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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."
The only colour plane that works right now is blue.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
But notebook and PDA users might be exicited their batteries will be lasting longer.
That's one reason it gets such good battery life. It uses the magic of diffraction gratings to use nearly all the light that it receives. I read that the creator of the screen is in the process of commercializing it, and I can't wait for it to get into the world of readily-available products.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
...is the faster switching speed. Considering this prototype has a ~1ms switching time, and LED backlights are already popular, it may be feasible to create, in effect, a flat panel DLP display by rapidly cycling the backlight color.
Current flat panel displays have three sub-pixels in every pixel. One only allows red light, one blue, and one green. It's very inefficient: You need three LCD elements to display each pixel, and two-thirds of the backlight is blocked outright by the color filters.
With a color-cycling display, every element displays every color in turn, so (all else being equal) you triple the resolution *and* the efficiency.
The only downside is a possible rainbow effect if the display does not cycle colors quickly enough.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I guess I'm looking at this from a different point of view from most of the comments so far. I read the article, and I'm thinking "Wow! What a cool new way of attacking an old problem!" It's a brand new technology, I don't expect it to be immediately better than decades old technology overnight. I just like the new technique and the micro-scale optics. Then again, I am studying optics in graduate school so I might be a bit biased...
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.
... which show that a ratio of at least 800:1 is possible."
"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
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.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
I can even think of two ways to block Linux.
If you can too, SHUT UP ABOUT IT!
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.
Who cares? Insofar as Microsoft is in the hardware business, they don't seem to discriminate except by providing only Windows and Mac driversâ"but everyone does that, so no biggie. Lots of people use their Intellimouse or their Microsoft Natural Keyboard on their pet OS. I don't see what Microsoft would gain by doing more work to discriminate: they'd just give people a reason to buy some other excellent monitor. It's more of an Apple thing to do, and even *their* displays work fine on any OS.
... quickly bash them, before they do anything good.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
You mean require HDCP? Why would they do that? So that suddenly 75% (guess) of their customer base couldn't use their choice of monitor? For what possible gain?
HDCP is only required when you play blu-ray or hd-dvd discs. I suppose Microsoft could agree to require it on DRMed media -- but they've never even hinted that they would be stupid enough to require it for general purpose computing. What would be the point?!
Honestly, this train of thought looks like the paranoid rantings of a delusional conspiracy theorist.
If this really works like a telescope, then wouldn't that mean the display would have a very low viewable angle? After all, a telescope is just a telephoto lens. And telephoto lenses have a narrow field-of-view.
So, you'd probably have to look directly at the display from a perpendicular angle. Move a little to the side, and you're going to lose the image altogether, or have it severely degraded. LCDs are already bad enough in this respect.
... and then they built the supercollider.
'Invention' is compatible with open source 'schtuf', but the GP is right that Linux is a unix-clone and therefore, limited in the amount of (software) invention it will allow. Granted, /any/ OS is limited and unix is a better choice than most, but there /are/ better models out there, including, ironically, models invented by the very inventors of unix that were already available when Linux was still in its infancy. All you get from cloning unix is a lot of eyeballs and a lot of already compilable source-code. But many choices of better desktop-OS-es and better server-OS-es and better embedded-OS-es have since come and gone.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I always said that Microsoft was pretty good as a hardware company.
My dead Xbox360 would respectfully disagree with you.
You're all wrong - open source software IS capable of innovation. For instance, take a look at LyX, a document processor that beats all else hands down. For that matter, LaTeX itself is open source and is the gold standard in creating technical documents. Neither of these is a copy of a closed source original.
The free software/open source approach works well where people can scratch their own itches - in fields where those who need technical innovation are also capable of developing the technology to do it, such as science and mathematics. It fares less well for products which are developed to be sold to someone else - `office suite' software, or for that matter computer monitor hardware (to get us back onto topic). However, saying that open source is incapable of innovation is like saying that all major discoveries are made by commercial entities rather than universities.
Your point has been repeated over and over. You are -1, Redundant.
Linus Torvalds is not a great thinker, but he has some reasonable ideas. Not long ago he said that innovation is overrated. Anybody can come up with new ideas. The thing is implementing them, and good.
Xerox was great, but Macintosh was more important in bringing the desktop to people.
There are good ideas everywhere, we don't need new ideas, we already know what we want, what is needed is good implementations.
Aside from that, MS is not that good an innovator, either. They didn't come up with WIMP, they didn't come up with the idea of selling it to the masses. They didn't come up with office productivity software. They didn't come up with media players, consoles, mouses, anything.
The thing they are good at is building a product that is good enough (good, when it comes to hardware), and selling it. They rule at marketing. They are the kings of it. They are innovators in that area. But that doesn't benefit the users, so I think it's not important for us, but for their shareholders.
GNU/Linux is a way to get good software, on _my_ terms. It's what I want, and it works. There are alternatives, a lot worse in most regards, and somewhat better in other, but they are not provided on terms that are fair to me, so it's a no-brainer who I will choose. It's not about innovation either. It's about fulfilling my needs, without asking for my first born baby in return.