Display Technologies News

Disruptive technologies (like the microprocessor and the World Wide Web) cannot be easily predicted, but they can be recognized when they appear. At the Consumer Electronics Show this month, a supersession called "Big Thinkers, Disruptive Technologies" highlighted five such technologies poised to disrupt 2011 — and displays play a major role in three of the five. In session chair Tim Bajarin's preview from PC Magazine, he highlights the importance of 3D displays on different platforms, how touchscreens are changing mainstream computing, and how tablets (i.e., smart displays that you carry) change the way people use computers.

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• No moving parts
• Sealed to IP67 standard

Model SDC100 features low power consumption and extreme temperature tolerance. Reliable operation in wet, dirty environments. High bright option. 10.4 in. to 22 in. Sealed cable set included. Rugged aluminum chassis. CPU options to Core 2 Quad. SmallPC.com profile.

The more video inputs, the better, right? With up to six channels, the CDU-538 also acts as an interpreter of the video. It converts the inputs into a multitude of graphical representations, depending on your needs. Let us customize your display requirements, and improve your view of the world!

If you don't want to choose between high display performance and long battery life, you may not have to. At CES, Pixel Qi showed off two 10.1 in. screens and a 7 in. 1024x600 resolution touchscreen developed with partner Chunghwa Picture Tubes that can function as either low-power black-and-white e-readers or colorful thin-film-transistor LCDs.

Up to now, consumer 3D displays have used frame-sequential systems, which depend on liquid crystal shutters in the glasses that make them heavy and prone to flicker. Now, LG has demonstrated displays that use polarization techniques instead. Polarization methods provide only half the vertical resolution of frame-sequential panels, but they eliminate image flicker and permit lighter, less-complicated 3D glasses.

Manufacturing large OLED displays has proven a hard nut to crack, limiting these bright, colorful screens to smart-phone-sized applications. Samsung recently demonstrated a prototype of a 19 in. active matrix OLED TV made using a printing method. Printing could lower costs, perhaps offsetting yield problems for big screens.

Extending OLED lifetime is the benefit touted by a patented technology from a Beijing company. They say that the technique obtains a single color emission through a composite light-emitting layer prolonging OLED life by 20x, demonstrating a lifespan of up to 100,000 hours at a brightness of 1,000 candela per square meter.

For demanding industrial, military, avionic, and outdoor environments...

Dontech's display enhancement services improve optical performance and durability of LCDs via passive and active brightness enhancements, optical bonding, EMI/RFI shielding using optical mesh, and conductive coatings and Therma-Klear™ transparent heaters for low temperature operation.

Learn more...

Optical Bonding is the affixing of two optical elements to one another using a liquid adhesive. It increases luminance and contrast of your LCD, OLED, or plasma display, while simultaneously reducing internal reflections. Other benefits include greater resistance to shock and vibration, extended operating temperature range, and condensation/moisture eliminaton.

New e-readers brought color to their screens at CES this year. A preview from CNET covers the technologies — the most interesting of which is a reader that incorporates Mirasol, a technology that uses optical interference to generate colors. This rather elegant solution, introduced in prototype at last CES — as demonstrated in this video — is being incorporated into 2011 e-readers.

Laser-based projection displays offer pure bright colors, and they are easier to keep in focus than some other projector technologies. But making full-color versions small enough to be practical has been a problem until now. Green diode lasers in particular are just becoming available. This video shows a pico-projector prototype that boasts full-color 720-pixel images, using lasers steered by micro-mirrors.

Touchpads and touchscreens are great if your hands are clean, but that limitation wouldn't apply if we could control displays with gestures. Non-contact infrared controls in gaming systems like the Wii and Xbox Kinect have proved successful, so why not for tablets? No reason at all, as this video shows. Thanks to a patented technology, Norwegian company Elliptic Labs has demonstrated an iPad dock that uses ultrasound to navigate the display.

The first glasses-free 3D TVs have hit the market (at least in Japan) and more models from Toshiba were introduced at CES. Both a 12 and 20 in. version are available now, with a 40 in. screen in the works. The autostereoscopic technology requires users to sit in specific viewing zones or face a fuzzy screen.

Lumex's technical design specialists can integrate TFT technology with touchscreens, switches, connectors, cable covers, heaters, custom daughterboards, and other key components to create solutions that maximize performance and efficiency in each individual application. Modules are compatible with standard LCD drivers and are available in standard and touchscreen formats. Buy now!

DMR technology is a voltage-driven technology using overlapping X-&Y-ITO layers to form an electrode pattern where the IC scans for actuation.

• Light actuation force which is 15 g
• Easy-to-use (SPI, I2C,USB)
• Win 7
• No calibration is required, pressure detection, fast response

Laser effects and light shows increase the impact of visual displays and performances in art displays, arenas and exhibitions, and nightclubs.

To learn more, visit ProPhotonix at the Photonics West Tradeshow in San Francisco, CA on January 25, 2011 at booth #1923.

Farnell's selection of displays range from basic, monochrome, single character '7-segment' displays through to full-color graphic LCD displays. Farnell offers all these display technologies in a broad range of screen sizes, colors, and resolutions.

Farnell stock products from the leading manufacturers in displays, including: Avago Technologies; Kingbright; Hitachi; and more...

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The U.S. Flat Panel Display conference will be held March 1-2, 2011 at the Hard Rock Hotel in downtown San Diego, CA. Speakers address manufacturing and supply issues, as well as what's next, now that flat panels have largely supplanted CRTs, and handheld tablet computers have arrived.

A patent application from Disney combines a small projector and camera with a cake to create an interactive dessert. If you've seen a child hesitate to slice into a beautiful cake in the past — or if you've hesitated yourself — imagine how much more traumatic a cake cutting experience could be when you add pre-programmed, changeable projections.

Motion Sick in Front of the Monitor?

Have you felt motion sick from playing immersive games or watching 3D displays? Should we be concerned about side effects on an unknown percentage of people, as 3D images spread everywhere (including in public ads)?