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Comments: 135 +-   Sony Debuts Razor-Thin Flexible Display on Friday May 25 2007, @04:17PM

Posted by Zonk on Friday May 25 2007, @04:17PM
from the forget-e-paper dept.
displays
sony
hardware
technology
Mike writes "Sony Corporation has put online a video of their new flexible 2.5 inch display. The display can be bent in half, is full color, and is apparently relatively inexpensive to make. This could be used in hundreds of cool new products, as well as enhancing thousands of existing products. In fact, it's hard to see where this kind of display wouldn't be used, especially in portable consumer electronics. 'The display combines Sony's organic thin film transistor, or TFT, technology, which is required to make flexible displays, with another kind of technology called organic electroluminescent display, it said. The latter technology is not as widespread for gadgets as the two main display technologies now on the market - liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels. Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that's so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough ... "In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person's wrist, even worn as clothing," said Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa. "Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper."'"
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  • What are those lines on the display? (see picture in article [dailymail.co.uk]).

    If this is a PR thing for Sony, that's a REALLY bad 1st impression.

  • Future (Score:3, Funny)

    by suv4x4 (956391) on Friday May 25 2007, @04:21PM (#19276025)
    "In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person's wrist, even worn as clothing," said Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa. "Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper."'"

    He's right. I've watched plenty of sci-fi series, and people there are crazy like that. They won't blink and wear their screen as clothing! Insane I tell you.

    • Re:Future (Score:4, Funny)

      by frank_adrian314159 (469671) on Friday May 25 2007, @04:26PM (#19276095) Homepage
      They won't blink and wear their screen as clothing!

      So the TeleTubbies are coming to a playground near you? Think of the children!

    • Re:Future (Score:5, Funny)

      by lsllll (830002) on Friday May 25 2007, @04:32PM (#19276165)
      I can just hear the conversation in the bedroom:

      Man: Honey, you wanna make love?
      Woman: Sure (starts to get naked)
      Man: Hey! Let's play roles! Let's put on LCD masks.
      Woman: Hmmmmm, okay. But who do you want me to be?
      Man: Let's do it Indian poker style. You select my mask, and I select yours, and we'll never know whose face we're wearing.
      Woman: K. (Chooses Brad Pitt for him)
      Man: *Yum* Ok. (Chooses Angelina Jolie) Hey, can I put bigger boobs on your LCD shirt?
      Woman: Only if I can put a strap-on around your hip

  • Fantastic! (Score:5, Funny)

    by The Mysterious X (903554) <adam@omega.org.uk> on Friday May 25 2007, @04:24PM (#19276069)
    "Mum, the living room wall has got a dead pixel!"
  • So we can expect it to be ready in about five years?
  • Is more along the lines of what he's thinking. Not that it isn't a technically cool accomplishment.

  • How long until.. (Score:5, Funny)

    by Cajun Hell (725246) on Friday May 25 2007, @04:27PM (#19276123) Homepage Journal
    ..someone introduces a display that is as thin as three razors?

  • Video (Score:5, Informative)

    by ddgromit (1101961) on Friday May 25 2007, @04:32PM (#19276169)
    YouTube has a video demonstration of Sony's technology from Japan at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7QbQugXy1A [youtube.com]

  • Grain of salt time (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 25 2007, @04:32PM (#19276177)
    The World + dog are announcing displays like this; especially digital paper products. It seems mostly to be premature announcements. Maybe they're trying to freak out the competition ala 'vaporware'.

    "Vaporware is a software or hardware product which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle. The term implies unwarranted optimism, or sometimes even deception; that is, it may imply that the announcer knows that product development is in too early a stage to support responsible statements about its completion date, feature set, or even feasibility." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaporware [wikipedia.org]

    "sometimes even deception" indeed.
  • is it just me, or is this really familliar to the e-paper that LG & Philips developed recently? http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/ 14/0410247 [slashdot.org]
    only this time there's a lot more buzz

    • Re:this looks familiar (Score:5, Informative)

      by Laur (673497) on Friday May 25 2007, @05:26PM (#19276823)

      is it just me, or is this really familliar to the e-paper that LG & Philips developed recently?
      E-paper can't display full motion video, its response times are much too low for that sort of thing, but it should have great battery life for mostly static images. This appears to be a "normal" LCD, but thin and flexible, and the videos show it displaying video. Different technologies with different applications, but both very cool.

  • YAY! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Colin Smith (2679) on Friday May 25 2007, @04:41PM (#19276297)
    The future is here.

    Every surface can be turned into an advert. Animated no less.

     

    • So I wonder: what will the future of adblocking be like?

      • Something tells me either a fist or a lighter will be involved...

        • So, I just need a 2nd level spell?

          Two spell slots just for going out... what is this world coming to?

          And then you need to take a seeing-eye dog as a familiar, too... sheesh.

        • Not exactly. All you would need are these special glasses and headsets, they could easily be incorporated in a helmet, that filter out or completely replace what you see with a spamfree view of your surroundings. Lets just hope the spamfilter is correct when it filters out the cars around you, especially that one with the pizza advertisemnet wraped all over it.

  • Heads Up (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Devir (671031) on Friday May 25 2007, @04:43PM (#19276315) Homepage
    Imagine a sheet like this, transparent and plastered on the windshield or in a corner of one. Then it's fed from a GPS computer for map information right in front of you. This would make GPS navigation a little safer.

    Add in some of the "Object detection" systems they've been pawning off for a few years and we're talking about a nice feature for the future of cars.

    Fighter Jets as well as commercial airliners can make use of this technology as well.

    There's a million uses other then the silly and mundane.

    • Add in some of the "Object detection" systems they've been pawning off for a few years and we're talking about a nice feature for the future of cars.

      I've been fantasizing for a long time about having a RADAR and/or LIDAR system that will detect all the vehicles around you, the speeds at which they are traveling, and so on, and report them back to you in realtime via a HUD. It's really not a necessary piece of equipment by any means, but it would be a boon to efficiency if you used it correctly.

      My dream of

      • I've wondered for a long time how difficult it would be to have sign recognition on a vehicle HUD. Especially handy for diagrams of major junctions and lane diagrams. It could be integrated with a GPS system to automatically guide you into the correct lane. This could either be accomplished through image recognition software - in the cases of standard signs (i.e. those without arbitrary text on) this should be much easier than your average image recognition software, since signs are high contrast and of a s
  • Vaporware or not, what comes to mind after the initial neat-o factor is that the flexibility of this stuff could make for an interesting home theatre set up. Anyone remember those 180 or 360 degree theaters? Not IMAX, but the inside-of-a-dome-as-movie-screen thing. There was a motion sickness factor, but I'm thinking there'd be some cool applications as far as movies where you don't get to watch all the action at once, or maybe depending on which side you're viewing, you may miss something important, etc...
    • The problem with your idea is that if you are attempting to press a flat piece into a section of a sphere, flexibility won't help you. It has to be able to expand and contract to follow the contour. It makes much more sense to just do it the way IMAX does it, and use a projector.
  • The video and press images feature both rows and colums that have gone wonky -- clearly (A) the tech isn't quite ready for prime time (heh), and (B) you wouldn't want to bend it all the time, for fear of fatiguing the printed parallel cables that feed/drive it.

  • FTA: "Sony Corporation posted video of the new 2.5 inch display on its' web page. In the video, a hand squeezes the 0.3 millimetre (0.01 inch)-thick display, which shows color video of a bicyclist stuntman, a picturesque lake and other images."

    I looked all over... where is the video? Can anyone find a link to the video? I'd like to see this thing in action...

  • been hearing about these things for years... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JustNiz (692889) on Friday May 25 2007, @07:45PM (#19278391)
    Yet another technology demo that won't actually be in a real product for years.
    Same with ink-on-paper displays. Plenty of prototypes exist but for some reason no-one seems able to or wants to make an actual device you can buy.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by snooz_crash (802357)
      R&D through several companies started in 1996. The tech name is flexible OLED.
      A history of which can be found here http://www.oled-info.com/history/ [oled-info.com]
      • They also mention using electroluminescent material in some way too - although it's not made clear how. I actually think that electroluminescent material is pretty cool myself, but (I think) there are two main problems with it - one, it requires really high voltages (but doesn't use much power), and it has a fairly limited lifespan. Maybe Sony figures that this isn't important in small gadgets, but the high voltage issue could make designs problematic.
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