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140" Monitor Demonstration At Purdue 238
michaelpapet.com writes "Edward J. Delp, a researcher at Purdue University is working with Philips to make a monster 140" monitor using 4 projectors on a single screen. Article claims it would be good for National Security... I dunno, I see this being the only way to satisfy 'big screen envy.'"
Life Size P0rn!! (Score:4, Funny)
wait, that didn't sound right.
Re:Life Size P0rn!! (Score:5, Funny)
gaming (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:gaming (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:gaming (Score:2, Funny)
I'd think you'd need to get 2 boxes and write a camrea mod for Doom3.
That's not a monitor... (Score:5, Informative)
However, that's not the tech advance anyway. What they're really showing off is the way to get multiple projectors to work together so that you end up with four times the projection area and also four times the resolution while using relatively off-the-shelf projectors, and avoiding the seam effect that would happen if you tried to do this yourself.
Re:That's not a monitor... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:That's not a monitor... (Score:3, Interesting)
i can tile 2 projectors together with my matrox dualhead display
its like that guy who stitched together 190+ pictures from his digital camera and claims he broke the 1 gigapixel barrier
taking pieces of smaller images - whether they be projected or not - and stitching them together into someting bigger has been commonplace on the backs of trading cards for years
Encrypted scalable video, not autocalibration. (Score:5, Informative)
THAT'S NOT WHAT THE TECHNOLOGY DEMO IS FOR. They're running the demo for the US Department of Homeland Security. The Homeland Security people aren't interested in the fact that they can align the displays. They're interested in the fact that they're doing it using encrypted scalable imaging [purdue.edu].
The fact that they have a bunch of calibrated displays is not interesting. The fact that they're using CKMSS and encrypted video is interesting.
Re:Encrypted scalable video, not autocalibration. (Score:5, Informative)
One of the big point of his papers is copyright protection.
Think: Distributed DRM.
Think: Broadband Movie Distribution.
Think: Projectors and TVs can have CKMSS included in them.
Think: Keep the movie encrypted from the studio to the home theater projector, and REQUIRE the use of CKMSS-enabled projectors or TVs.
Think: MPAA looking to replace CSS with some new shared-key system like CKMSS.
Just some thoughts.
Re:That's not a monitor... (Score:2, Informative)
e.g.:
http://www.cs.unc.edu/Research/stc/Projects/pix
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/omnimedia/
Re:That's not a monitor... (Score:2)
RTFA (Score:2)
DPI (Score:5, Interesting)
I've seen these things that 'Make a big-screen dvd player', that are simply a lens you put over a portable dvd player's LCD screen, which doesn't have high enough DPI to account for such a big screen. is it extra blocky or is it at like 1200000x102400000 resolution? (And if so how many FPS can it get on... say, anything?
Re:DPI (Score:4, Informative)
Innovative software allows the four separate projections to be blended together so that no seams are seen between adjacent segments, joining the four images into a single picture with higher resolution than regular television sets.
Wow! Higher resolution than regular television sets. Even 800x600 would qualify.
Re:DPI (Score:2)
Re:DPI (Score:2)
I'd quantify it as 720 luminance samples and 360 chrominance samples per line; effectively 720 pixels with 4:2:2 sampling. Perfectly in line with CCIR-601, or as its known, ITU-R Recommendation BT.601-5 (10/95) (AKA "broadcast quality")
(Note that "analogue" does not imply infinite definition; CCIR-604 specifies certain bandwidth and signal-to-noise requirements, including maximum deviation; digital source material is better qual
Re:DPI (Score:3, Informative)
Think that the first digital theater projector that TI demoed in france was running at 1280x960 (not sure about the vert. reso.) pixels.
So I guess there's no need to rant over there after all.
Re:DPI (Score:3, Insightful)
They also state that it has "higher resolution than a TV". That merely means that the image, as a whole, is at least 800x600. That's not very high res. Also, the pictures they display are reminiscent of a projec
National Security is an overused buzzword... (Score:5, Insightful)
This monitor can only display a super-high-res security camera image if a super-high-res camera was installed too... and that resolution on a map would be wasted if they don't have a different datapoint for each pixel. I'm putting this one under "cool tech without any real use".
Re:National Security is an overused buzzword... (Score:2)
Ok, get a clue!
Next thing you should do, is take a marketing claass. Its so obvious they are trying to attract investors, and if there is ANY chance at all that they get government funding for their project, they would be stupid not to persue it. That is also the reason why "national Security" is an overused buzzword, as you put it.
Oh, come on! (Score:3, Funny)
Versus bad == terrorism / danger to our children (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed, but once you understand that, you might as well buy into the system. Politicians aren't sentient as such, they just twitch occasionally under particular triggers, and National Security is of course a key positive trigger.
While one's at it, one might as
Re:National Security is an overused buzzword... (Score:2)
Still not as big as Frank's 2000" TV! (Score:5, Funny)
It's like
having a drive-in movie
in your own living room."
I couldn't resist
(Weird Al reference)
Re:Still not as big as Frank's 2000" TV! (Score:2)
Before I finished reading the headline to her my wife interrupted to say 'you are not getting one.'
140" is only 12' which in widescreen would make it 10.6' by 5' which is not all that large for a cinema screen. There have been digital projectors that size for ages. But I suspect that the screen is actually academy ratio so it would be 9' x 7'
Yes this hack is cheaper but I saw it 7 years ago when Tom Knight did it at MIT.
As far as the resolution goes anything ove
Monster Blue Screen of Death (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Monster Blue Screen of Death (Score:2)
Even Bigger (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Even Bigger (Score:2)
National Security (Score:5, Insightful)
What you fail to realize is that it's spelled "National Security", but it's pronounced "GRANT FUNDING".
Daniel
Re:National Security (Score:3, Funny)
Kind of like this one here... (Score:3, Informative)
Same thing again, but with twice as many projectors:
http://www.cs.vu. nl/pics/F3_big.jpg
or this one ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Reverse engineering for dummies (Score:5, Interesting)
There you go. Take four projectors and let them overlap a little. Then, you pixel-row by row eliminate the overlaps by not moving the projectors, but simply feeding the projector black lines in the places where you don't want it to do any work. When you've assured that there's no point on the screen being served by two projectors, you've also lowered the seam area to less than the width of a pixel on the screen.
Re:Reverse engineering for dummies (Score:2)
I wonder if they do what ink jet printers do... not make it an absolute seam, but a blurry seam, slowly blending from one projector to another over the space of a few inches. The arti
Attention Slashdot Editors: (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank you.
Re:Attention Slashdot Editors: (Score:3, Interesting)
There's something definitely unusual about our cute little slashcode these days. Could he be experimenting with drugs?
Re:Attention Slashdot Editors: (Score:2, Informative)
After a little while, I can log it.
Also, another problem - sometimes I have to reload the page; because the text is all over the place.
Using latest (stable) Mozilla.
Re:Attention Slashdot Editors: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Attention Slashdot Editors: (Score:3, Interesting)
RSS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:RSS (Score:5, Informative)
Looks like we're both right (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Attention Slashdot Editors: (Score:5, Informative)
Netcraft [netcraft.com] has so graciously given, for all those 503 errors, please use one of the following:
Also: please copy and paste this post to every other person that has whined about slashdot, and has not donated money or clicked on ads!
I know I am offtopic, but mod me as you wish! Mod up if you want ppl to know these other sites (and possibly slashdot the slashdot), or mod me down if you do not want this information to get out!
Also: I have no information on why the site has been going 503. All I know is from Netcraft [netcraft.com]
Re:Attention Slashdot Editors: (Score:2)
Seems the errors only affects the front page.
Re:Attention Slashdot Editors: (Score:2)
Re:Attention Slashdot Editors: (Score:2)
Ladies and gentleman, this... is CINERAMA! (Score:2)
You can kinda sorta do this in your house (Score:2)
Doesn't seem hard to do four this way. Their setup is rear projection, which is a bit harder of course. And the article says it's running near 16/9 aspect.
National security, indeed (Score:2, Funny)
We shal prevail... (Score:2)
Just one question, is the chick with the hammer seeing anoyne?
Re:We shal prevail... (Score:2)
And since current desktops are not vector based... (Score:5, Insightful)
I want a fully vector based desktop, on Linux, and I want it adopted by the major distributions as the default. I know that their are some vector based desktop, but they are not usefull since they are not widely deployed and apps are not coded for them.
I want to be able to program and specify that Widget B is 70% the size of Widget a, and the window is by default 12 cm wide or 50% of the width of the desktop (user configurable).
I hate specifying in pixels. They are not the same on different display devices.
Re:And since current desktops are not vector based (Score:3, Informative)
Get a Mac. Honestly. Get a Mac. It's BSD based, and Quartz uses Display PDF. It's everything you want, and it's available now. Either that, or track yourself down a copy of NextStep that used Display Postscript.
Re:And since current desktops are not vector based (Score:2)
I hate specifying in pixels. They are not the same on different display devices.
Using cm isn't a perfect solution, either. I had told X that my second head (my TV) was 32". Well-written apps went ahead and scaled properly to render 12 point text to be 12 points high, which I could not hope to read from my couch. I ended up telling X that I have a 15.5 cm wide display, which is the size of a monitor of the same viewing arc at arm's length.
Sure, it's only a problem in unusual cases-- such as the display
resolution??? (Score:3, Informative)
DUH!! My 17" monitor already has a higher resolution than my tv-set!
Hmm... (Score:2, Funny)
Oh come on now... (Score:2)
Oh wait...
But does it self-align? (Score:5, Interesting)
Self-alignment is quite feasible today, because you can get multi-megapixel cameras. Or you could aim a cheap webcam at each join point. Somehow you've got to get high-resolution images of the join points. Then alignment is a straightforward process, if you get to project test patterns.
For a production product, it would make sense to put a cheap camera in each projector, looking at the screen. Doesn't even have to be color. Some CRT-based projectors have this now, for auto-convergence. Then you could just aim a few projectors at the screen, get them roughly aligned, and let the software do the setup. This could even work for LAN parties.
could be cool, yet sounds boring. (Score:2)
140" is for wimps. Here's one as long as a 747! (Score:3, Informative)
DiamondVision installations [mitsubishielectric.com]
Standard Multi-Image Trick (Score:5, Informative)
I'd hardly call this "innovative" or even label it as a "technology." It's a standard multi-image slide show trick that probably goes back at least to the 1960s. (It was old hat when I did it in 1989.) It has been done with movie projection and is routinely done with video projection (see Dataton WatchOut [dataton.com]).
The trick is to have some overlap between the projection areas, and to use complementary gradient filters at the overlapping edges. The gradient filters can hide seams that even the slightest misalignment would cause.
There was a graduate student (at CMU?) who made a nifty program that could compensate for alignment problems. The projectors could be crudely aligned, then grids were displayed on each one. A PC cam captured the grids, computed the offset, tilt, and keystoning. From that information a reverse transform was applied to each projector's output, and you got a remarkably well aligned multi-projector image. Very impressive, since the cam was obviously much lower in resolution than the composite image.
Multi-projector techniques are even more important with video than they were with slides, since the light output of video projectors is so much lower. To throw a big image, combining multiple projectors is the most practical option.
Were you referring to this? (Score:5, Informative)
The technique is fast and the results are impressive.
Re:Standard Multi-Image Trick (Score:3, Insightful)
As others have mentioned, the Dataton system ma
So it won't be ready by August 4th? (Score:2)
6.7 feet high still seems inadequate for several Doom3 monsters.
Am I the only one... (Score:2)
Guess I need new glasses.
Re:Am I the only one... (Score:3, Funny)
Or a bigger monitor?
The question is... (Score:2)
I worked on a bigger display at Purdue (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I worked on a bigger display at Purdue (Score:2)
Re:I worked on a bigger display at Purdue (Score:2)
Good Ol' Purdue (Score:2)
Yes! (Score:4, Funny)
one small problem... (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess I'll have to play life-sized doom3 in the garage...
Re:one small problem... (Score:2)
War Room (Score:2)
TeleSuite already has a 4 screen display (Score:2)
Standard use includes 4 scalars to make the display overlap seamlessly and IP multicast transport using multiple video groups.
It's not built for national security, but it does do a good job with telepresence.
This is not news (Score:5, Informative)
Here's how it works. The RU and the PPPL walls were powered by a linux cluster, one machine per projector with a high end graphics card in it (Yes I played Unreal Tournament on it...it was damn nice). How does Unreal work on it? At the time we were using a project called WireGL which intercepts OpenGL calls on the master machine (or whatever machine is running the program) then splits them up across the Myrinet network to the machine that will render the image on it's section of projector. This project was run out of Standford while the new version of the project is called Chromium is now located out of UVA. This projects also not only split up the image but allow for pixal overlap so that the image appears "seamless".
Yes I've also seen parts of the Matrix on the PPPL wall as a coworkers project was to write a parrallel MPG player for use on the wall, as this was a summer fellowship project he did not have much time to complete it and took a basic approach to it which was preprocess the mpg to split it into the configuration then using a modified mplayer I believe it was added networking code to syncronize the images, sound was not completed during the summer.
Princeton U's cluster was a windows cluster which needed custom video drivers to power their wall but otherwise it was the same principal (when I left Princeton U was supposed to be moving the cluster over to linux).
From skimming the questions in this thread I believe I've answer all but the DPI question...and that ends up being you do not have a pixalated display, infact at PPPL before we scaled up to 12 projects (the number of them when I left there atleast) the wall was a 7 Megapixal display and we found images taken with a 7 megapixal camara...they look simple stunning, in one image you were able to see finishing nails driven into a table cloth to keep it down.
Anyway I hope that answers everyone's technical questions.
Cheers
Re:This is not news (Score:3, Interesting)
CRT projectors (Score:2)
And I don't see what it has to do with fucking national security, I guess thats the latest excuse to get massive amounts of government money to buy projectors.
Would be a huge waste of resources. (Score:2)
I'm pretty sure that however much a 12-foot monitor costs, the money could be much better spent on funding homeland security efforts in our cities [herald-mail.com].
Re:Would be a huge waste of resources. (Score:3, Funny)
*gives long congress-like speech on how I'm related to someone who's sister's uncle's room-mate once talked to a guy who died somewhere near the WTC explosion*
Yes that's right, I went there.
Ha! (Score:2)
oh, wait, I can disclose it
This has been done before (Score:2)
Re:This has been done before (Score:2)
I have low bandwidth, and if this takes up too much space, I will have to take it down. Instead, try the google cache [216.239.59.104].
Note that Marques is wrong here... it's now 12 projectors, 4x3 (so we have a net effect of a widescreen) of 4096x2304. And yes, it does run Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, though I don't have any good pics handy.
On another note, it's mikeage, or Mikeage, not Mike Age. Goes back to high school... thanks Elie Klein.
Re:This has been done before (Score:2)
ask yourself: do i need this monitor? (Score:4, Funny)
This is already being sold for years (Score:3, Interesting)
If you go to the site, you can even see some existing installations (network video and all).
Nothing to see, move along...
Go Boilers (Score:2)
Mandatory Dr. Strangelove Reference (Score:2)
President Muffley: That is correct. He is here on my orders.
Turgidson: I... I don't know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean... begins closing his notebooks he'll see everything. He'll see the big board!
Wait! (Score:2)
Why would they want to monitor... (Score:2)
Umm how will this help security? (Score:2)
But really how much of a help in national security it is. It would be just stupid to say if only in 2001 we had a 140" high res display then 9/11 wouldn't happen. Besides the way they show the screen on the picture they can only see the lower end of it. Thus wasting the need for high res in the rest of the screen. Is there going to be a platform that can make you travel to the screen. This is just a waist of my money and it
Has anyone tried overlaying images? (Score:2)
So rather than:
AABB
AABB
CCDD
CCDD
you'd have
ABAB
CDCD
ABAB
CDCD
I'd think that this might be more difficult than a simple overlapping mosaic, because you'd have to have consistent geometry across the entire image (rat
Re:Waste of money (Score:3, Informative)
I hate to rain on your parade but Thomson is mostly a French company, actually used to be owned (at least partly) by the French government.
As a side note, the actual article says they are working with Thomson but the slashdot summary says Philips (another European company, from the Netherlands).
Re:Running windows? (Score:2)
Re:But! (Score:2)
Re:Dude... (Score:3, Informative)
It's a great toy for an overhead projector at an internet cafe, or, who knows, at a demonstration of a 140" monitor on a university network...
Ah drat, got the name wrong (Score:2)