 2-3 months for this technology to be available. You are simply throwing $2-10k down the toilet and flushing, because this stuff truely and utterly beats everything that is currently available by a VERY noticable margin.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
A Field emission display. Technology Review Had an article on it back in november with some explination of the technology and the hurdles involved. The big one as it sounds that Moto can not get over is how you support the glass in the middle so it does not touch (front to back) as the display requires a vacuum to operate, fairly easy with a 5" diagonal very difficult with a 40" screen. This is surely not the first, but first for Moto.
-Me