Microsoft Engineers Invent Displays That Top LCDs For Efficiency

MechEMark writes with this excerpt from a hope-inspiring article at the IEEE Spectrum, which says "Researchers from Microsoft say they've built a prototype of a display screen using a technology that essentially mimics the optics in a telescope but at the scale of individual display pixels. The result is a display that is faster and more energy efficient than a liquid crystal display, or LCD, according to research reported yesterday in Nature Photonics ... The design greatly increases the amount of backlight that reaches the screen. The researchers were able to get about 36 percent of the backlight out of a pixel, more than three times as much light as an LCD can deliver. But Microsoft senior research engineer Michael Sinclair says that through design improvements, he expects that number to go up — theoretically, as high as 75 percent."

Comments

contrast ratio: 20:1

[YesIAmAScript]

And that's uselessly low.

It's easy to make an LCD more efficient, just block less light. The problem is that the contrast ratio is the difference between the least amount of light you can block and the most you can block. They've just basically made a system that isn't capable of blocking much light and so it's brighter. But at the expense of the contrast ratio.

Re:contrast ratio: 20:1

[scrib]

Since you didn't include a reference, it took a bit of searching to find a good source. This source also has some good graphics about how the display works.

"The first prototype's contrast ratio was 20:1, mainly due to the use of non-collimated back light. This was a limitation of the current prototype, not of the technology. This is supported by simulations ... which show that a ratio of at least 800:1 is possible."

20:1 may not be particularly useful, but 800:1 is certainly usable, and modified with "at least" makes this a technology "at least" worthy watching for future development. It's not reasonable to judge a technology by its first prototype.

Re:DLP rainbows

[originalTMAN]

unlikey for three reasons 1.) rainbow effect only exists in ("slow") single chip DLP's because, only one color is on at any given time. 2.) the mirrors don't spin and reflect per say, they bend to focus. 3.) the switching time is fast- 600fps fast- so even if they're were rainbows which they're shouldn't be, you wouldn't be able to see them because it is so far above the flicker fusion threshhold.