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Samsung Patent Describes Holographic TV Technology (consumerist.com)
Patently Mobile is reporting about a new patent application filed by Samsung that lays out new holographic TV technology. Slashdot reader Rick Schumann writes via Consumerist: Holographic displays as described by Samsung would be able to make the depth the brain perceives consistent with the focus of the eyes. Lasers would be used to project holograms that float in front of the screen, which of course sounds a heck of a lot like a mini Princess Leia telling Obi-Wan Kenobi he's her only hope. The display apparatus could also include an eye tracking unit that would locate an observer's pupils and adjust how far it has to project the holographic image for optimum viewing.
Worth noting: This is just a patent application; no indication of even a working prototype.
In this context, you can be sure there is more. The patent laws of the US and other countries require that the application (and consequently, any issued patent) describe the invention in sufficient detail so that someone of ordinary skill in the art area to which the invention most nearly pertains can make and use the invention. You don't have to build one, but you do have to provide enough detail so that someone else could build one.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
means it is only for one person, or a few. This is not the holodeck you are looking for.
Crooked Leia, storing classified information in a private server... did you know that she's still under investigation by the empire for doing so?
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
I've actually seen these devices in action a decade ago (at Darpa Tech) and it's stunning. but I never understood how they worked. Yes I understand the hologram part of this. The two things I don't understand are
1) I would think that the pitch of the spatial light modulator elements has to be much finer than the wavelength of light. Yet the surface on which these operate are enormous which would mean length/pitch would be an insane number of controllable pixels.
2) The ones I saw were black and white. Not black and green or black and red. So how are they getting the "white" part if this. lasers are monochormatic. There are white light holograms but if I recall correctly these usually give up one axis of holographic dispersion to make the other axis multi-color. and even then they usually are haloed with fringing rainbows (like the Visa card Dove).
So how do they pull off these two tricks?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.