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Laser TV — the Death of Plasma?
spoco2 writes, "As reported in major news outlets yesterday in Australia (The Age, the Herald Sun), a new television technology has been developed which is touted (by the developers) as far and away superior to both plasma and LCD. From The Age: 'With a worldwide launch date scheduled for Christmas 2007, under recognisable brands like Mitsubishi and Samsung, Novalux chief executive Jean-Michel Pelaprat is so bold as to predict the death of plasma. "If you look at any screen today, the color content is roughly about 30-35 per cent of what the eye can see," he said. "But for the very first time with a laser TV we'll be able to see 90 per cent of what the eye can see. All of a sudden what you see is a lifelike image on display."' The developing company, Arasor International, is said to be listing on the Australian stock exchange shortly."
Do not stare into laser with remaining eye!
:(
Oh, errrrr damn but I'll miss battlestar
liqbase
I must say I'm not too impressed with the picture quality of the plasma- and LCD TV's we can buy here in the Netherlands. Especially if you take the price into account. I'm glad I've bought one of the last CRT widescreen TV's a few years back. My old CRT IIyama monitor is also better than most LCD flat monitors you can buy today. Hopefully this new technology will deliver the colours and the viewing angles we have become accustomed to from CRT's!
-- Cheers!
Yeah, I got an email just like that today
'this company's stock is about to explode, buy now'
the brilliance of the light emitted has little to do with the range of colours the TV can produce. Seeing more shades of red isnt going to blind you.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
You're just a cynic. Obviously this isn't hype.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
Ah, a true geek. Considering "almost like stepping outside from a dark room" to be "quite dangerous".
Yep, that's what I've always felt was lacking in TVs.
Not higher frame rates, so it doesn't turn into a blur whenever something moves.
Not more pixels, so it doesn't look like a blur whenever something doesn't move.
Not better content, so I'd actually watch it.
No, what I've always wanted, is more bits per pixel.
Price and formfactor is what matters.
Even though Plasma looks far better than LCD, the average consumer cannot really distinguish image quality (many consumers prefer a overly color saturated SD display over a well-calibrated HD display).
They plan for this next year, SED has been planning to enter the market for several years, too.
The problem for all of them is that some companies like Panasonic are able through mass-production and new factories to really push the price down for Plasma displays.
If they can make screens even flatter and brighter and at a low price, it might have a chance to succeed.
If it is just an expensive, better looking device, it can only survive in a fringe market.
One of the major problems with using lasers for displays is speckle, the random interference patterns that develop as the highly coherent laser beam hits the display screen (whose surface is far from smooth when compared to the wavelengths of laser used). This greatly diminishes the quality of display and more importantly, anyone sitting in front of this for extended period is likely to get headache and temporary vision problems.
Extended field trails on psychophysical effects are needed before such technology is approved by FDA or equivalent regulatory organizaiton.
The problem with the extended colour gamut of the new system is that existing source material is based on the sRGB colour space, which encompasses roughly 35% of the eye's gamut. Anything shorter wavelength than blue, such as spectral violet; many saturated greens and oranges, and most cyans are not available, and the nearest colour is used.
We're all used to this, so when a violet flower is shown as purple (red + blue) on our displays, we don't question it. But try putting a vase of violets next to your TV and you'll see the difference.
Some proper digital photography setups try to improve on the situation using colour profiles, which is simply a lookup table to transform the RGB colours in the file to absolute colour values.
Digital cameras can record colours outside sRGB, so if you ensure your workflow never enforces that constraint, you can end up with a file that can be printed using colours your monitor can't see.
Typically, the input file (usually a raw camera file) is transformed via a device profile (representing the camera's actual spectral response) into a working space (a device-independent space for editing). Whilst editing, the image is viewed using a transform to sRGB (or your display's output profile, if you've calibrated it), but this restriction is for viewing only and doesn't change the file. Then, when you print, the image is converted via a device profile for your printer to print to the extremes of its capabilities - which may exceed sRGB in some colours (e.g. cyan), and be even worse in others (e.g. pure blue).
To make use of this new TV system, we'd need something similar - wide-gamut source material, and device profiles for each set (or simply assume sRGB as default, for backwards-compatibility). Otherwise, it's like listening to music mixed for cheap portable radios (i.e. most current CDs) on a real hi-fi system.
Ydco co
No, but it's entirely possible to configure a plasma to look worse than the TV next to it.
Look at the TVs in shops - they look awful, but it's the same technology, just setup poorly.
Apparently, this guy already saw the TV in action and was pretty impressed:
His post is a comment on another news story about the technology. Of course, take it with a grain of salt since nothing stops a company's marketing guy from posting as Joe Internet.
For example, a Feb-16 article in Engadget...
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
Probably they use 3 laser diodes here in primary colors in to create an RGB image on a white phosphor screen. The lasers can be modulated in an analogue way, so it will have better intensity dynamics than LCD.
Also, the pixels will be sharper, because you don't need 3 phosphor colors and a mask (one pixel instead of RGB pixels). Using mirrors, they can fold the path of the screen and create thin TVs.
Hype, shmype - I saw this on last night's news, and watching the plasma vs laser demo on a standard def tv, I could see a noticeable improvement in colour and clarity. They've got a definitely promising product, and the manufacturers getting behind them aren't the idiots who buy shares of free, clean unlimited plasma/fusion/dark matter energy providers, for instance.
Does it have any fricken sharks in it?
If they were completely phony, I doubt they'd be presenting at all the major display technology industry conferences http://www.novalux.com/company/events.php) because their exposure to hype-killing doubters would open them to a lot of attacks. And Mitsubishi is really big in projection TV, so is a clear choice of manufacturing partner to use the laser modules Novalux produces. As for the cost issues, clearly the quickest time to market way to go is to replace conventional display components with this optical front end, and modify existing electronics - ie, Mitsubishi chassis - to handle the increased bandwidth. It all sounds feasible. Note they are demoing at the SMPTE conference next week; it's not like some Gizmondo handwaving. SMPTE attendees would smell phony a mile off.
I'd rate them as not vapor.
I dunno... It sounds pretty reasonable to me. The only difference between Laser and DLP technology is the source of colored light. DLP uses white light through a color wheel to produce the RGB colors. Lasers produce the colors directly, and lasers in all three colors are now commercially available, although expensive (been to ThinkGeek lately?).
Laser TV technology is definitely NOT vaporware. The technology is already here. Now, the claims of quality may be a bit hyped at this moment, but given the intensity possible with laser light, I fully expect the laser tv to be an amazing display when all the bugs get worked out.
Yes, some entrepeneurs will push the envelope when trying to introduce something new. I used to work at Mitel Corp, which made business telephone systems. After much pre-announcement, we were supposed to roll out our SX-200 at a major trade show. Unfortunately, the software wasn't fully debugged, and so the thing didn't work properly. So Terry Matthews (that's Sir Terry now, of course) went out, bought a NorTel SL-1, and installed it at the back of the booth behind a curtain. They ran cables out to the SX-200, which was to all intents and purposes an empty shell. Everyone thought the SX-200 was fantastic, we got a lot of pre-orders, and when the software was debugged just a few months later, the SX-200 became one of the most successful PBX's of all time.
So there's certainly precedent for the idea of presenting something as a "done deal" while it's still in development. The question is, will the Laser TV actually appear in the market, as the SX-200 did?
And will we need goggles to watch it? The goggles.. they do nothing!
What was once true, is no longer so
Laser TV has existed for a long time using Argon (blue, green) and Krypton (red) lasers as a white light source (either mixed gas or two lasers) The color is chosen using an AOM or a PCAOM (see a patent for laser TV at: http://www.freepatentsonline.com/6426781.html ).
The new breakthrough is that we have solid state Diode Pumped Solid State lasers (specifically high power DPSS), you should be familiar with the 532nm green laser pointers. The green is achived through frequency doubling 1064nm infared DPSS lasers. Red lasers need not be frequency doubled because they can manufacture Diode lasers to that frequency and is available in higher power ranges. Blue DPSS lasers were developed, usign 808nm infared lasers frequency doubled, the power available is still really low, (and I can't wait to rip apart a blue ray drive to get the laser out!) and the lasers are extremely expensive. Hopefully with greater production of blue lasers the prices will go down.
The next issue to deal with in the U.S. (I don't know austrailian law) lasers are regulated by the FDA and any laser over the power of 5mw that exposes radiation to the public has to have an FDA varience to legally operate. I am wondering how this TV would be classified. I really would prefer a solid state DPSS laser projector to replace easily broken, expensive to maintain, LCD projectors. If you need more information about this technology sam's laser faq, and the guys at alt.lasers are nice and answer questions.
Peace,
Adam