Flat screen technology

[dakels]

I am really not satisfied with LCD native resolutions and the bad interpolations of non-native resolutions. Its a limitation of the deisgn though. I don't really see a way around this unless interpolation becomes so good you can't tell, or another technology or method is incorporated.

I haven't done any research into this but what do you guys see as the immediate future of flat screen monitors? Better LCD's or new technology? Is there anything else on the near horizon? I know Plasma is limited; large cell size, delicate phosphers, and low brightness, but all that can be improved I think but it's still has a quantified resolution like LCD.

 

[zephyrprime]

Well maybe we'll use OLED or electroluminescent. Who knows. Interpolation's not going to get better so you can forget that option. Perhaps the resolution of screens will just get really high and interpolation won't be as noticeable. If OLED ever becomes a reality, this will definitely happen. But it would be much harder to attain super high resolutions with LCD technology.

 

[Shalmanese]

How often do you change the resolution on a monitor anyway? My guess is only for graphics-intensive games. With the current generation of LCD's, running games at an interpolated resolution does very little to degrade quality. Personally, I sometimes prefer to play at an interpolated res since in makes jaggies less apparent.

For office applications, 1024@15" and 1280@17" is just about the sweet spot. Personally, 1600@17 would be nice as well but I suspect some people would dislike it.

 

[dakels]

Games are not the main issue. The majority of people using 17" monitors are not using a 1280x1024 for one reason. Everything is too small for them. In fact most offices you will see 800x600 running on 17" CRT's and 1024x768 for 19".

Pixels=size dependant on resolution. To increase the size, then you either have to increase the pixel size or add more dots/information to original image, i.e. interpolation. I don't see why can't improve some sort of vector scaling that's done within the OS or graphics card. It would alleviate the shrinking of everything as resolutions are increased. The graphics card or monitor would have to render and interpolate the screen image. I have used Quartz Extreme for Mac OS X and it looks beautiful. That is an on-the-fly rendering/antialiasing system done on the video card but controlled by the OS. LCD interpolation is done on the LCD display controller. Why can't we just make a better interpolation system controlled by the graphics card?

The problem I see with this though is that even if you do it well, you are letting the computer approximate the image's (type, buttons, image) which is inaccurate to the original image information. This could be a problem with graphical images. Image editing programs like photoshop would have to run the image uninterpolated to keep the image content accurate. Everything else though could be interpolated because it wouldn't really matter if your text, buttons and other vector items were interpolated to be larger. For most people interpolation would be a major benefit to run hiher, tighter, clearer or native resolutions while still retaining the relative size of what is displayed on screen.

make sense? I;m sure something similar must have been done or is being worked on?

 

[Akira13]

I think I remember something about bio-something-or-other screens (I don't remember the exact terminology). Supposedly they were working on those a year back, and they said that the screens would be able to roll and unroll. I don't know where that technology went, and how good it was.

I was thinking about resolutions, and it seems to me that the only way to get rid of pixels is to shrink them down to zero (at the same time, you put infinite pixels on screen). Then it dawned on me that what we see in the "real world" is a picture made up of an arbitrarily large number of molecules. Perhaps we could create a screen that mimics the molecular structure of what we want to see. Of course, this would take technology that is far beyond our reach now, but it would provide an infinitely high resolution display.

Of course these are just the rantings of a very bored EE student.

 

[NogginBoink]

AFAIK, LCD is the only thing on the horizon. It's mature and economically viable.

Manufacturers love that.

 

[f95toli]

Polymer based screens have already been demonstrated and are actually used in some applications where you only need a small screen (front panels of stereos etc). Since polymer based screens tend to consume less power I would guess that we will soon see them in PDAs. Foldable screens are not impossible within a few years.

Another approach is to use carbon nanotubes,a working full-sized prototype has already been shown (Samsung?).

The biggest problem is not technology but the fact that new techniques require huge investments in for example new factories, I agree that LCDs will dominate the market the next few years. The LCD-technologie can also still be improved, for example by using other types of liquid crystals. It is still a very active research field.

 

[CallTheFBI]

Originally posted by: f95toli
Polymer based screens have already been demonstrated and are actually used in some applications where you only need a small screen (front panels of stereos etc). Since polymer based screens tend to consume less power I would guess that we will soon see them in PDAs. Foldable screens are not impossible within a few years.

Another approach is to use carbon nanotubes,a working full-sized prototype has already been shown (Samsung?).

The biggest problem is not technology but the fact that new techniques require huge investments in for example new factories, I agree that LCDs will dominate the market the next few years. The LCD-technologie can also still be improved, for example by using other types of liquid crystals. It is still a very active research field.

I think LCD technology is going to dominate for more than the next few years. Look how long the CRTs have dominated, LCDs will dominate at least as long in my opinion. Remember change comes slowly, the vast majority of desktops in offices and homes still have CRTs anyway and we are already talking about technology beyond LCD? Hehe, one step at a time man.

 

[f95toli]

I don't think we will see new technologies in a while UNLESS they are cheaper. A polymer based screen might be cheaper to make and if so they will be on the market soon. That does not mean that they will be any better than LCS screens (but maybe cheaper). The limiting factor when it comes to resolution is not the liquid crystal iteself but the addressing, you have to address each individual pixel in order to switch it. This is done using a matrix made out of metal (usually tin) that is placed behind the liquid crystal layer. New technologies will face the same problems and it is hard to see a good way to solve this.

 

[Shalmanese]

If your just worried about native resolutions then I would say that, at present, theres simply no demand for low res LCD's. LCD's are still a luxury item so the people using them still demand lots of screen real estate. There also probably a lot younger/healthier and have better eyes. When I was working in a computer repair shop, it was usually the middle aged illiterates who had a tiny 15" monitor cranked at 640x480.

When LCD prices come down enough to become "mainstream" there will be product differentiation with 17/18/19" 1280x1024 LCD's being the "base model" and 1600x1200 LCD's being the "deluxe" model and 1024x768 being the "budget" model. People will be able to choose the one they need.

 

[IGBT]

Isn't there something called "cold cathode" around the corner??

 

[dakels]

Cold Cathode, from what I know is mainly for large flat screen screen usage or low resolution usage like terminal screens. The pixel size is fairly large so it's more focused on usage of large screen TV's and such. It is also a quantified and therefore fixed resolution IIRC. But then again, I don't know a whole lot about it.

 

[spikemike]

i saw a 13" oled from sony in may last year, they are really awesome, High contrast, hig response time(so now complaints from gamers) however right now one thing you have to realize is that each screen these companies make that have no flaws are probably worth in the several millions of dollars range. They are built essentially in a lab. They have spent large quantities of money on this technology. The other thing is some people are saying oleds are much thinner http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7722&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0. However what I think is going on there is the electronics are all seperate, that you plugged the DVI/RGB cable into then a cable went from the box to the screen, my guess is the ones in the picture on the other site are exactly the same. Sony came out with an LCD a couple of years ago that was 1/4" thin and all laptop screens are that thin as well, but for the sony screen there was a box that was seperate It still looked impressive though. As far as native resolution OLEDs are just like an LCD it is a standard RGB stripe. The antialiasing done on the screens is usually taken care of by Windows now. However this native resolution problem can be made better using a technology from Clairvoyante Laboratories www.clairvoyante.com, which has come up with a way to increase resolution without increasing cost, and can be applied to any RGB style monitors. I personally don't know what the complaint is, most of the antialiasing algorithms these days are pretty good. EInk is another source of flat panels for ebook applications in particular. I have seen several working displays from them. For black and white they are outstanding very high contrast ratio 12:1 paper is around 15:1 i think monitors get around 8:1 for black and white. However they color monitor looked pretty bad. There technology is all reflective so they have to use a color filter and this greatly reduces brightness. There is something called ThinCRTs from Candescent but if they are the same as FEDs then this technology will probably never take off. ThinCRTs(FEDs) are currently very difficult to produce and don't have any really benefit that I can recall. OLEDs are most likely the next big thing but I think there will still be a bit of waiting for them to get in production.