Forget LCDs and LEDs, Here Come LPDs 244
waderoush writes "It's not every day you hear about a brand new display technology, but San Jose, CA-based Prysm came out of stealth mode yesterday to talk about its plans for manufacturing laser phosphor displays, or LPDs. The new devices, which the company will show off at the Integrated Systems Europe trade show in Amsterdam next month, reportedly use 25 percent as much electricity as equivalently-sized LCD screens. And they should be easier to manufacture too, since they don't have a backplane of transistors like LCD screens: the image is generated by a laser beam that sweeps across phosphor stripes under the control of a scanning mirror. The venture-funded startup, which plans to build and sell LPD screens under its own brand, is promoting them as a low-cost, low-maintenance way to display information in lobbies, airports, broadcast studios, command centers, and the like."
thickness (Score:2, Insightful)
Probably wont get much thinner than 5"-6" but some of us don't care much about depth. All else being equal, if it's price is lower and it uses 1/4 the electricity, I'm interested.
Re:How Thick is the Display? (Score:5, Insightful)
At the end of TFA, they claim that conceptually it would work for a laptop display; so it must be pretty thin. The reason to target big displays before worrying about home TV's seems to be that the cost of manufacture is less an issue there. Until they can do relatively cheap mass-production, they won't be able to address the TV market.
Also, the headline notwithstanding, this may face tough competition in the TV market from advances in LED-type displays.
Re:LPD screen or LPD screen? (Score:1, Insightful)
phosphor burn? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:do not want (Score:5, Insightful)
WTF... there was a time when people didn't want to move to LCD because of motion blur issues, problems that CRTs, a phosphor-based technology, didn't have. Now you're saying the exact opposite is the case? *boggle*
Re:How Thick is the Display? (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting assertions.
DLP sets use moving components, often including a rotating "color wheel". I've never heard of an audible "whir" being a problem there, so I'll hold off on speculating whether there would be one here.
I also know of no reason the screen couldn't be as thin as a notebook LED. I would think the laser's beam thickness would be the limiting factor (since it would govern how shallow an angle the beam could use to approach the screen without spilling across pixels).
Re:How Thick is the Display? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, getting rid of the lead faraday cage on the front and using thinner glass would make them quite a bit more portable.
Re:How Thick is the Display? (Score:4, Insightful)
You can't steer an electron beam with a mirror. You need magnets, and those can't generate sharp turns.