Microsoft Engineers Invent Displays That Top LCDs For Efficiency 283
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."
OS Agnostic? (Score:2, Interesting)
Well it seems obvious to me that a display technology should not be impacted by an OS but then my more synical nature takes over and asks if there is SOMEHOW a way that they could make this a Windows only thing.
Well is it possible?
DLP rainbows (Score:1, Interesting)
It says that it uses mirrors? Will these new LCDs suffer rainbows now like single-chip DLP projects?
Microsoft's niche (Score:4, Interesting)
I always said that Microsoft was pretty good as a hardware company.
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.
Re:contrast ratio: 20:1 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Profitless excercise (Score:3, Interesting)
Anna Pyayt led the research as part of her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Washington in collaboration with two Microsoft engineers. Microsoft funded the work and has also applied for a patent on the technology.
See, they may not manufacture it themselves, but they'll certainly be getting license fees for each unit sold...
They need something to make up for their lack of Vista sales.
Who knows, maybe the display will incorporate a TCPA/Palladium chip, so a licensed OS will be required also.
e.g. For an OS to be able to display something on this type of the monitor, the OS vendor must license the patent and pay the fee
And support the TCPA specs.
What better way to push Vista than to make the hardware explicitly require it? XP doesn't support the advanced DRM required for the more modern lines of efficient displays (which will eventually be mandated by law, just like laws will eventually be passed banning traditional lightbulbs).
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.
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:OLED (Score:4, Interesting)
Where have you been? OLEDs are easy to make these days. There was even an article on PRINTING OLEDs on poster size paper some months back.
Re:OS Agnostic? (Score:2, Interesting)
Right,
The whole concept of DRM looks like the paranoid rantings of a delusional conspiracy theorist. Honestly, why would there be situations where I don't have the right to see a movie I bought?
However, DRM exists and people begin to get used to it, sadly. If it can profit to Microsoft to lock their hardware to be only compatible with Windows, they'd do it, without looking back.
They also make really good mice (Score:3, Interesting)
I have no clue why. Dell/HP/Logitech mice, meh, they're essentially disposable -- I get a new one with every new computer because they're generally on their last legs by then. Persistent gunk issues, laser malfunctioning when running over certain colors, total hardware failure, button responsiveness drops, what have you.
I got a Microsoft laser mouse for ~$50 back in, crikey, must have been about 2000. It isn't a gamer anything -- just two buttons and a wheel -- but that thing is an absolute tank. If its reliability continues like it has through the last near decade of heavy, heavy use it might very well be the last mouse I ever buy.
This looks like a variation on DLP (Score:3, Interesting)
Something that was invented 20 years ago. I wonder if Texas Instruments have their lawyers on standby...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLP [wikipedia.org]
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.
Re:Microsoft's niche (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure if you're being snarky or if you didn't know this, but the 4 LEDs surrounding the power button also tell you how many controllers (between 1 and 4) are connected to the system. In many peoples' opinions, they also look cool.
I'm not saying they're completely necessary, but given the popularity of case mods, I don't think a company deserves to be criticized for putting extra lights on their system (especially ones that do have some useful functions).
Re:OS Agnostic? (Score:3, Interesting)
Inferior don't you mean? - Hence the fact that they're hardly used. They're really expensive and only last a few thousand hours before fading. They also bring back the burn-in problems which we thought we'd long since forgotten from phosphor based displays. Hence, if I walk into a local shop, they have NO OLED screens at all.
Actually, Dell is selling laptops that have OLED options for the screen. They have improved quite a bit since when you last looked at them.
That aside, I still think they beat MS's new technology (I havent looked at a monochrome monitor in years - nor do I plan on again if at all possible).
As both technologies mature, I would thus expect that OLED technology remains above the curve. In addition, it is still far more efficient in lighting... MS's idea uses tricks to decrease light waste on a wasteful technology, while OLEDs display the light you are looking at without the use of mirrors and lenses to try to reach (they exceed) that efficiency.
They tend to only be used in things with an inherently short lifespan, eg mobile phones, which are rarely used after a 2-3 years. Nobody would buy a TV which is quarter as bright after 2 years and has a channel logo burnt into the top left.
Yes they would, did and still do... it's called Plasma screens... which while improved, still have those problems. The early models (years worth of production models) exhibitted major image burn problems and major image/color fade problems. While the current ones are better, they still have those problems.
On a side note, LCDs exhibit those problems as well - even if to a much lesser extent. The crystals dont fully close over time and thus start leaving an afterimage. I've bought quite a few used LCDs that were used in certain vertical markets, and as soon as you turned the things on, you could see the burn-in from the image that used to be on the screen.
Even newer ones do this as well... at Star Trek New Voyages, we've replaced various of the "blinky light panels" on the Enterprise bridge with LCDs... showing the same blinky lights in the same place over and over again have started to leave ghost images on a few - none of which are very old (all are actually relatively new). Not a big issue for us, as with the plexi over them, it's not noticable on camera... but it is there.
As a side note, perhaps you should research what you talk about before you post (just a thought)... Sony and others have already started either production - or sales - of OLED TVs to replace or supplement their current LCD and Plasma offerings. Some of which are already being reviewed online.