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Displays Patents Science

LG Phillips Patents Oil and Water Display 90

Posted by kdawson from the mixing-it-up dept.
jordanhh writes "Tech.co.uk reports that LG Phillips has filed a patent for a new type of thin, flexible display. 'The pixels are made from tiny plastic cells filled with minute amounts of oil and water. The oil floats on the surface of the water and shrouds the colored surface underneath it. When electricity is applied across the cell, the oil moves aside, changing the color of the pixel.'"
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LG Phillips Patents Oil and Water Display More

LG Phillips Patents Oil and Water Display

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  • oil and water (Score:3, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:38PM (#20146991)
    What? No vinegar?

  • Confusing phrasing (Score:3, Funny)

    by c0d3h4x0r ( 604141 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:42PM (#20147045) Homepage Journal
    Am I the only one who read this as LG Phillips Patents Oil and Water Display ?

    • Re:Confusing phrasing (Score:4, Funny)

      by Anonymous McCartneyf ( 1037584 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:57PM (#20147245) Homepage Journal
      No, that's what it actually says. The headline doesn't have boldface, though.
      At least it isn't "British Left Waffles on Falklands."
      • Yep. Just before the British navy made pancakes from Argentinians (jets, that is).

        Okay, that wasn't nice, I admit it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by spun ( 1352 )
        That's almost as hilarious as the New York Daily News headline about the state bailout of the subway system in the 80s: 'Sick Transit's Glorious Monday.'

        • Re:Confusing phrasing (Score:4, Funny)

          by Kingrames ( 858416 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @07:59PM (#20150125)
          Another funny real headline:
          "Carpenter nails wife, kills self."

          The headline guy was fired for that one.

          • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

            by orangepeel ( 114557 )
            If you liked that headline, you should check out this link [64.233.169.104] (Google cache because I think the original site now requires registration).

            Two of my favorites:

            "Day gives daughters 1st-hand job experience"

            "Shooting spree spreads Christmas bliss"

            But the headlines are only part of the hilarity. Some of the stories posted on that page are an absolute riot.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Zaatxe ( 939368 )
            The headline guy was fired for that one.

            Here in Brazil that news about lead in Mattel's toys painting got this headline:
            China-made toys cause brain damage

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Fizzl ( 209397 )
              Offtopic, but I'll ask anyway..
              Do american companies really fire people left and right for simple mistakes? Or is it just an euphenism?
              Seems that I see "XXX was fired for XXX" all the time.

              Personally I don't know anyone who has ever been fired for anything but gross, willfull, bordering-the-law hazardous actions.

              Even if you are incompetent, the company that hired you tries to find easier work for you instead of firing. Even if you come to work drunk, you've given two weeks paid leave to get yourself in shap

              • Re: (Score:1)

                by gharris ( 188182 ) *

                Even if you come to work drunk, you've given two weeks paid leave
                I think I need to move to Finland!

                --Glenn

        • Re:Confusing phrasing (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Gordonjcp ( 186804 ) on Wednesday August 08, 2007 @03:53AM (#20153427) Homepage
          Needs a little introduction, but here goes - there is a fairly low-end football team in Scotland called Inverness Caledonian Thistle, and a much much better team called Glasgow Celtic. Now as it happens, Inverness Caley were drawn against Celtic for a particular match, and things were, to be honest, looking like a bit of a foregone conclusion.

          A chap I know is one of the sports writers for the daily red-top rag, The Daily Record. Like most tabloids, about a quarter of it is sports pages, and what they do to get the issue out quickly is have two whole back pages set up - one talking about Celtic's win, one talking about Inverness Caley's win (should it happen). So they're sitting in the office the night before the match, writing up headlines to use for the next day. One of my mate's colleagues says "Oh, well it's never ever going to happen, but - 'Super Caley Go Ballistic, Celtic Are Atrocious'?"

          Celtic basically needn't have turned up. Inverness Caledonian beat them 4-1, and the headline went out.
    • I know, me too! It should definitely be LG Phillips patents ((Oil and water) display) blarghy.
    • now supermarkets will need LG licenses to *Display* "Evian" & "Extra Virgin Olive Oil" :)

  • "I can dig that..." (Score:4, Funny)

    by starglider29a ( 719559 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:43PM (#20147077)
    Yeah, man... I saw something like that on the screen over the heads of the Jefferson Airplane back in '67. At least I THINK it was on the screen... oh... WOW!
  • Thanks - I'll be here all night.

  • Excellent Blacks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Innova ( 1669 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:44PM (#20147087) Homepage
    They expect to get excellent blacks (the bane of digital display technologies) by using motor oil from my 1999 Saturn.

  • Last Year? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bigtomrodney ( 993427 ) * on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:45PM (#20147105)
    This was the big news from Philips/LG last year [com.com]. Did they score another patent on this or is it the same one?

    • Thanks for the link (Score:3, Informative)

      by oneiros27 ( 46144 )
      That makes much more sense. The one from tech.co.uk talks about floating, which would make it useless for the applications mentioned.

      ('street furniture' => 'bus stops') ie. vertical, not horizontal mounting

  • Well (Score:2, Funny)

    by ajenteks ( 943860 )
    That really paints the term "dead pixels" in a new light.

  • Not very palatable (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I'm waiting for Hidden Valley's research into a ranch-based display to pan out.

  • One "L"! (Score:5, Informative)

    by MaWeiTao ( 908546 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:52PM (#20147193)
    It's Philips with one "L", by the way.

  • Prior art... (Score:3, Funny)

    by msauve ( 701917 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:53PM (#20147203)
    this is exactly like the light show I saw at a Dead concert once.

  • Nice try LG, but *I* patented it first! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sincerely,

    Dr. Peter V. Boesen
    SP Technolgies

  • Ugh (Score:3, Interesting)

    by TheRealMindChild ( 743925 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @04:59PM (#20147287) Homepage Journal
    Pardon my pessimism, but I couldn't see this being very fast.

  • Where's the "cheap" part? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @05:12PM (#20147463) Homepage

    The "E-paper" and "E-ink" crowd have been touting "cheap, flexible displays" for about fifteen years now. But all they ever seem to deliver are expensive, rigid displays inferior to other technologies.

    Electrostatic oil displacement has been used before, most notably in the Eidophor [spgv.com] projection TV system. This is a technology first demonstrated in 1939, yet in use through 1993. Big, heavy, expensive, and complicated, but could project TV pictures brighter than film. The image medium was an oil film written by an electron beam, used as a reflector for a lamp.

    The basic idea is simple, but making it work required rotating smoothed oil film past the projection station, so there were big moving parts. All this had to happen in vacuum, but it wasn't a sealed unit, because the cathode had to be changed every 200 hours or so. So it needed high-vacuum pumps, vacuum locks, hours of startup, and a skilled operator.

    • making it work required rotating smoothed oil film past the projection station...
      Made me wonder-can this new display be vertical? Wouldn't the oil separate to the top, exposing water on the bottom (fine for horizontal use)?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Animats ( 122034 )

        It's a pixel-sized cell thing; each cell is sealed. At that scale, surface tension beats gravity, so orientation may not matter much.

        • yeah, right after I replied, I thought of surface tension at that tiny size, being dominant!
          Still, it might be fun to shake it really hard & see what happens :)
          • Just what everyone needs:
            A color Etch-a-Sketch monitor.

            • Just what everyone needs: A color Etch-a-Sketch monitor.

              That's been tried. The Iconorama [ed-thelen.org] was a 1950s effort by the USAF to build a large-screen display. This was a computer-controlled Etch-a-Sketch like setup arranged as a projector. As with an Etch-A-Sketch, there was no selective erasing; when the image (which was mostly the tracks of attacking aircraft) became cluttered, the entire image was cleared and replaced with a newly drawn one. The previous big-screen attack plotting technology was an edge-

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Woek ( 161635 )
      ... and by fifteen years you mean two years, right?
    • no, I was in the sony store a couple of weeks ago and they have a $300 epaper reader there, and that is first gen so it is bound to go down from there

  • Just what we need... (Score:3, Funny)

    by E++99 ( 880734 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @05:13PM (#20147487) Homepage
    ...something else to drive up the price of oil!

  • Prior Art (Score:4, Funny)

    by skeeto ( 1138903 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @05:20PM (#20147601)

    Oil based displays have been in use for years. In fact, there is famous prior art [wikipedia.org].

  • so is it that different from this [eink.com] tech? Eink has been around for quite a while now.

  • crap... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ItsLenny ( 1132387 ) on Tuesday August 07, 2007 @06:52PM (#20149235) Homepage
    good as a toy if you're rich and wanna be like... "LOOK WHAT I GOT!!!"

    however they say they wanna use it for marketing purposes such as wrapping it around street furniture [tech.co.uk]...

    HOWEVER it also says in this part [tech.co.uk] that it needs to be viewed from 180 (straight on)... which would make it invisible to passing vehicles almost always and i'd imagine since it's "not as bright as a standard LCD" that the sun light will just wash it out anways...

    cool tech honestly.. but mostly useless I say

    • But it looks light weight, which might prove useful. I think it's funny the first thing they think about is the Minority Report-like ad displays, but there are many more uses for this. As an artist, it would be cool to send my portfolio in one of these rather than a CD or something where someone has to make extra steps to load it into their computer, they just unroll this and the display starts. This being if they could get the price down enough for it to be treated in this kind of casual fashion. If it'

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Woek ( 161635 )
      Yeah, the text was confusing. They mean it has a viewing angle of 180 degrees. In other words: you can see it well from any direction as long as you're not looking at its back.
  • Tech.co.uk reports that LG Phillips has filed a patent...

    No they don't. They report that LG Philips has done so. How hard is it to at least get the name of the subject company right?

    And it's not even right in the headline. Sometimes I despair.

  • First to name the old SOD.

  • Sharp (Score:2, Funny)

    by Loconut1389 ( 455297 )
    Looks like Sharp will have to rename their Aquos line!
  • So this is the real OLED, an Oleo (oil) Display, or should that be OLEOD?
  • Prior Art! [google.ca]
  • These things will become popular, and someone at NASA will forget that they require gravity to function...

    "Shuttle to Mission Control: Orbital insertion in 3...2...1...ummmm.... Guys, we have a problem..."

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