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Potential for 1000dpi Flat Screens 39

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i-can-see-your-cels-from-here dept.
nvf writes "The Economist has a story about Iridigm's new technology that uses wavelength interference between two tiny mirrors to create a pixel of the appropriate color. The article does say it will be years before a commercial product is out, I hope it's worth the wait." I s'pose when these come into service, I might care less about anti-aliased text *Grin*
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Potential for 1000dpi Flat Screens More

Potential for 1000dpi Flat Screens

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  • All I said is that the most these reflective screens can (and should) be used for is the Color Gameboy. Aside from that, anyone that's used one has wished that it had a backlight instead. That doesn't make it a bad product ... just one with obvious potential.

    For the record, Nintendo uses relflective LCD's specifically to keep power consumption low. That's why a single pair of AA batteries lasts me WEEKS. But I'd opt for rechargeables and a backlit screen in a heartbeat.

  • Re:Possible problems (Score:3)

    by warmcat ( 3545 ) on Friday December 22, 2000 @02:33AM (#544355)
    The dynamic range is poor. If you have 100 'subpixels' of blue in the area that would normally be a pixel on an LCD display, you can only get 100 levels of blue intensity in that pixel.

    The example of 100 subpixels is actually better than the modern colour TFT displays, which are usually 3 x 6bpp or 18bpp and give great-looking colour to my eye.

    Also, the pixels' colour components can be pulse-width modulated, ie, using the time domain; if they are refreshed at, say, 75kHz then you can have 1,000 shades of each colour without flicker.

    -Andy
  • Actually, it would only be a four-color display :)

    Not a problem, though provided one can change the state of a single cell quickly enough, thanks to the slow response of human eyes. Considering the nature of the cell they described, I imagine one could change it very rapidly. At least on the order of microseconds, maybe nanoseconds.

    Anyway, suppose you could update each cell 6 times for each screen refresh: R=red, G=green, B=blue, X = black

    XX,XX,XX = black
    RX,BX,GX = grey
    RR,BB,GG = white
    RX,XX,XX = dark red
    RR,XX,XX = bright red,
    etc...

    So, one could easily get a 9-color, 100 Hz display if the cells can switch in 1.6 msec.

    I bet one could build a 24-bit equivalent display if they can get the switching speed down to 100 usec or so.

    CP
  • I noticed a change when the printers went from
    200dpi to 300dpi, barely when they went to 600dpi.
    I doubt if we can really see much more beyond 300dpi.
  • Yes, these could definatly cause problems.

    But they also didn't, at least I didn't see it, mention the number of colors that are possible for each pixel. It looks like there will be more than three colors for each. They also don't mention if they can reproduce white. If they can reflect white light, many of these problems will go away.

    Reflecting ambient light should be able to get better contrast and color that the current three color projection method we use now. The more paints you have the better mixes you can make.

    Dan
  • Blah. Meant ~10 usec, not 100 usec.
  • They can't sell it like this in the UK - or can they? The name is surprisingly similar to another, possibly vexatious, registration.

    (see The Register [theregister.co.uk] and Silicon.com [silicon.com])

    Iridigm's technology, which sounds to me too much like a satellite business, call their tech "I-mod"

    I'd post a link to the Trademarks Office if the server was not down (business UK hours only) but British Telecom just tried all the related names to annoy NTT DoCoMO with their 'phone kit :

    Once you have a trademark registration, btw, you have a good claim against "confusingly similar" marques.

    and once you've filed you have a superior claim in Madrid Treaty countries (US recognises this) from date of application of registered trademark Not the actual first use of a name.

    you have to see an excerpt of the class descriptions for the application to believe this :

    I had to cut the actual text because of Lameness Filter. But you can search for yourself [patent.gov.uk] tomorrow :-)

    an excerpt from class 9 of the application: transmission, reception, processing, retrieval, reproduction, manipulation, analysis, display and print-out of sound, images and/or data; computer hardware and firmware; computer software; digital communications apparatus and instruments

    the names : Status: Pending Mark Text: I-MODE Mark Text: i-mode Mark Text: i-MODE Mark Text: I-mode Mark Text: I.MODE Mark Text: i.mode Mark Text: I.mode Mark Text: i.MODE Mark Text: I MODE Mark Text: i mode Mark Text: i MODE Mark Text: I mode M

  • Suppose your creations were made vectorally, as is done in Adobe Illustrator, or other products. They could simply shrink what they are looking at to the size of their liking, with no loss of quality. Of course, vector graphics are not a one size fits all solution, such is the reason for products like photoshop... But they do go a long way towards satisfying your argument of size concerns.
  • They can no doub sell this as 10000 dpi, but if you use 100 pixels in order to create any other 'real' pixel on the map, you go back down to 100dpi (Windows uses (logical) 96, Mac uses 72)

    If you do address every single pixel, you've got to do some funky time-shifting things to control pixel intensity, or you've got to create an in-monitor dithering solution to get 24/32 bit equivalencies.

  • Re:Serious problems to work out... (Score:3)

    by jkorty ( 86242 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @04:23PM (#544363) Homepage
    To get other colors, the device can scissilate a pixel between the three primaries several hundred times a second, leaving each color turned on for the proportionally appropriate time. To get variable intensity, add the black setting to the equation.
  • Imagine a beowolf cl---sorry, couldn't resist :)

    I can see this making advancements in producing affordable head-mounted displays. Personally, I wouldn't mind having a set by Microvision, but the technology still is quite expensive. But this has the potential to create low cost active 3d goggles at a decent resolution. Good enough for Quake III at 1600x1280 perhaps?

  • Why stay away from metric? Those US measures are prehistoric... Those English people are starting to come to their senses by adopting metrics. BUT because screens (and let's not forget tyre sizes) have allmost allways been in inches, allso here in europe I think that we should keep those things in inches, but for the rest, distances and so on, the metric system is much better... That shit with inches, feet and miles sucks... There is no logic in this. An inch is 2,54cm, a feet is about 30cm and a mile is 1,6km (nautical miles are 1,8km) The metric system is much easier to understand in this and especially in weight and volume measurements because the Americans and British use different pounds, ounces and gallons... Remco
  • Pfft. We'll be ready in plenty of time. Do you really think in 5 years we'll still be tooling around with some dinky 128 meg video card. RAM is ultra-cheap these days; 3 gigs will be nothing in 5 years.

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by Zecho ( 206792 )
    How is this related to plasma screens?

    I think that it would kinda suck to have that high quality of a display, considering anything you create graphics wise would probably suck on another display. think 1024 as opposed to 640... anything you sent to anyone else would be useless.

    Also, creating images large enough to see them would dramatically increase the amount of storage space needed for (as mentioned above) anyone's porn collection. Just a thought.

  • Just rechecked the article.

    I see where they state that there are 4 settings. Black, red, blue, and green.

    Dan
  • That female mutant who can see extra colors (article from 2 weeks ago) STILL won't like it!

  • ...would be great for finally getting a display that would be usable on a cell phone. So, instead of trying to increase the size and bulk of a cell phone, make the screen of a high enough dpi, and be able to view true web content on your cell. Not for the vision challenged, of course :)

  • Same as GLV technology. (Score:3)

    by jms ( 11418 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @12:27PM (#544371)
    Looks a lot like GLV technology, which I think was covered on slashdot this month.

    http://www.siliconlight.com/htmlpgs/glvtechframes/ glvmainframeset.html [siliconlight.com]

    http://www.e-town.com/news/article.jhtml?articleID =3772 [e-town.com]

    One of the hot topics on the various projectionists and film collectors forums is digital projection -- and how much resolution is enough.

    There are at least two limiting factors.

    The first is the size of the film grain. Once you reach a certain resolution, any further increase in resolution goes towards clarifying the individual film grains instead of contributing more picture information. This starts to happen at around a 4K vertical resolution.

    The second is the resolution of the human vision system. Again, there isn't much point in having higher resolution than the resolution of the cones in your eye. Again, your visual resolution is approximately reached at 4K resolution over a 60 degree field.

    Another advantages of these digital micro-mirror based interference systems is that they can handle tremendous amounts of light, much more than can be passed through motion picture film without melting it.

    I'm not surprised that display technology has tended to stagnate -- in order to effectively utilize high resolution (6Kx4K or so) technology, you need to be able to move data fast enough to keep the video pipeline full. I'll bet that in five years, tube monitors and televisions will go the way of tube radios.

  • You're stupid. Anti-aliased text looks cool. It's fine that you don't care about it, but I'm sure cmdr taco knows a lot more than you do, anonymous coward. Why don't you run a website that serves half a million page views a day if you're so smart? Go should consider going back to your cave and smashing some rocks over your head instead of taking out your ridiculous, groundless anger out on people more intelligent than yourself. Your point about taking the resolution is also stupid because the reason we have antialiased text is so that it looks good on 72 dpi screens which is what most WYSIWIG applications default to. Dumbass.

  • Essentially, what you have is pixels which have only 4 possible values but which are 1/100 the size of normal screen pixels. I think that with appropriate dithering, the display could be amazing. Isn't this basically what four color printing does?

    Imagine a screen in which everything is specified by vectors (display postscript or display pdf) which doesn't even really have a concept of pixels in the interface. All dithering and antialiasing are handled by the display hardware and the picture has the resolution and color of a glossy magazine. Furthermore, the display is as clearly visible in sunlight as it is under a desk lamp. Maybe the resolution needs to be a bit higher, but I think this is a positive development.

    My ideal display is a flat panel with 24 bit color, pixels too small to be seen, touch sensitive, and as large as a drafting table. I see this as one small step closer to nirvana.

  • When you choose to use 100 dpi fonts, do you think it refers to the dot pitch of your CRT? I don't think so, it means 100 pixels/inch. Besides that what's the point of having 1000 physical dots per inch if you only got 100 pixels per inch.

  • I just cannot wait for the day when I will be looking at a display I can fold up and put in my pocket.
    I want a passive (no light) display...works for books.
    Sure no more hacking by CRT light, but I think I could find a kerosene lantern somewhere.

    --
    $ whoami
    nobody
  • Well - 25mm (1 inch-ish)/90dpi = 0.24mm (roughly the dot-pitch of my monitor). I'm guessing the DPI for my screen ('typical' seems to vary between about 75 and 90). If monitor manufacturers thought they could claim the maximum resolution of their monitors was higher, I'm sure they would.
  • They have a device that separate mirrors to cause interference in light.

    Q1. Where's the light from?!! The light is the big power draw in LCD's not the LCD itself.
    The interference depends on the wavelength so the light has to be defined wavelengths i.e. artificially generated. So all that talk of low power is BS?

    Q2. Its electrostatic with a mirror on a springy base, so if I switch off the voltage presumably the pixel changes back to some neutral state?
    So does this mean they have to keep the voltage there all the time? I.e. several transistors per pixel and a wire to each individual pixel? Ahhh!

    Q3. How fast do these mirrors move?
    Maybe if they put in a treacle thick liquid, they could make the mirrors move slowly, multiplex the display. Kind of like they do with LCDs now.

    Q4. Does the light come out of the side?
    I mean they have 2 plates that form a gap, the story makes it sound like the front and back plates of an LCD, but doesn't the light have to come out of the side of that pixel? Doesn't it come out along the gap (or slightly off centre)?

    This story sounds like they're fishing for research funding.

    [Skeptic Mode off]

    Sounds cool, you could make a continuosly changing colour discreet 'LED' like indicator with that.

  • great (Score:5)

    by KevinMS ( 209602 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @11:51AM (#544378)

    my porn collection will look like a stamp collection
  • Now we know the answer to this [slashdot.org] question.
  • Are we finally going to get to DPCM?
    DPMM?
    Ever? Please?

    Metric lag burns my ass.
    Nitpicking I know but still...

  • Applications (Score:3)

    by tested metal ( 239445 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @12:00PM (#544381) Homepage
    While I'm dubious about desktop applications of this anytime soon, this could be the holy grail of medical imaging and remote surgery. One of the greatest problems they came up with in the Army's tele-surgery experiments was the unexpected time sink of having to constantly magnify everything. The resolutions of the screens used was too course to see many blood vessels and the like at a glance.

  • I thought that said Iridium... (Score:4)

    by GeekLife.com ( 84577 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @12:05PM (#544382) Homepage
    With their apparent (probably soon-to-be-patented) method for making screens *really* flat: drop them from outerspace into the ocean.
    -----
  • Reflective screens are garbage. I need a screen that emits light, thank you very much.

    Reflective screens are so sensitive to where the light source is coming from, and are SO prone to glare as to be absolutely useless outside of the aforementioned Gameboy application. Even so, not a single Color Gameboy user has ever said, "Hey, this screen is great! Who needs a backlight?"

    I rest my case.

  • It's doubtful that these would ever become "full size" displays. 1000 dpi is overkill. On a 300 dpi laser printer, if you take a second to look, you'll "jaggies" around the curves of type, but do you notice the jaggies on type that's been printed from a 600 dpi laser printer? No... Our eyes can only handle so much resolution before it's just overkill.

    The future for this technology rests most likely in head mounted displays for things like surgery and engineering tasks where there aren't any free hands... Maybe some ultra high end cell phone or PDA may one day opt for a "scaled back" version of it.

    Anyhow, so far as gaming goes, you'll probably be able to make due with a far less powerful card than you're envisioning... For starters, the textures won't *need* to be 100 times larger, and really, your eyes wouldn't know the difference between a 150 or 200 dpi texture versus a 1000 dpi texture... The only issue will be that the cards will have to keep track of a lot more pixels. But it doesn't matter, because none of us will ever see this display resting on a desk anywhere...

  • That's nice, but... (Score:3)

    by jmv ( 93421 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @12:09PM (#544385) Homepage
    Well, a 1000 dpi display would be nice, but it would unfortunatly require 100 times more pixels (hence RAM, processing, ...) then a current 100 dpi display. That means instead of a 32 Meg video card, your card will need 3 GB of memory (textures will also be 100x larger). On the fastest machines available you'd be getting almost 1 fps in Quake... do I need to continue?

    We're not ready for 1000 dpi displays and won't be for at least as much time it'll take to have those displays available commercially.
  • When I got to reading the linked article it got me to thinking about a story that ran in Wired's print magazine called "Bright Switch" [wired.com].

    Either in this article, or one of the others in this same issue, they get into talking about using this optical filtering technique to be used for things like clothing, replacement for paint, and even a way to stop earthquakes.

    Mind you, a lot of this is theoretical stuff about using this crystaline stuff as a filtering mechanism. It still makes for an interesting read, and it appears to be a similar concept to what this thread is supposed to be talking about.
  • The pixels can be be only one of 4 states? Let's do the math: 2^4 = 16 color display. You need to have brightness control on the pixels before you can get into 32 bit color (or 64 bit for those lucky female tetrachromats out there)
  • That could be taken care of with enough of a pixel density.

    As is stated in many other posts, we cannot see resolutions over a certain DPI. A black pixel next to a red one should just make the red pixel seem darker.

    I have a feeling that this tech might just be able to have better color/intensity differentiation than anything we have now.

    Different colors of paint are just multimple colored molecules mixed together.

    Dan

  • Possible problems (Score:5)

    by Michael Woodhams ( 112247 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @12:12PM (#544389) Journal
    A few thoughts arise:

    As described, the system is purely reflective - unlike a CRT or a backlit LCD, which actually produce light.

    The colours will not be very pure. Each pixel is effectively a coloured mirror. It will have maximum reflectivity at one wavelength (say, red) slowly falling to zero reflectivity at twice that wavelength (infrared) and at 2/3 the peak wavelength (yellow perhaps?) then reaching a maximum again at half the peak wavelength (blueish).

    While you can change the colour that a given pixel reflects, you can't change the intensity with which it reflects it - i.e. they are on or off, not half-on.

    The colour purity problem might be solvable with coloured filters in front of the pixels - but this would make the display much dimmer, and unless you use a remarkable filter, would restrict each pixel to just one colour 9according to the colour of the filter in front of it)

    Some possible solutions to the on-or-off problem are to use many very small pixels so you can control intensity according to how many are on, or to use an LCD in front of the pixels to control intensity (at which point, why not just use a colour LCD display?)

  • 100,000,000 sales world wide.. i wouldn't call that a screw up :)

  • Ink on Paper is NOT readable in low-light! (Score:3)

    by SuperRob ( 31516 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @01:39PM (#544391) Homepage
    We're not talking about viewing angle (although the GBC is hampered by this as well). It's speicifically low-light and glare issues that concern me. You NEED to have a light-source with reflective screens, and that light is likely to cause glare, reducing readability significantly.

  • Re:Possible problems (Score:3)

    by Michael Woodhams ( 112247 ) on Thursday December 21, 2000 @01:01PM (#544392) Journal
    Yes, this is my 'lots of small pixels' solution. It is not ideal however:

    The dynamic range is poor. If you have 100 'subpixels' of blue in the area that would normally be a pixel on an LCD display, you can only get 100 levels of blue intensity in that pixel.

    There are also brightness problems. To make 'white', you need every pixel on, and alternating colour in red, green and blue. This means that each pixel is reflecting only on colour, so only about 1/3 of the light falling on the display is reflected - this will be a very grey 'white'.

    A possible solution to the colour purity (and perhaps dynamic range) problem has occured to me. The second movable mirror could be made reflecting at only one wavelength, via thin-film technology. Then by moving this relative to the front reflector, you can control the combined reflectivity at this particular colour. I expect it would be technically challenging to put different thin-film reflectors on adjacent small mirrors, however.

    This still leaves the low reflectivity problem. Possibly this coudl be solved by some clever side-lighting method.

    Anyhow, the technology has significant problems that are not addressed in the article. We can't tell from the article if the inventors have solutions for them. I predict problems of poor colour reproduction, poor contrast and low brightness.

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