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Microsoft Engineers Invent Displays That Top LCDs For Efficiency
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:51 AM
from the fewer-electrons-means-more-money-for-food dept.
from the fewer-electrons-means-more-money-for-food dept.
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."
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One problem. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:One problem. (Score:5, Funny)
The only colour plane that works right now is blue.
But how do you know whether to reboot the display or the PC?
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Re:One problem. (Score:5, Funny)
The Random Victim Limerick Troll:
he likes to poke fun at our holes.
He clicks 'post anon'
as he shouts at his mom -
cause the basement is getting too cold.
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Re:One problem. (Score:5, Funny)
The only colour plane that works right now is blue.
The blue is a feature. It has a calming effect while you contact tech support to ask why your computer was bricked by the new and exciting upgrade you just installed. The loud hum coming from the monitor is also supposed to be a relaxing sound and the smoke is supposed to remind you of a warm fireplace much like the smoke from an Xbox does.
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Re:One problem. (Score:4, Funny)
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Microsoft's niche (Score:4, Interesting)
I always said that Microsoft was pretty good as a hardware company.
Re:Microsoft's niche (Score:5, Insightful)
I always said that Microsoft was pretty good as a hardware company.
My dead Xbox360 would respectfully disagree with you.
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The OLPC screen already does this (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to be ignored... (Score:5, Interesting)
...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.
Different point of view (Score:5, Insightful)
it's microsoft... (Score:5, Funny)
... quickly bash them, before they do anything good.
Viewable angle (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:OLEDs? SEDs? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:OLEDs? SEDs? (Score:4, Insightful)
Except that OLEDs and SEDs in theory also reduce the power consumption over normal LCD, as the pixels themselves emit light so there's no need of backlight.
Sure SEDs and OLEDs are not really mass produced currently, but neither is this new technology for LCDs.
And SEDs and OLEDs have many other advantage over LCDs: better refresh rate, contrast, viewing angle (reliability for SEDs).
So this new LCD technology isn't very exciting..
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Re:contrast ratio: 20:1 (Score:5, Informative)
"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.
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obviously (Score:5, Funny)
I can even think of two ways to block Linux.
If you can too, SHUT UP ABOUT IT!
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Re:OS Agnostic? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:OS Agnostic? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think you are being paranoid. MS didnt do that with any of their other hardware. (joysticks/keyboards/mouse/etc) Really, is there any practical way to keep someone from plugging a monitor into a linux box?
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Re:OS Agnostic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, all they need to do is follow the DRM laden specs that high end monitors on HDMI are supposed to use in Vista - and lock the monitors in that mode.
All Linux and other OS's need to do is enable DRM... MS isnt locking them out of anything... they arent implementing the right technology to use it, even though they "can" (or can't because the video card manufacturers wont release the specs needed to modify drivers under Linux).
This would have the same effect, and put the blame at someone else's feet (ie: not Microsoft's).
Note the sarcasm in the words... yet it is quite possible the truth will follow that path nonetheless... but it would be a stupid move. Especially with other technologies out there that would be competing against this.
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Re:OS Agnostic? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:OS Agnostic? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing Linux cant adapt to.
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Re:DLP rainbows (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Haha, let's see "Linux" do something like that (Score:5, Insightful)
You're all wrong - open source software IS capable of innovation. For instance, take a look at LyX [lyx.org], 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.
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Re:Haha, let's see "Linux" do something like that (Score:5, Interesting)
'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.
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Re:Haha, let's see "Linux" do something like that (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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