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Sharp's Double-View LCD TV
HaloPhreak writes "Sharp has released that they will soon release products that will "allow viewers sitting to the right and left of a screen to watch different channels." This is a new breakthrough in LCD technology my the industry-leading LCD manufacturer. In the article by Reuters, more than just television use is anticipated for this new technology. According to the article, laptops, ATM's, PDA's, cellphones, and even billboards you see in malls could use this technology."
What about sound?
Two different pornos at the same time.
this is a great day for technology.
So while at work, I could sneak one of these babies in, and have something 'questionable' going on at the side view, and when they storm up, I'll just be working. It will freak them all out!
I, for one, welcome our new dual channel television overlords!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
So you can be watching a solid, intelligent news program, while your friend can be watching some reactionary, right wing Nazi propaganda show. Wait, my TV already does that.
I'm just posting to say that I'll soon be posting about this article
I have had many a strained discussion of a TV show that I just watched with my wife...we obviously were watching two different shows on the same set.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
With dueling Samauri swords at 2 feet. sigh
I could have sworn I had seen this before on slashdot, yet not on such a commercial level. If I recall correctly, some student posted about viewing different pictures at different angles, and even had set up a demo. He hadn't managed to perfect two streaming television channels, if I recall correctly. Hmm...can anyone find/remember this?
The actual article.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
I wonder if the two channels could be split so that one eye would see a different picture than the other eye. I guess you would have to have the TV aimed directly at you, but it still would be pretty cool and you wouldn't have to wear some geeky looking glasses/helmet.
The real question is: Can I use mirrors to watch two channels at once? :)
The unofficial
The technology behind it is pretty similar to their 3D screen technology. The front of the panel is ribbed so that certain pixels are directed in different angles...I saw an article about this a few months ago. The one problem many forget to think about is it cuts your verticle resolution in half ;)
I really don't think it's a practical solution to anything...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
allow viewers sitting to the right and left of a screen to watch different channels.
Sounds like they made the glassesless 3D laptop screen, noticed that from a distance it gave two separate 2D images, and decided to try marketing that, too.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
From TFA:
Katayama acknowledged that sound would be an issue. He said directional speakers were one possibility in the future but earphones would be the most likely option at present.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
The reuters article seems to be more about patents than anything.
As for the sound question, thats one of the catches mentioned in the following:
Here is a better article.
Sharp did not disclose what products would use the new panel, but said it could eventually find uses in mobile phones, personal computers, car navigation systems and in various commercial applications.
Personal computers, TVs, and various commercial applications (whatever those might be) seem to make sense for this technology but I'm at a loss for what mobile phones and car navigation systems need it for...
Mobile phone screens are tiny, need to remain tiny, and shouldn't be attempting to distract drivers any more than they already are. Why do people need to see two things at once on a phone?
Car navigation systems are "small" in order to not completely take over the entire dash and leave room for other shit. Why would a car's navigation screen need to be smaller, making it more difficult to navigate with, while increasing distraction?
Is it just me or does the article linked to have nothing to do with two people being able to watch two channels? The article, to me, seems to say that Sharp and AU Optronics have agreed to share patents, nothing about sharing one screen with two people.
The article doesn't say anything, but am I missing something, or is this an advertorial?
My Sony TV does this already. I have a widescreen TV and I can watch 2 4:3 TV shows side by side. I forgot the exact measurements, but on my TV I can get something like 2 25" screens side by side.
The thing that sucks is that the "active" screen has the sound. Before I got a DVR and a program guide, it would have been really cool to have the sound on the inactive screen so that I could flip between channels while looking for something new to watch. However, my DVR does this now.
As soon as you put on headphones, you are no longer doing something with other people; you may as well just have a handheld device. The only possible use I can think of for this is a replacement for split-screen in games.
I emailed the editor -- I can't find a reference to the story anywhere in the post.
Perhaps over on this side of the room it's screwed up, if we all stood somewhere over to the left, we might see how this makes sense.
Chicken Mind-Reading Study Concludes
I see one problem with this: how is the audio transmitted to have each person listening to two different things?
Damien
i seem to remember that there was an article up about a year ago regarding directional sound using hyper-sonic waves. the waves traveled almost totally straight and cancelled each other out to form a beat that was audible as sound to us. Why not slap a couple of those puppies on this LCD and you now have directional sound and image? if someone could do this...they'd probably make a lot of money.
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Watching two different programs sounds cute, until you start trying to divide up who gets the soundtrack.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
There doing this for stuff like Airplanes and stop people from peaking at what your looking at, etc, More of a privacy issue then a "Cool i can watch 2 different pr0ns at the same time"
This is basically a lenticular lens with an LCD back, lenticular tech has been around for years, and even lenticular lenses with LCD backs have been around for years... nothing new to see here.. move along.
The only possible benefit this could bring is console gaming for multiplayer on the same console. But its way to expensive for this and pointless for any other uses.
standing on the wrong side of the article, cuz I see something different. That said, I already have one LCD. Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy another plain one and have two rather than scrapping this one for a fancy new double model?
If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
This is a new breakthrough in LCD technology
Yeah, or is it a slightly re-engineered version of their 3D technology
I have one of those sitting here, and I can totally see how this 'new breakthrough' would be possible using the same technique, just different mechanical layout.
FYI: the 3D monitor is not that great, you have to position your head in the _exact_ right position.
I mean, now we have to invent the 2-man cubicle!
Time is comparison of movement to other movement.
If this technology is refined, it might work to allow a person to see a different thing with each of his eyes. This is what makes a stereo screen work without goggles. Of course it would only work for 1 person with everyone else getting just one side of the picture, unless you can have bands of left vs right eye, so there were several angles at which one could position his head relative to the screen, and still see different images.
Oh, and twice the porn. *yay*
-S
I can be watching porn, and when my girlfriend/wife walks in she'll see the discovery channel instead.
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
There is alot going on here. Cheap 15" LCD's are out there. But they don't look that great and they are small.
What if I want to run High Definition content? What does the resolution max out at?
What happens if my pr0n collection for whatever reason decides to make an appearance on this separate channel?
Face turns red? Everyone laughs?
But in all honestly, have you ever veiwed porn if someone was in the same room with you, even if they were at a computer facing the opposite direction? Who would do that, it is about as dumb as thinking you have privacy at work in your cubicle and want to check out playboy.
Someone should send you the video of the fat boy in the college dorm room who forgot to lock his door. Meanwhile, a buddy cracked the door open, saw the kid masturbating, ran back to his room, grabbed his camcorder, and recorded the kid beating off. The kid turns around and there are 10 people who start laughing, and the one doing the recording.
If anything is needed, it's an LCD that restricts wide-angle viewing so that only the person actually using the laptop gets to see anything.
I think these are out. I believe I saw advertising for it. But I could not tell you what manufacturer, because I try and block out advertising.
Okay, here is my wishlist. A good, inexpensive, 1600 by 1200 23" widescreen LCD for under $300. If you can make that, I will be a buyer.
And for a HDTV, how about a 48" widescreen 1024*768 LCD for under $900?? That will do DVD 480p and ESPN satelite 720p without downscaling. Baseball would look so awesome on that!!! Hopefully it will be someone in the USA who can make it, and not China, I would like to support USA workers.
BTW, can someone explain to me why a normal tv with 480i looks better than something of the same size on my computer monitor? Does higher resolution ability make a lower resolution picture look worse?
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
- By duct tape and 2 LCD monitors
- Wrap them up together.
Viewers must be 180 degrees apart.This is the trickiest part. Years of study has shown that the best way is if they're back-to-back. Avoid taping the screen itself.
Uncopyrightable: The longest word you can write without repeating a letter.
Since the dawn of LCD technology, viewing angle has been intimately tied to contrast. I've always been surprised that people still sell "privacy filters" for laptop screens when all that's needed is a settings tweak to make the viewing angle very narrow.
This promises to go one better... feed a "Nice try, asshole" message to potential shoulder surfers!
What are they going to do when they bring this to Monitors? Are they expecting me to grab the screen and turn my monitor 45 degrees (or whatever it ends up being) to show a new desktop?
Motorize it and link it to a keyboard button, and maybe then well talk (probably not though, as this thing will probably cost more than two monitors anyway). Untill then, I'm sticking to Ctrl-Tab.
Vol~
So what happens when you look at the screen centered? Do you see parts of both images like some of those cheap toys out of a cracker jack box that change the image when you move it side to side? Or do you see nothing at all?
Would seem kinda silly unless you have the specific situation of three people on the couch with lefty wanting to watch CNN, righty wanting to watch "Survivor: Anarctica", and the middle person wanting to read a book. And the same three people always sit in the same spot and want the same thing.
A simple solution to that. I was watching the former TechTV a while back (rest in peace :( ) and I remember seeing in "Invent This!" a rich guy who ran a small company who had developed a directional speaker. You could only hear it if it was directly pointed towards you.
Combine this directional TV with these speakers and bam, each person sees AND hears different things.
D.A.R.Y.L. where he is playing pole position and watching a bunch of other stuff. But seriously isn't it great how we can be bombarded with advertising in a whole new way? I don't see this being used for anything but advertising. Booo Hisss. I want smell-a-vision.. you can keep your double in- double out LCD screen
Sounds fine for advertising, but sucky for home entertainment.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
http://www.livesoundint.com/archives/2002/novdec/p arametric.php
Basically this lets you hear one thing and the guy next to you hear something completely different.
"Oh wait, my wife and I do that already."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'm interested to see whether this technology can be tweaked to display slightly different images on narrow angles, which can trick our eyes to believe the flat images are 3-D.
This would be great for video games. Imagine instead of split screen, having dual screen on the same TV. You'd no longer cheat and see the other person picking there plays, and two player Halo would be taken to a new level.
I don't see it being that difficult for the console makers because the power in these things is already rediculous, so why not put dual component outputs one labeled left and the other right. That would also eliminate people's questions of "what about the sound."
Plus I don't have to deal with that annoying looking straight at the monitor addiction I've been unable to shake on my own..
My Linux Command of the Day site : LCOD
At last, a working reason to be up late!
"Uh, mom! I didnt see you there! Uh yes, I'm watching a documentary about cold fusion"
Matt
It's been done before. All without a fancy-schmanzty computer or el-cee-dees. How many of you remember those old billboards with rotating triangular louvres? Some didn't rotate. The picture would change as a different side of the louvre came into view as you drove by. I bet they're still cheaper than a giant LCD monitor.
What?
So if you sit in the middle, do you see half of both?
Now I won't even have to alt-tab from Slashdot when my boss walks by.
The poster must have linked incorrectly. Here is the good link. . .
= topNews&storyID=9066875
http://yahoo.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type
http://www.akihabaranews.com/en/news_9871.html
I can just see my kids peaking around the "virtual corner" to see where the other one is hiding!
Tim
As some have noted, TFA talks mostly about patents, so I'm just going on the idea of a split lcd.
Obviously, console games would greatly benefit from this, as you could have multiplayers on one screen and one console.
One other application might be stereo vision for goggles.
A silly possibility is to prevent shoulder-surfing, and display fake screens to the sides of the laptop (looks like boring work) and the real picture to the center viewer (boobies).
It's like 3-d kinda... but not >.> but definitely VERY cool this could be used in the future in some great ways. Say, I'm on the internet; my parents want to watch a dvd... so they sit on one side and watch the movie... I can still surf (in a one computer family, which mine is not; we have 6 computers between 3 me and my parents; I own 5 of them)
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
...was the release released by the release department?
...click here to view.
Synchronize your calendar and mobile phone via text messaging.
I work over the corridor from these guys, and let me assure you that there are entire sectors of industry who are very interested in this technology. Very interested.
It's not bullshit, and you'll be seeing them in the real world quite soon.
Having seen the demonstrations and the low-down technical details of how they work, I'm pretty impressed by it -- in particular the solution for the problem of how to get touchscreen buttons to have one function for the left-hand person and another for the other.
I'm sorry I can't go into more details, but it's more than my job's worth...
Pirate Party UK
will one person have to wear the red glasses while the other wears the blue ones?
Now I don't have to have two TVs and headphones in the room. It'll be so much easier to have the experience of being alone and not sharing anything with the other person, even though they are right there. This is the next best thing since giving people the silent treatment.
Ummm, since this is the internet, you may not have realized I was being SARCASTIC. If this technology was really valuable, people would already be doing some form of substitute, such as the scenario I described. Historicly, when people want to do something with technology but can't, they do the next best thing as I described:
No A/C? Run a fan. No sound? play a piano in the theatre and put subtitles on the screen.
Insofar as this tech might be an intermediate step toward true holographic displays, it has value, but in its current form it's most likely just a curiosity that's not useful for a home viewer. It probably will have niches though, like the billboard suggestion; then again, they've had something like this for years with billboards; you can even do it so it with several frames so the image moves as you roll by. It isn't done very often of course, because it's more expensive. For small items it's not bad. I've seen little cartoons like that given away as Cracker Jack prizes when I was a kid, and that was well... way too long ago now.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
idea I've heard of since the Internet Refrigerator. How spending all those engineering cycles making things that are actually useful?
If the cost of this thing is more than 2X the cost of a "normal" TV, then what is the point? (other than space conservation of course). Dottie slash
And this is more usefull than simply having two different television displays because... uh, why?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
So that guy in the seat next to me won't have to crane his neck over to see what I'm doing anymore?
Chip H.
Regular TV = $500
Fancy-ass double-doodad TV = $3000
Doh!
Unless you live on a 22 foot boat of something.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
From http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/aptech_stor y.asp?category=1700&slug=Japan%20Double%20Display: "The 'two-way viewing-angle LCD,' announced by the Japanese consumer electronics maker Thursday, will go into mass production this month and will cost roughly twice as much as a standard display."
Why not just buy two seperate displays? That way, if two people wanted to do different things, they could just put the displays in two different places...
Not that I don't think the technology is really cool.
"I know, let's really fuck with the other member of my team by having him view different code than the stuff I'm editing!"
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
I recalled an earlier /. story. see here.
This would be absolutely excellent for games that use split screens. You effectively have double the real estate.
The Secret of Life: Proteins fold up and bind things.
I wonder if this was a failed attempt at engineering a 3D TV.
Now if they can build a toilet like this, I would never have to interact with my spouse...oh, wait...I'm divorced. Three times. Something just wnet click.
Actually, it is a dupe, thanks for asking..
oops...
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
Yeah - this kind of thing makes me wonder who really has problems:
This much is clear: The kid masturbating has less of a problem than the rest. This isn't just catching someone in an embarassing moment, this kind of treatment of another human being is humiliating and degrading. At best it is harassment, at worst, exploitation.
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Seeing this covered on TV here in Japan this morning. Key application (pending regulatory OKs) is in cars, driver sees car navigation, passenger sees TV/DVD/etc.
I wonder if Fox News will only play out of the far right side?
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
No bullshit in regards to it actually existing, I'm not doubting that. I'm sure it's cool technology and all, I just don't see it actually being useful. I don't want to watch TV from an angle, and I can't play games properly unless I am sitting pretty squarely in front of the display, it just doesn't feel right. I'm sure I'm not alone in that. Some TVs let you use headphones to listen to the PIP channel, so you can do a similar thing, albeit sharing screen space. That's pretty much a useless gimmick, and this is just the evolution of it, better in some ways, worse in others.
Fsck the grammer, what about the blatant advertising?!
"Grammer Check!!!"
Does anyone check their comments anymore?
(It's grammar.)
"It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it exists." -Ludwig Wittgenstein
Yeah, to hell with grammar and spelling check!
The big win for me here would be full screen capability for consoles when playing coop. I've always wanted to have my own fullscreen view of a game and not get the cramped letterbox split screen view that you otherwise get. Even better when playing deathmatch you can't see the other person's screen.
--- C0sm1c
This would be great for multiplayer console games like Halo. You could sit on different sides of the room and each have a full screen to look at, rather than having half the screen.
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The link (now?) goes to an article entitled "UPDATE 1-Sharp to share PC LCD patents with AU Optronics" which is all about lawsuits between LCD makers. It says nothing about dual-screen anything.
I remember when Zenith came out with the split/embedded screen TV. It sold as well as their TV with the built in color printer, ie. very poorly. Nobody bought them just for the capability. If they hadn't bundled them into their high end TVs, hardly anybody would have ever had it.
But maybe the market has changed in 20+ years. Maybe now people will just buy goofy crap for its own sake.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
This is perfect for automotive use! Now every rice burner will not only have paint that changes color from every angle but will have two options of what to watch on their 5 lcd screens. I can see it now. If I don't like the program from the right lane I can just switch lanes and try the left.
This technology would have GREAT potential in the PDA industry.
You look at the PDA straight on, and it's your normal PDA. Games, daybook, accounting, whatever, it's the same.
But a quick turn of the wrist and you instead see something you set as a 'permanent' screen. Perhaps the current day itinerary, or just your overall day planner. No more having to go to the main menu or remember quick buttons. Just turn the wrist.
However, how they would work the touch screen would be interesting.
Two possibilities I see:
1) The "turn the wrist" screen is a read-only screen, perfect for, say, a photo of a loved one with day/time and the next three or four appointments/events, or the entire planned events for the upcoming week. Starting a program from the main view would allow you to edit the read-only view.
2) A comfortable switch, put within easy reach of where the thumb generally would be, allows you to toggle which view is being affected by the stylus. However, I don't see this happening, as holding your PDA at an angle and trying to write would be rather akward and cumbersome.
Now me and that strange person right next to me can reach even lower levels of interaction! Now we don't have to share anything but our approximate positions in common! Science never ceases to amaze me.
Invest in some cheap wireless headphones and buy rechargable batteries. Do NOT buy one with built in battery and recharger as the batteries can cost more than 30 dollars to replace.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
Something very similar was posted to /. a while ago.
The picture shows the lady holding up a mirror and you see a different channel in the reflection.
What if the tv split the image for one channel so that if you use a mirror you see the entire channel on a screen twice its actual size.
Only problem is that you couldn't look at it straight on. well, it's a better idea than what they're trying to sell it for.. watching two channels at once with ear phones wtf?
bite my glorious golden ass.
I can certainly understand that this is amazing technology, but new technological innovations only succeed if the higher price points deliver better experiences than do available products. Frankly, this technology seems only marginally better than that of two typical televisions, adjacent to one another. I don't understand the economics behind this planned release.
"Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world." -Archimedes
Heh. You're not thinking far enough outside the box, I'm afraid.
It's not TV or game manufacturers who are interested. There are lots of situations where two people need to have VDUs, but the area for mounting them is limited.
Pirate Party UK
It will probably cost four times the amount of just buying two television sets to begin with.
Dual View Video
Obviously, the "Department of redundency department". Obviously.
hi mom!
Now my wife can watch her stupid Murder She Wrote (Hint, Angela Lansbury manages to blame someone else for all of those murders) and I can watch porn! Woo hoo! Now to manage to hide that fact. Yea honey, I'm watching MSW. How come your drooling honey! Don't think I could say Angela Lansbury looks hot. She wouldn't buy that.
a blend of both?
-- i am jack's amusing sig file
This technology is not about personal usage. It is for multi-user environments where different people have different needs. Sound is a secondary concern.
For example, this technology would allow a sign at a train station or airport to simultaneously display departing and arriving flights, providing full-screen images to both viewers on one monitor.
In a car, it is illegal for the driver to watch TV or a movie while driving, so the driver gets a navigation display while the passenger gets a movie. (We'll let the driver listen in).
In a control or security panel, two operators can watch two different video feeds from a sngle montior, saving valuable panel space.
In a store, the images can be pitched to the direction of pedestrian traffic. Those coming to the point of sale from different directions will see a different ad.
The applications are only limited by the imagination of the designer.
Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
No doubt, for example it would be great for the center console of an aircraft (or any vehicle), so that two pilots could have different displays. However, the article was clearly talking about two people two people watching different TV channels, and I just don't think it would be more than a gimmick for entertainment.
So now the conservatives will sit on the right to watch Fox & liberals will sit on the left to watch the ABC channels...
When will they make a TV for independents?
If the viewer sits close enough to see each view with a different eye and the display shows a stereoscopic pair, you get an autostereoscopic 3D display. On the other hand, it uses parallax barriers, which generally causes loss of resolution -- the horizontal resolution is shared between the views.
One of the things that I like about LCD tv's is that they just keep coming up with new technology. Sharp is also working on a glasses free 3-d LCD tv. How cool will that be? There is also an American startup working on 3-d LCD tv's altough I can't recall their name right now. Read about new LCD technology at http://www.lcd-tv-reviews.com/
Laugh at my ignorance while I learn Rails - a Real ne