>  For a moment it got me, until I watched on the projector feature, which
> made it rather clear that it's a spoof.

I think both the non-rectangular display and the projector, are features 
that are only available in the R&D stage at the moment.  Won't be long 
though...

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> Well, if they get the laser projectors work I wouldn't be surprised if
> the projectors get *much* smaller than they are now (Still they will use
> a lot of power). I think Frauenhofer Institute has some prototype
> working, where the optics (excluding the electronics) is only a few cubic
> cm.

I saw a demo from these guys a couple of years ago which was only a few cc:

http://www.lightblueoptics.com

But as you mentioned, they told me back then the problem was the cost and 
availability of small green laser diodes.  I'm sure that's on the way to 
getting fixed though, and then we'll have all sorts of cool applications :-)

BTW the technology used is pretty interesting, they use a micro display, 
just like in a conventional projector, but instead of creating the image on 
the display, they create a hologram from the image and show this on the 
display, then use the lasers with the display to recreate the image on any 
surface.  The benefits of this system are that the image is always perfectly 
in focus (so no need for moving lens) and that if one pixel or line fails in 
the display, it affects every pixel in the final image equally so you 
essentially don't notice it.  These two things will make them potentially 
very cheap to manufacturer once the laser diodes drop in price.

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"scott" <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote in message 
news:492a5978$1@news.povray.org...
>>  For a moment it got me, until I watched on the projector feature, which
>> made it rather clear that it's a spoof.
>
> I think both the non-rectangular display and the projector, are features 
> that are only available in the R&D stage at the moment.  Won't be long 
> though...

I'd rather the coffee maker.

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Am Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:51:16 -0500 schrieb Tim Cook:
 
> I'd rather the coffee maker.

http://www.handpresso.com/

:)

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Am Mon, 24 Nov 2008 09:02:52 +0100 schrieb scott:

>> Well, if they get the laser projectors work I wouldn't be surprised if
>> the projectors get *much* smaller than they are now (Still they will
>> use a lot of power). I think Frauenhofer Institute has some prototype
>> working, where the optics (excluding the electronics) is only a few
>> cubic cm.
> 
> I saw a demo from these guys a couple of years ago which was only a few
> cc:
> 
> http://www.lightblueoptics.com

That's pretty impressive! I want one :).

>  These two things will
> make them potentially very cheap to manufacturer once the laser diodes
> drop in price.

On an only slightly related note, I'm still waiting till the OLED screens 
get cheap enough for consumer laptops :). My current laptop should 
survive till then.

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> On an only slightly related note, I'm still waiting till the OLED screens
> get cheap enough for consumer laptops :). My current laptop should
> survive till then.

OLED is fighting a very tough battle against LCD, when OLED was first 
invented it instantly addressed many problems that LCD had (response time, 
colour range, viewing angle, contrast).  But the problem is OLED can't 
improve any further (except for the lifetime and cost issues), whereas LCD 
has been catching up in leaps and bounds over the last 5-10 years.

If you buy a good quality LCD today (eg one used in a TV set or good 
monitor, not a cheap laptop display), you will be very hard pressed to tell 
it apart from an OLED display.  THe only thing LCD really needs to improve 
to be totally on par with OLED is the contrast.  Currently consumer LCD 
contrast tops out at about 1000:1 - 2000:1, this is still not good enough 
for good blacks in a dark room.

When any consumer OLED monitor is released, it's going to need to pretty 
sophisticated electronics or software to counteract the ageing of each 
sub-pixel.  In current displays it doesn't matter if your display gets a bit 
darker after a year or two of use, but it will be a bit annoying if you get 
a permanent imprint of the windows task bar at the bottom of your monitor 
:-)

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scott wrote:

> sub-pixel.  In current displays it doesn't matter if your display gets a 
> bit darker after a year or two of use, but it will be a bit annoying if 
> you get a permanent imprint of the windows task bar at the bottom of 
> your monitor :-)

You mean there'd be a real reason to have a screen saver again?  LOL!

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> You mean there'd be a real reason to have a screen saver again?  LOL!

Yeh it looks like it!  Actually there is a SOny 11" OLED TV on Amazon, I was 
reading through the user manual (from the Sony website) and it said that is 
shifts the image around every so often to avoid burn-in.

I would be more concerned though about people who use their computers a lot, 
I mean my screen saver is hardly ever on because I'm mostly at the computer 
during the day.  There's a timer on my old monitor (that I just use as a 
secondary display for my laptop now) which says it's been on for 6519 hours. 
I would hazard a guess that for the majority of that it's said "Start" at 
the bottom left corner!  Even with standard LEDs, after 6000 hours you are 
going to see at least a 10% drop in brightness (which you hardly notice on 
LCD because it affects the whole image), I think this would be quite visible 
if it varied pixel by pixel though.

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> Yeh it looks like it!  Actually there is a SOny 11" OLED TV on Amazon, I was 
> reading through the user manual (from the Sony website) and it said that is 
> shifts the image around every so often to avoid burn-in.

  Wouldn't help with larger areas with an uniform color...

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> Yeh it looks like it!  Actually there is a SOny 11" OLED TV on Amazon, I 
>> was
>> reading through the user manual (from the Sony website) and it said that 
>> is
>> shifts the image around every so often to avoid burn-in.
>
>  Wouldn't help with larger areas with an uniform color...

Agreed, but at least the moving around should stop any recognisable pattern 
burning in - like the word "Start" or "88:88:88" where the clock is - it 
would just be more of a dark blur in that area.

I guess this is primarily a TV so there probably won't be the same issues as 
with a computer monitor or any other display where static information is 
shown in certain areas of the screen.

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