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Graphics Software

Sony Pursues New Digital Display Technology 137

Posted by Hemos from the making-things-brighter-and-better dept.
ih8billy writes: "Looks like Sony is looking to replace their now patent-free Trinitron technology with something called GLV (Grating Light Valve) technology. Looks pretty promising as a digital display technology. It can do 1080p without breaking a sweat. GLV also has promise in optical signal routing."
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Sony Pursues New Digital Display Technology More

Sony Pursues New Digital Display Technology

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  • I hope GLV doesn't have that annoying faint horizontal black line 1/4 the way up the screen like every trinitron monitor does...

  • It's using the exact same physical principle, and in an application where most people wouldn't have imagined it would be useful or usable, just like Cannon's DO lens.

    Diffraction and interference, the property of light which makes the anti-reflection coating on your glasses work. The diffraction and interference is created using different physical systems, however the basics are the same. One quarter lambda.


  • One of their PDF papers explicitly mentions some of the ways they go about reducing speckle, and shows some comparisons. So they are aware of it and are dealing with it, and it looks like they can do so without any significant added cost or system complexity.
  • i like all tvs. i must have one of each.
    I am not elvis, however.
  • Well readers are always complaining about how slow slashdot is with posting things. Perhaps they're trying to get a little more up to speed?

  • DLPs shown up in some home-theater equipment. Panasonic has come out with some new HDTV rear-projection sets that use DLP as the display element instead of traditional CRTs. Don't know how good/bad it looks yet, I haven't seen it in action.

    Interesting side note: DLP has not made many inroads into the portable projector market. Last time I was on an airplaine, I picked up the in-flight magazine and flipped through it, noticing that almost every other page had an ad for some type of portable video projector (the kind used for laptop comptuer-based presentations). Nearly all of them had max resolution of 1600x1200 (as opposed to DLP's current max of 1280x1024), and almost all of them were LCD-based. Some of the ads even came right out and said, "No DLP projector can match our hi-res LCD system!" DLP simply has to increase its resolution if they want to compete.

  • The patent's been dead for at least five years. Actually, as they've been making tv sets since the 60's, and all they made were the trinitrons, the patent's probably been dead for longer. Sorry, but no corporate conspiracy theory here.
    --
  • Yep, Trinitrons are nice, and they're often preferred by the graphics types -- unless they're doing CAD.

    Serious CAD needs high resolution and good antialiasing, which is more difficult to get with the Trinitron's vertical phosphor stripes than it is with discrete dots. That's why some of the top-line Invar-mask monitors are more expensive than even the Trinitrons.

    ---

  • To achieve the scanning;
    GLV Ribbon Rotating Mirror
    * -> 0
    ^ /|\
    Laser _____________
    Display

    Laser Rotating GLV Ribbon
    ---> *
    /|\
    ___________
    Display

    You can also probably play with diffraction gratings, lenses, mirrors, and other neato optical toys to get the desired effects

    Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
  • They already make Trinitron clones. It's called the Mitsubishi Diamondtron. Actually, Sony's (and Mitsubishi, I'm sure) been improving their Trinitron tube since they first started to build TV's with them, so it's obviously not just a matter of getting the patent document and slapping together a factory. There's a reason why Trinitron tubes get OEM'ed to other companies; they just don't have the expertise that Sony invested in for decades to build their tubes.
    --
  • (forgot to put this in the parent post. oops).

    OTOH, as Sony moves away from the Trinitron as their flagship product, the prices of the tubes should start to come down.

    Though, this development really surprises me. My father is one of the directors @ Sony Display Division, and he mentioned nothing of the sort *shrug*.
    --

  • Well, do you really think that only Sony should push technology forward? Aren't there any companies left to invent themselfes GLV? If they aren't then probably Sony deserves the money...

    Just look around, how old is the concept of the very computer you used to write down your anticorporatist remark? Less than 30 years... How old is the concept of the network you used to post your comment? Ancient IP is around 30 years old, the Web it's even younger... How old is the very tool facilitate our comunication, /. ?!

    Actually we should have the next big thing on our desktops much sooner. Patents on the old Trinitron just facilitate that. They should encourage competition to come up with the next big thing. Too bad everybody (except Sony) was too lazy to care about that...

  • Hmm. (Score:3)

    by Apotsy ( 84148 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @01:24PM (#576697)
    Since it says they're using lasers, I have to wonder how they solved the interference pattern problem. Just try shining a laser pointer at a flat, white surface. Instead of a smooth dot, you get dot with some bizzare, grainy-looking pattern in it, due to the interference pattern caused by the reflected light's interaction with itself (the light is not reflected evenly, since any household surface will have small irregularities in it). Then try moving your head around while looking at the dot. See the pattern move, too?

    I'm not sure how that effect could be eliminated from a device like this. It would be interesting to see it in action. The interference problem might be a little distracting.

    It's also encouraging to hear that they are aiming for ultra-high resolutions like 8 million pixels. We might actually have a digital cinema system in the future that matches the resolution of 35mm film (about 10-12 million pixels). Sounds cool.

  • Ok, maybe third!

    Anyhow, I managed to snag a 15 inch Trinitron monitor from my apartment complex a couple of years back - someone had left it in the laundry room as a "give away" item. I took it home, plugged it in - screen is completely white - but nothing else seemed wrong. So, I took a gamble:

    I took it down to a guy who has a shop repairing small monitors at a flat rate ($100 - larger monitors are a bit more). A week and $100 later, it was fixed (some control ICs were blown).

    That has been two years ago - it is a great monitor. I just recently replaced it with a 19 inch Trinitron (KDS monitor) - I will never go with anything else...

    *note - side bitch*

    Just realized I have "helped" a small portion of the MPAA, since Sony is a member. God I hate how these bastards are EVERYWHERE!

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
  • Just an idea, try reading the article. The patents on Trinitron were origninated in the 60's
  • Shit, imagine how long it took me to type it
  • I like the implications of this: trinitron monitors should come down in price as other monitor manufacturers can now make them if they so chose (and I hope they do: even though this trinitron monitor I'm using right now is being driven by a lowsy card (i810), it's a nice monitor: 16 or 17" flatscreen. I wouldn't mind one at home:)

    Bill - aka taniwha
    --

  • Trinitron is old technology, indeed with those annoying lines. Nowadays there are lots of other spendid tubes that have aperture grille, and that look at least as good as Trinitron (but without the lines).

    Philips is the biggest maker of tubes in the world (including television tubes), and many of them are excellent. An example is the 109P20 monitor [philips.com].

    Trinitrons aren't bad, (though Sony itself sucks because of bad customer service) but the're certainly not the only, or even the best choice if you want an excellent monitor.
  • They have a PDF presentation of the technology at: http://www.siliconlight.com/webpdf/bayarea_sid299. pdf [siliconlight.com]. Page 20 of 25 points out that there's an inherent reduction of laser speckle.

    • For a start, this GLV technology basically produces one long thin column (Personally I'm surprised they chose to implement a column rather than a row, but whatever...) of light, and then a moving mirror effectively drags this column back and forth across your screen. Any speckle that you DID have is thus blurred by being dragged horizontally across your screen. Try spotting speckle in your laser pointer when you're swinging it really fast left and right. (or try spotting speckle in a laser light-show, for that matter).
    • Secondly, they don't have to use completely coherent light. They can merge multiple lasers of similar but not identical wavelength. This is a bit like overlaying multiple different speckle patterns on top of each other, again blurring the effect.
    • Thirdly, they can use non-polarised light, and I'll admit I haven't got the foggiest idea what they're saying there, but apparently they can thus use "novel speckle reduction means", whatever that might mean! Even if this is bull$#!+, points 1 and 2 sound pretty convincing to me.

    What I find particularly amusing...

    The first ever John Logie Baird televisions used a big circular disk with holes or lenses appropriately placed to scan a spot of light as the disk was spun. Each hole or lens scanned a single column of the screen, then dropped off the bottom just as the next hole/lens was about to appear at the top of the next column.

    The second generation of TVs (this is still before CRT took off) used all kinds of moving mirror magic to basically do the same thing - optically scan a spot of light across the screen. Some used a mirror drum with about 30 or 40 carefully angled mirrors, each of which would scan one column of the screen, again each mirror's reflected spot of light dropping off the bottom of one column of the screen just as the next mirror was about to take over at the top of the next column. Others used 2 synchronised drums - one spinning fast, and turning a spot into a vertical column of light, which was then reflected off the next (slower, but still quite fast) mirror drum which swept this column left-to-right.

    This brand new GLV technology is doing almost exactly the same thing, except it's using a clever microchip with thousands of tiny moving reflective ribons to produce the initial "column" of light, which is then swept across the screen by a horizontally-scanning mirror.

    Isn't it funny how history repeats itself? :-)

    Why did we bother with all that expensive, heavy, dangerous CRT stuff in between, eh? All that mucking about with thick glass, phosphorescent chemicals, and stupendously high voltages? :-)

  • Sony seized the opportunity and the Lawrence Tube became the Trinitron in 1968

    There may have been a delay between the patent being filed and being granted (so 68/69 could have been Patent Pending), hence it may have just run out?

    Phillip.

  • Re:*pun absolutely intended. (Score:3)

    by American AC in Paris ( 230456 ) on Thursday December 07, 2000 @01:36AM (#576705) Homepage
    It seems corporatists want to have their cake and eat it too - they want to do as they please (pollute, collude, rape), but they want the rest of us (via our Corporatist $whoring$ governments) to guarantee their pocket books...

    I, for one, would be honestly surprised to learn that you did not own several thousand dollars worth of corporation-spawned leisure goods. Do you own a computer? TV? VCR? DVD Player? Stereo? Stereo in your car? CD player in your car? Playstation? Dreamcast? CD player that you can carry around with you? MP3 player that you can carry around with you? Microwave oven? Internet connection? Cell phone? Pager? Handheld computer? Laptop computer? Digital camera? Camcorder? Cordless phone? CD library? DVD library?

    You're fooling yourself if you honestly think that the Big Bad Meanie Government is the driving force behind corporate corruption. It's the ever-growing leisure class that drives corporate corruption--companies put the latest and greatest thing out on the shelves and people camp out inside Wal-Mart just to get the first one. It's hard to say that the corporation is raping society when society is clawing it's clothes off like a nymphomaniac. Corporations get away with the crap they do because people just keep throwing money at them.

    If you own a DVD player, you've let the RIAA/MPAA win. If you regularly buy CDs, you're part of the pipeline that feeds the recording industry. If you own a Walkman, a Discman, a Vaio, play Everquest, or buy any number of the things Sony puts on the market, then you are part of the hand that feeds Sony. How much do you think a corporation will care about what you think of their business practices if you continue to buy their products, especially when said products are not necessities by any stretch of the imagination?

    Sony manufactures consumer goods. To suggest that the government is somehow responsible for their business practices is absurd. Sony does and gets away with what it does because the people care more about getting their toys than they do about the ethics of the corporation. Wake up and smell your own damn complacency.

    Its almost laughable

    Amen to that.

    $ man reality

  • There are probably several different mentods to achieve the scanning;

    GLV Ribbon Rotating Mirror
    * -> 0
    ^ /|\
    Laser _____________
    Display

    Laser Rotating GLV Ribbon
    ---> *
    /|\
    ___________
    Display

    You can also probably play with diffraction gratings, lenses, mirrors, and other neato optical toys to get the desired effects

    You know, this is stupid. Evidently, the lamness filter detects all this neato ascii art, and thinks it shouldn't be posting it... Well, at least I can't preview it, though the messed up non-plaintext version got committed. Maybe I should try again ^^

    *sigh*

    Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]

  • The method the GLV to produce a patch of 'dark' is ingenious. A strip of alternating rasiedand depressed strips reflect no light because the light from the depressed strips is 180 out of phase with the light reflected from the raised strips.

    This is how the pits in CDs work. They appear dark not because they present a less shiny surface, but because the light they reflect cancels out the light reflected by the adjacent 'lands'

  • They seem to have thought of this. From one of the presentations on their site:

    • Inherent reduction of laser speckle
      • Natural reduction of speckle through fundamental linear scanning approach
      • Use of multiple non- coherent sources (i. e. laser bars or multiple DPSS lasers) further reduces speckle
      • Use of non- polarized light enables novel speckle reduction means
  • There are probably several different mentods to achieve the scanning;

    GLV Ribbon Rotating Mirror
    * -> 0
    ^ /|\
    Laser _____________
    Display

    Laser Rotating GLV Ribbon
    ---> *
    /|\
    ___________
    Display

    You can also probably play with diffraction gratings, lenses, mirrors, and other neato optical toys to get the desired effects

    You know, this is stupid. Evidently, the lamness filter detects all this neato ascii art, and thinks it shouldn't be posting it... Well, at least I can't preview it, though the messed up non-plaintext version got committed. Maybe I should try again ^^

    *sigh*

    Geek dating! [bunnyhop.com]
  • Sony also makes the Spressa line of CD-RW drives, allowing me to make free, digital copies of all their music.
  • Personally I'm surprised they chose to implement a column rather than a row, but whatever...

    Actually, that makes sense. Pretty much every display format in existence has an aspect ratio greater than 1 (wider than it is tall). If you're going to have a device that's bounded in one direction but not the other, it's better to make the short direction be the bounded one, and the long direction be the unbounded one.


  • I may be way off base here, and if so, someone please give me an education; but for the CPU and a peripheral to exchange some form of authentication doesn't the OS driver have to know about this and allow/facilitate it happening?

    If so, then while I can see it taking place in an MS world, I can't see Open Source drivers willingly cooperating. Or the peripheral vendors allowing their authentication methods being made open to public scrutiny.

    ???

    Macka
  • Patents used to be valid for 17 years from the date of issue. They recently (less than 5 years ago, I think) changed it. They're now valid for 20 years from the date of filing.

    --

  • I found one, but in Portuguese: here. The Flatron one is the 17" 795FT model. (Mine is a 795FT Plus, which is the same but has an USB Hub.)

    There's some info also in LG USA web page at http://www.lgeus.com.


    --
    Marcelo Vanzin
  • Does anyone know if this GLV tech is what is being used in the fancy "monitor menus" at McDonalds*?

    * For those that don't know - here in the Phoenix area (and I guess they are cropping up elsewhere), certain McDonalds have menus displays, instead of the "standard" light up menu - behind the counter. The "menus" can display animations and movies. The resolution seems OK - on par with an 800x600 LCD - maybe better. These displays, though, are much larger (approximately 24 inches diagonally). They aren't that deep - but deeper than what an LCD display would need, but less deep than what a projection system would use (I suppose).

    Does anyone know what these displays are and/or who makes them?

    Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!

  • I had an opportunity to see the GLV in operation up close at the offices of SLM in Sunnyvale, and I have to say that they are a great bunch of people with a really great technology.

    They had always been proposing it for digital theatre presentations, rear-projection displays, and so-on, and didn't really see a way to get this sort of thing on the desktop in the near term.

    I have to concur with some other posts on this thread that a "Triniron Replacement" this most likely is not.

    As an aside, during the demo they gave some two years ago, they looped a rather short loop from a ram disk to project onto a wall... they had trouble getting enough moving content that was able to show off their resolution capabilities, since even HDTV content doesn't challenge it. Very cool.

  • ... not even goatse.cx.

    We've all seen this before. And we're not affected if we see it again. I, for one, am completely desensitized to goatsex. (God, that sounds bad when I read it.)

    Really, I mean it. By now, the hardened veterans of the internet are used to this. After all, it's just an asshole - much like yourself.

  • ahem I ALREADY [bostonphoenix.com] DID [while1.org]

  • THIS GUY'S LINK IS A PORN LINK (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    you fucking suck jerk
  • hey, to people submitting, commenting or posting the articles (yes, that includes you, Hemos):

    Actually READ the article before opening your trap. This has nothing to do with replacing trinitron CRTs, replacing rear-projection TVs or replacing flat-screen monitors... it's for MOVIE PROJECTION, like how your silly Star Wars movies are going to be shown in a year and a half.

    Remember when we heard about digital projection in New York and LA? This is the same thing, only better. Now, let's all go click on that link, read it a bit, then come back and say something witty or stupid or about goatsex or about natalie or whatever the fuck you want, but let's not figure out how great it'll be to not have black lines on our monitors or to not have a screen that takes 150W of power.

    -Chris
    ...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...

  • Re:Diamondtron? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My understanding was that Diamondtron, rather than being a Trinitron "knock-off", was simply a licensed version of Trinitron. Diamondtron tubes, with the tell-tale support wires, were produced long before the Trinitron patents expired (I had a DEC monitor, made by Mitsubishi, with one of these tubes.)

  • Oops, I fscked up the URL.

    Try http://www.lge.com.br/html/produtos/informatica.ht ml. Slashdot seems not to be understaing my URLs... :-/


    --
    Marcelo Vanzin
  • Humm, according to one patent lawyer's website (the bastard), the patent laws are an ever evolving creature. There has been quite a bit of activity on the length of patents in the last 15 years or so. According to his web site (and three others to confirm, including encyclopedia.com) they all state patents are valid for 17 years.
  • "Products could appear within three to five years, depending on the development time required to bring laboratory prototypes through a product development cycle as a finished product."

    Ever notice all cool tech is at least 3-5 years away from being used by consumers?

  • I did a search for "GLV" and this is what I came up with:

    http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/corpcomm/news/corporat e/104.html

    I'm not hyperlinking it because it did not work. Maybe they have a glitch in their search engine and it pulled up a link to an intranet site or maybe its just me. If anyone can get in, I'd like to know.

    On another note, does anyone think that Sony's site is too flashy? What happened to simple websites that were easy to navigate?
  • I was intrigued by the fact that they're using a scanning approach to projection, something I've been tinkering with (in my head only) for years now.

    I've wondered if it shouldn't be possible (or even easy) to set up a mirror that vibrates on two axes, one horizontal and one vertical, and then to point tri-color LEDs at that mirror and focus their converged beams on the wall.

    Basically, I figure a 3x3 array of bright LEDs should be more than bright enough, once focused, to illuminate a small pixel space on the wall. Get three of these, one for each color (now that you can find blue LEDs easily), and you've got a full-color pixel. I'd be reluctant to use lasers, both for obvious eye-danger reasons, and also for the (presumed) expense of blue and yellow beams.

    In my imaginings, I figure that the horizontal and vertical synch signals could (if properly shaped -- can anyone point me to a site that might show me waveforms for such signals?) even drive a mirror deflector directly -- just hook one corner of a mirror to a pivot point, and hook each of the opposite two edges to a small speaker, and connect the speaker coil to the sync signals (or to re-shaped signals, if necessary).

    I'm sure I'm missing something here, but what if I'm not? Could it be possible to build a home-brew HDTV projector for under $300 in parts? Anyone out there care to investigate this further?

  • Oops... I mis-typed something. The last sentance of the second to last paragraph should be

    The speckle from that 'pixel' could be imperceptible, and since the device is being scanned, there is not a large 'surface' of light emitted from the GLV that could interfere in a noticeable way.

    Sorry for that error.

    -----
    D. Fischer
  • Nice idea, and it's already used on a small scale. Rooms would be too big, as the beams would lose any sort of coherence or focus in that distance.

    The use of optical frequencies is already being used for routing in lab systems, and possibly in commercial systems. This gives you an entirely optical network - very fast, with none of this crappy electrical stuff.

    Most of the switching in current lab systems is done with MEMS mirrors, but there are other possibilities with arrayed waveguide gratings and lcd holograms that look promising.

    The little bit of smoke isn't going to work I'm afraid - it's all IR....
  • would our eyes accept something so radically different than what we're used to (horizontal scanning)?

    Why not? First of all, does your eye accept looking at a monitor sideways?

    I think you have a misconception of how CRTs work... Yes they scan sideways but they scan up and down too... side to side, then addvance a line.

    --Ben

  • Look, Sony didn't innovate this technology. They BOUGHT it. Same with the Trinitron tube ... they bought that, too.

    You haven't heard about this yet, because Sony had no reason to shop around for new technology until the Trinitron patent expired. Now that it has ...

    Plus, if you had read the article, you'd have seen that the Silicon Light has actually shopped this technology around to a LOT of different companies ... Sony is the only one that was interested. So if this does end up being the Next Big Thing, then don't blame Sony. Blame all of those other companies that didn't want it.

  • Check out Corvis [corvis.com]. They have patented (and secret) optical switching technology that sounds a lot like the description in this article. Best of all, they are a public company! -pm
  • All CRT's "project" the image onto the tube, duh. The article explains that, and that's why this technology could be usedin regualr monitors.
  • and hot grits. Can't forget the hot grits...and Natalie Portman...mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
    --
  • Oops...didn't mean to mislead you. Yup, the OS needs to be involved at some level (either by doing the authentication, or letting some user-level app do it).

    The Open Source community will be involved in this at somepoint. You must remeber that companies make hardware, and when it comes to something like this, its either their way or no way. Yeah, maybe we can hack together drivers, but we'll also get sued for breaking the EULA. :-/
    --------------------------

  • Have you ever seen a LG "Flatron" monitor?

    I've read they're not very much popular in the USA due to low availability, but it is the only thing I've seen to beat my previous Sony Triniton in image quality.

    And the screen is horizontally and vertically flat (to the point that the image seems to be convex when you look at the monitor).


    --
    Marcelo Vanzin
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I have a 19in Trintron. I love it. The screen is perfectly flat. Before I got used to it, I felt like I was looking at a concave screen!
  • So... they have an exclusive on something that's not secret, and really means nothing in terms of real life products for about 5-10 years.

    This won't make any real difference to the market - it'll be at least 12 years before this hits the level where general consumers will be buying, by which tim IMO 3D technology will be much more of an issue than it is now. So it's not gonna be driving prices down anytime soon!

    So, to sum up: Nice bit of news to keep an eye on, but nothing to get excited about for a few years surely?

  • The story mentions TI's DLP (Digital Light Processing, AKA Micro Mirror) process. I wonder what happened to it? I haven't seen it used in anything but expensive video projectors.

    Rather than a linear raster, the TI chips are a rectangular array of mirrors and can display a whole screen at once. They are binary devices, but can do intensities using pulse width modulation, thanks to the mirrors' 50 kHz (or better) switching rate.

    All in all, I thought TI had a cool hack. Too bad it hasn't become popular.
    --

  • whaddayamean Colorwheel?

    how fast is this baby spinning? 150 rps? It does the colors sequentially?

    why does it seem like I'm missing something here?

  • would our eyes accept something so radically different than what we're used to (horizontal scanning)?

    Why not? First of all, does your eye accept looking at a monitor sideways?

    I think you have a misconception of how CRTs work... Yes they scan sideways but they scan up and down too...side to side, then advance a line.

    A yup. But just to amplify this a bit, the CRT miracle (a steady visual percept over the entire screen caused by a weird serial scan across the phosphors of the screen) is caused by two things.

    The first (and easiest to understand) is the fact that phosphors don't decay instantaneously, so that wouldn't (in principle) need to scan the whole screen at once on a CRT. The second (and more important) thing is that the human retina is a s-l-o-w beast, with the effect that our "instantaneous" percept is actually the average of activity in a surprisingly broad temporal window.

    Now, in the bad old days, you could easily get "flicker" in a monitor display, especially a cheap color one, because the time required to draw the screen was just long enough for phosphors to decay noticably *and* just long enough so that the temporal averaging done in the retina didn't help you. But even that was only true in your rod-dominated peripheral vision (where the aptly-named "flicker fusion rate" is higher). And the worst cases were largish screen sizes with huge dot pitches and interlaced displays.

    But those days are essentially gone now that we can easily repaint a screen at 70 Hz or even 120 Hz. Now, things are a bit trickier for large back projection displays, since the screen has no phosphor, and you're going strictly on retinal "hang time", but this technology is now well under control for modest resolutions. What this new technology promises is an easier way to scale up resolutions to match full HDTV richness, which is, of course, a Good Thing.

  • I think it says something if 6 out of the top 10 recommended displays are Trinitron... If one can get equivalent or better display out of the invar style displays, great.

    I think the Trinitron displays are prettier than equivalent Invar-mask displays: they tend to be brighter and more saturated. That said, I went from a Trinitron to my Invar-mask ViewSonic, and I've never regretted it. Especially when I do a marathon 16-hour day at CAD (fortunately, this isn't every day!).

    ---

  • Can you clarify why this is a problem?

    My guess it is because one is using ordinary lines in a high contrast with their backgrounds.

    I don't see high resolution being a problem with either type display.

    I have been doing CAD work on an off (mostly on the side or part time) for nearly 8 years now and I don't think it would bother me that much, although my opinion likely won't count for most people.

    Heck, with FD Trinitron I would be willing to put up with the minor percieved increase in aliasing for a flat screen.
  • Mitsubishi Diamondtron monitors have been around for at least 7 years. They were significantly cheaper than the Trinitron-based monitors at the time, and at least in the 13-14" tube sizes (which was the prevalent sizes then), their margins were excessively small on the tubes. It's kind of difficult to see Mitsubishi paying Sony a royalty at this point *and* being able to OEM their tubes for slightly less; it makes no business sense for Sony to make the licensing affordable to 3rd parties when these technology licensees would compete in the same space as you (i.e. midrange+ monitors).

    OTOH, back then, the Diamondtron monitors were rather horrible, so it's also possible that it wasn't economically possible for Mitsu to be able to offer the tube at the similar price points. However, Sony no longer dominates the market for high-end CRT tubes (Diamontron, as well as other CRT manufacturers, have caught up--and surpassed in some cases--with Sony).

    Sorry for rambling, but this is my take on it as I saw the industry.
    --

  • What are you talking about??? It looks nothing like the Cannon lens. The lens technology is to keep the light comming through the lens from refracting (like in a prism) which is a big problem with big lenses. This causes lens flare. The bigger the lens, the bigger the problem with lens flare. Hence new exotic lens tech instead of just coatings. BTW - It the quality of the coatings on a lens that really make it good. They correct the fact that different colors of light travel through the glass at different speeds and bend at a different angle.
  • I read that the color temperature of Trinitron screens is usually set better and still retain brightness.

    Invar tubes tend to not hold brightness as well when the color temperature (color of gray) is set properly.

    Most TVs are set high, but the non-trinitrons (invar or what have you) are set even higher to try to compete with the Trinitron's. It was the subject of an Associated Press article a few years back.

    I am not suggesting anyone choose one over the other, but I am definitely willing to pay more for a better picture and quality construction. Last time I bought a display, a Trinitron won on the comparisons I made, I try to be impartial in the judgements.

  • Re:Hmm. (Score:5)

    by skoda ( 211470 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @02:23PM (#576747) Homepage
    "Speckle" is what you're referring to. When a coherent light source (i.e. laser) reflects off a rough surface, the rays reflect in slightly different directions and when subsequently brought to a focus by your eye, interfere producing a speckly interference pattern.

    Speckle only occurs when the laser is reflected from a rough surface. Reflected from a smooth surface, you won't get that speckle pattern.

    Even when reflected form a rough source, if the beam is small compared to your eye's resolution, then the speckle is minimal or even imperceptible.

    Now, assuming a single laser beam is raster scanned across the modulator thingy (similar to how the electron beam is scanned across a TV's phospors), then at any point in time a small laser beam is being focused by your eye. The speckle from that 'pixel' could be imperceptible, and since the device is being scanned, there is a large 'surface' of light emitted from the GLV that would interfere in a noticeable way.

    But I'm just guessing here. Interference is one reason lasers can be a challenging illumination source for imaging optics.

    -----
    D. Fischer
  • I think curved monitors show the porn better, gotta have curves for all those curves

    Adler

  • Why did we bother with all that expensive, heavy, dangerous CRT stuff in between, eh? All that mucking about with thick glass, phosphorescent chemicals, and stupendously high voltages?:-)

    Not that I didn't notice your smiley, but I thought I'd point out that CRTs do have the advantage of having no moving parts. The only reason we're able to go back to moving part design now is because of miniturization. Microscopic moving structures like the GLV and DLP technologies don't need to be oiled or maintianed as much as macroscopic machines.

    But I'm sure you knew that already, based on your :-)

  • This is shocking.

    Right, that gets "Insightful" and mine gets "Off-topic". Idiots.

  • Well, that just tossed my CRT upgrade decisions into a cocket hat. If its as good as it looks, I want two!

    Know anyone who wants to hold the morgage on a soul?
  • I feel your pain, as I was just about to unveil my "LightBrightATron", with an "PaperVar-Shadow Mask" (Patent Pending). It's made with space-age copolymers, high-lumen incandescant light sources, and quality, black matte, wood products which will will accent any decorating scheme in your home.

    :)
    -----
    D. Fischer
  • Damnit! I have been caught on that one so many times. Usually I have pretty decent grammar, and I never use lamerspeak (u r cool hehe). For some reason, though, I just can't seem to ever get that word right. Excuse my stupidity. I am humbled. :P

  • And then we can hopefully show the court the box, the EULA in it that we couldn't see before we purchased the hardware, and the drivers we wrote so we could use our legally-purchased hardware with our legally purchased computer. Of course, this is assuming that the lawsuit in question doesn't wind up before someone like Kaplan, who bows to the "respectable" people. (Read: the ones with the cash)


    -RickHunter
  • I haven't seen one of these before, but it does sound interesting. Do you have a URL for it?

  • If this new technology becomes reasonable in price, then it would be a complete kick up the ass for home movies and DVD. If it can project with the image quality it says it has, then watching The Matrix on the big screen is going to be a whole lot more fun than having to buy a 120cm rear-projection TV! Imagine Quake 3:Arena on your living room wall...

    Self Bias Resistor
    "You've got a half-stoned girl under one arm, and a bag of fertiliser under the other. You don't look like your average horti-fuckin-culturalist!" - Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

  • I doubt it. By the time this is on the consumer market, CRT's will probably be almost gone anyway. The Mitsubishsi Diamondtron is a copy that's almost as good and much cheaper though.

  • ummm, considering the article predicts time to market in "as soon as 3 to 5 YEARS" I kind of doubt it...

    .technomancer

  • The length of a patent varies by what time it was issued and what kind of article was being patened. I.E. a patent may be good for 50 years if issued today, but in the sixties it may have been good for only 25, versus a patent issued at the turn of the century may be good for a 100 years. Obviously my examples are not based in reality, I am trying to make a point. I believe currently the law states the patent is valid for 17 years.

    Just doing a little bit of your own research will answer you own questions. I recommend a combination of Google and Encyclopedias.

  • *WHAP!* *BIFF!*... goes the clue-by-four.

    Perhaps the entire SECTION of the article "Sony's next Trinitron?" flew completely under your radar? The article explicitly discusses application across a wide range of display sizes and markets.

    Moreover, if you had the slightest clue about the currently available display technologies they mention (LCD variants, DLP, etc.) the application of GLV is obvious -- to either front or rear projection displays. See Samsung's line of projection TVs (PLK405W, plus their entire HDTV line) which includes both tabletop sets and floorstanding projection TVs. See every DLP projector out there.

    Personally, I find this fascinating. GLV's use of laser-scanning instead of the conventional (consumable and expensive) projection bulbs may turn out to be a big win for Sony vs. other technologies. I'll be interested to see relative power-consumption and efficiency figures for comparable DLV and {LCD,DLP,etc.} projectors.
  • The video projector in our conference room uses a DLP chip with color wheel(as opposed to 3 DLP chips). Works really well. Picture is much better than the LCD models I've used in the past. DLP projectors go for around $3000, in the same price range as LCD projectors.

    Panasonic PT-52DL10 [appliances.com] is an HDTV set out using it. It's way overpriced though - part of the appeal of DLP is it should make the sets cheaper, not more expense($11,000!)

  • Trinitron Lines (Score:4)

    by wardomon ( 213812 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @12:13PM (#576763)
    So, will the GLV projectors have those nifty guide lines that the Trinitron tubes have? I don't think that I could type straight without them.

  • Re:A bit on Trinitrons (Score:3)

    by jo42 ( 227475 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @02:58PM (#576767) Homepage
    >Trinitrons rock

    Trinitrons look like dog wank once you have used one of these SGI 1600SW [sgi.com] flat panels. Best part is, you can get them direct from SGI for either $1495 or $1395 w/video card if you know how.

    "Linux sux!" - me

  • Trinitron is a tube technology. This thing is for projection systems. Perhaps it could be scaled down to tube-size, but that certainly isn't the focus (ahem) of the article, which talks aobut its use in theatre scale systems (with a brief mention of home projection).

  • Patents promote innovation? (Score:3)

    by The Famous Brett Wat ( 12688 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @03:12PM (#576770) Homepage Journal
    I find it curious that this new technology should coincide so closely with the expiry of the Trinitron (TM) patent. Could it be that they've been keeping this new technology under wraps for a while, just waiting for the Trinitron cash cow to expire -- that they didn't want to cannibalise the Trinitron market until such times as its intrinsic value dropped? A pity that it's unlikely that we'll find out the truth on that matter.

    [Disclosure: I was a Sony employee at one time.]

  • *pun absolutely intended. (Score:5)

    by SubtleNuance ( 184325 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @03:40PM (#576771) Journal
    their now patent-free Trinitron technology

    Thats a surprise, to think, Sony will now sell (GLV)The Next Big Thing(TM) after the monopoly rights runs out on their existing technology.
    If there were no patents - wouldnt they have had to develop (GLV)The Next Big Thing(TM) sooner in order to justify selling their wares?

    reminiscent of a similar move made by the company in the early 1960s. An American inventor of a new type of CRT display device called the Lawrence Tube (after the inventor) was unable to interest any U.S. television manufacturer in its worth. Sony seized the opportunity and the Lawrence Tube became the Trinitron in 1968

    Had their been no patent available on the Trinitron - if the technology was freely available in the public domain - how long ago would we have been buying ourselves (GLV) The Next Big Thing(TM) Monitors?!?

    It seems corporatists want to have their cake and eat it too - they want to do as they please (pollute, collude, rape), but they want the rest of us (via our Corporatist $whoring$ governments) to guarantee their pocket books...

    Its almost laughable... what a wonderfully perfect display*...
  • I suggest you put your reading glasses on and take a closer look at the article yourself:

    "The first Sony display products to appear will likely be high-end projection systems for commercial digital cinema, simulator training systems and
    consumer home theater." (emphasis added)

    Other references in the article makes clear that Sony is examining this as the next generation of home video display (high-end).

  • Silicon Light Link (Score:4)

    by Alien54 ( 180860 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @11:54AM (#576774) Journal
    This is the link to the actual company producing it: www.siliconlight.com [siliconlight.com]

    This is good for more detailed technical data, etc. There are some white papers, etc. All the usual good stuff.

  • Similar to Canon's (unreleased) 400mm DO lens (Score:3)

    by stripes ( 3681 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @11:55AM (#576775) Homepage Journal

    That looks a little like the stuff Canon used to shave a few pounds off of it's 400mm lens [dpreview.com]. Wish I could buy (either!) now. (it's the "Multi-Layer Diffractive Optical Element" thatlooks a bit similar to some of the GLV...)

  • Re:Idiots (Score:3)

    by headwick ( 247433 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @11:57AM (#576777) Homepage Journal
    Did you not read the article yourself? "...nothing to do with replacing trinitron CRT's"? Perhaps you should read yourself, since your are now included in the "idiot" category.

    "GLV technology can eliminate the CRT, replacing it with a small laser engine scanning an image on a rear-screen surface."

    entire paragraph...
    "A CRT is nothing more than a rear electron projector scanning the beam on a coated surface of the glass face. The glass is heavy, fragile and relatively expensive to manufacture and ship. GLV technology can eliminate the CRT, replacing it with a small laser engine scanning an image on a rear-screen surface. The elimination of the shadow-mask, a necessary part of the construction of three-gun CRT designs, will by itself allow a dramatic increase in resolution and brightness."
  • Wow ... was just reading some info at the Silicon Light [siliconlight.com] site. Apparently, the Scanned GLV Architecture calls for a single array of chips, enough to create 1x1080 pixels. It then scans VERTICALLY to create the picture.

    I get the idea, but would that ever be fast enough for long term use (how does the array "move;" does it use mirrors and refraction to paint the picture?), and would our eyes accept something so radically different than what we're used to (horizontal scanning)?

    I have more questions than answers at this point, but this technology looks to be great. I can't wait until I can see an actual production system using it.

  • A bit on Trinitrons (Score:4)

    by Oscarfish ( 85437 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @12:33PM (#576782) Homepage
    I got my first one last fall (17" monitor), and I convinced my Dad to buy a 19" one this past Summer. It's hard to use anything else now, and I'll never buy another shadow mask CRT.

    Trinitrons use aperture grille technology, not traditional INVAR shadow masks. Every Trinitron is an aperture grille. The faint black line(s) you see on the screen are called damper wires - what you're actually seeing is the shadow of a very small filament that holds together the aperture grille and prevents distortion. I completely ignore them, to the point where I have to look for them to see them, but it drives some people crazy.

    All Trinitron displays are at least vertically flat, meaning the screen has a cylindrical shape rather than a bulbous one (as with traditional shadow masks). Many Trinitrons are also horizontally flat, resulting in a visually flat screen, no curvature at all. The former is an example of Sony's Trinitron televisions, and their new Wegas are an example of the latter.

    Trinitron technology is used in monitors other than ones made by Sony; they manufacture tubes for any number of other compaies, including Sun, Dell, and Gateway. Some SGI monitors use Trinitron tubes, as well. In fact, you can do a search [amazon.com] and find any number of Trinitron-based CRTs.

    Yes, they're damn expensive, and many technicians don't know their head from their ass around them (last week I needed to replace the 15-pin VGA connector and the tech said it took hours, instead of minutes, because Trinitrons use different color coding on the solder points than shadow masks, and mine was the first one he'd ever worked on), but if you use one, and you like it, it's hard to ever go back to shadow mask CRTs. Trinitrons produce a more crisp, detailed picture, with richer, more vibrant colors. And if you have a Wega TV (which I hope to have sometime this Spring), just walk down the aisle of your local Circuit City and look from the side at all the TVs that don't use Trinitron tubes - see how bulbous they are!

    Trinitrons rock, and as far as I'm concerned I'm through with shadow masks. In fact, I probably wouldn't go for anything else outside of a direct view HDTV.

  • ...you could have a fully immersive flight simulator and an airport landing light in one box!

  • Cool :) (Score:3)

    by CromeDome ( 184915 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @11:25AM (#576785)
    I'd bet the price of a nice flat screen monitor made with this technology would make the price of current flat screen monitors seem pretty attractive to my boss ;)
  • My point is this: if Trinitron were the best, all 10 would be Trinitrons...

    I think it says something if 6 out of the top 10 recommended displays are Trinitron. I like them but I will say that there is more to tube display quality than than the Trinitron feature alone. If one can get equivalent or better display out of the invar style displays, great.

    IIRC Diamondtron is pretty much the same as Trinitron, but don't quote me on that, I believe Mitsu licenced out Sony's patent or whatever. I never did investigate that.
  • As the article said, you can use a rear-projection system that fits in a case of similar size and shape to today's CRTs.
  • The dmaper wires? They really bother some people, I guess, but you can't beat a Trinitron's picture, and I think they're worth it.
  • damn!

    and all the time I've put into my soon-to-be-patented "crayolatron" technology... I'm soooo close, too - great color pallet, just gotta up the refresh rate - plus it has really low power consumtion, excluding the burning of calories...

    Even a pre-schooler can use it!

    who's this Binney Smith character anyway...

  • Yeah, it looks cool, but... (Score:3)

    by PimpBot ( 32046 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2000 @12:39PM (#576802) Homepage
    Maybe I'm just paranoid, but in a class I'm taking [cmu.edu] right now we were discussing MPAA and DMCA. One of the (disturbing) trends in technology seems to be authentication between the host CPU and devices - basically, any peripheral you attach will authenticate with the host box, making sure they are "compatible."

    Sounds cool, doesn't it? But now companies could start being able to restrict what you hook up to your computer. Sony does like HP right now? Now Trinitrons won't work on your Pavilion PC.

    DVD drives apparently have this technology already...in preparing to start your DVD drive, the CPU and the DVD drive exchange encrypted messages to make sure you can use the DVD functionality.

    I didn't see it in the article, but does anyone know if this new monitor technology will definately be using this stuff? If so, be prepared to get a EULA with your next hardware purchase :-/
    --------------------------
  • That may be so, particularly on televisions, but I detest trinitron monitors. I can't stand the lines on the side of text. Trinitrons have their uses for many people, but for coding, they can't beat a shadow mask CRT in a well-lit environment.
  • The internal combustion engines in our cars are 100 years old, and nothing has really come along to replace them. The only workable electrics still have a combustion engine them. Goes to show that at any point refining an existing technology is almost easier than making a new one. I don't know if we'll ever see the demise of the CRT--maybe once LCD screens start obeying Moore's law like every other transistor based technolofy.
  • And right now, the media arm of Sony is the darling of the company.
    --

  • Re:Huh? (Score:2)

    by Nexx ( 75873 )
    The patent for the Trinitron tubes ran out a while ago. Mitsubishi "copied" it, and came out with the Diamondtron. It used to be that the Diamondtron tubes weren't as good, but now, they're very much comparable.

    Actually, now that some invar-mask tubes are flat-screen capable, it's kind of a moot point.
    --

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