Cold CRT Guns for Thinner CRTs 110
Fly writes: "According to EETimes, an Austin startup company is close to producing CRTs with cold-emission electron guns. They claim this will reduce the parts needed for electron guns as well as allow for greater control and deflection of the electron beams leading to thinner CRTs. Their technology uses older chip-manufacturing techniquest to deposit diamond tips for the guns on silicon wafers. They hope to enter the CRT market next year."
More efficient? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:More efficient? (Score:1)
CRT are on thier way out (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:1)
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:1)
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:1)
Ghosting was recently solved. (Score:4, Informative)
That was recently solved - by remembering the previous frame and computing a voltage that would rapidly force the liquid crystal to the correct transparency rather than feeding it the voltage that would eventuall lead to it stabilizing at the desired transparency and letting it relax to that transparency in its own sweet time. There was an article about it maybe a month ago in slashdot.
Exepct TV-rate LCDs without ghosts as soon as this gets incorporated into the driver electronics - assuming the patent holders don't sit on it.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
They contain leaded glass, which should be recycled anyway, into more CRTs.
Besides, show me a LCD monitor that can display 1600x1200 and I'll show you a new car.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:1, Informative)
Viewsonic VP230mb [viewsonic.com]
ViewSonic proudly introduces the 23.1" VP230mb LCD display with 170 viewing angles and a 1600 x 1200 native resolution
As for some new cars: here's [edmunds.com] a good place to start :)
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
I hope the car is nice!
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
I could get a very nice car for that. Even down payment on a house.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
With the extra $16,500 you can still buy a car!
Also widely regarded as having a superior picture. Only downside (if you actually consider this a downside) is that you need a Mac with an ADC output. Personally, I do since my Mac is 5 years old (4 years too old to have ADC), but oh well.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:1)
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
Heater isn't the big power waster. (Score:3, Informative)
The CRT's heater wastes some energy. But most of the energy consumed in a monitor is the energy dumped when the magnetic deflection field "flys back" at the end of each horizontal scan line. Some of this is recycled - into the accelleration high-voltage supply or even powering the CRT's heater - but most is just dumped as waste heat.
This is just a replacement electron gun, so it won't do anything about the deflection power waste. But see my other posting and its parent here [slashdot.org].
Re:Heater isn't the big power waster. (Score:2)
Maybe I didn't fully get what all they were doing from reading the article, but it seemed to me that they weren't using deflection plates to direct the electron flow. Wasn't that the point of having 100,000 of them little diamond things?
From the article...
That's the part that is throwing me. Well duh! Hot-cathode guns are under electronic control. Seems they were alluding to some different method of moving the beam around. Heck, I dunno.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:5, Insightful)
--Eric
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
When I can buy a similarly featured LCD screen at an equivalent price I will - until then I'll stick with CRT's.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:1)
We have leftover part from Phillips in our lab - they abandoned the project a few years ago.
They stopped the research on improving manufacturing of CRT tube cases.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everywhere. I threw out some old TVs at the local landfill just a short while ago.
I guess the environmentalists gave up when a scientist explained to them how difficult it is for lead to leach out of glass...
If this were actually dangerous you'd see "Tell your kids: don't lick the TV screen" warnings near the tube of the monitor.
>CRT monitors no matter how small are still big, clunky, and waist energy.
Agreed.
> LCD and TFT monitors will take over the market simply because they are better for the sellers as for the buyers, Smaller size cheaper to store, cheaper to ship. IMHO this company has a few merits but is beating a dead horse.
You forget the merits of a CRT:
- Better saturation
- Closer colour tolerance
- Adjustable colour temperature
- Clearer picture
- Better resolution flexibility
- Better contrast
- Better brightness
- Faster response time
- Simple manufacturing
- Consistent quality - No "dead pixels"
- Very high refresh rates making them perfect for 3d shutter glasses
- Cheaper to fix
- No backlight to wear out (no, don't point out the irony)
- No ghosting
- Free antialiasing
All at a much, much lower price than LCDs.
I don't agree they are better for all buyers, just those forced to buy a 2' x 3' desk for their computer.
As far as better for the sellers, other than the weight difference, I don't see how. Normally customers want cheaper and better. Weight and size are often only a concern when the buyer has made a poor choice in purchasing a desk.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:1)
Looks like you've never seen an SGI 1600SW. Even today this 4+ year old technology continues to outperform many new LCD flat panels. Unfortunately, they are now discontinued - good thing I picked up a few when you still could.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:1)
Re:CRT merits? (Score:1)
- Closer colour tolerance
- Adjustable colour temperature
- Clearer picture
- Better contrast
- Better brightness
I have a CRT sitting next to an LCD. I'd much rather use the LCD for any major graphics work. The only time the CRT really beats it out is when the brightness is turned up almost all the way, at which case the saturation goes down, not to mention it's harder to use... Also, my LCD does have adjustable colour temperature...
- Better resolution flexibility
True, but how many times do you change resolutions other than for gaming?
- Faster response time
- No ghosting
These are probably the only things I really see as the CRT holding over an LCD, which are also the reasons I'm still using a big, bulky 21" CRT as my main vewing box (for games, primarily).
- Consistent quality - No "dead pixels"
I've had a CRT with a bad pixel once...
- Very high refresh rates making them perfect for 3d shutter glasses
How true
- Free antialiasing
Eh? no free antialiasing on a CRT, unless you mean the capability to run at lower resolutions, in which case it's just easier to see the individual pixels. LCDs are better for this as long as the resolutions are evenly divisible by the native one... DOS looks better on an LCD.
- Cheaper to fix
- No backlight to wear out (no, don't point out the irony)
- Simple manufacturing
Don't know anything about these...
"Weight and size are often only a concern when the buyer has made a poor choice in purchasing a desk. "
Maybe, but I'd rather carry around an LCD for LAN parties (despite it being really bad(TM) for fast-pased games). Also, having another square foot of deskspace can be useful for those of us who actually use paper every once-and-a-while.
Re:CRT merits? (Score:1)
Playing DVDs, viewing TV from (some) TV cards, DOS, when you're tired and just want things "big"...
>I've had a CRT with a bad pixel once...
They probably screwed up on the shadow mask on your monitor. I'd return it... This is pretty unusual. But finding dead pixels on LCDs is completely normal, unfortunately.
>Eh? no free antialiasing on a CRT
You need a monitor with a sharpness control... There's one inside labelled focus, but then again there's 20 kV inside. Don't open up your monitor unless you know what you are doing!
>I have a CRT sitting next to an LCD. I'd much rather use the LCD for any major graphics work. The only time the CRT really beats it out is when the brightness is turned up almost all the way, at which case the saturation goes down, not to mention it's harder to use... Also, my LCD does have adjustable colour temperature...
I don't know what CRT and LCD you're using, but $ for $ I've found that if you buy an LCD and CRT of the same size and price, you get a CRT that beats out the LCD.
But hey, maybe I haven't seen a good LCD for a while... the only one I've got is on this laptop I'm typing on, and the brightness, colour, and contrast fade unless I'm viewing it at the "right" angle.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
The static zap would very quickly educate them on that matter, not to mention the dust that collects on the screen...eww.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:1)
Not all of them, check out the stuff that Candescent is making:
http://www.candescent.com/
These are "thin" crts (field emmisson displays). They essentially are thousands of microscopic cathode ray guns per pixel. The resulting display is much brighter than liquid crystal based displays.
Sadly, they do not seem to be mass producing yet.
Re:CRT are on thier way out (Score:2)
I think I'll probably have to wait for OLED before I get my flat panel. I can't wait to get this huge massive thing off my desk....
These screens are really cool. (Score:4, Insightful)
They have almost all advantages of TFTs but have also almost all advantages of CRTs. They are very flat like a TFT, but have no problems with the viewing angle, smearing or bad color display. They need more power than a TFT so they shouldn't be suitable as a replacement of a laptop tft. They also shouldn't have any pixel faults because for every pixel there are many nano electron guns, so if one of these breaks down it doesn't matter. They should be cheaper to produce than a TFT because the process is more fault tolerant.
One of the biggest problems in the development of these things is that there isn't that much room between the electron emiter and the phosphorus, because of that they couldn't speedup the electron to the same speeds they get in a normal CRT and need to find new low-energy phosphoruses.
Two articles confused. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think you may have two articles conflated.
This one seems to be talking about using a diamond "forest" of cold emitters to replace the heated-cathode in a conventional electron gun, then deflecting the beam in the standard fashion, leading to an ordinary rectangular-cone CRT (but with no heater and instant-on).
You seem to be referring to another approach that was to use cold-emitters (which would also benefit from this breakthrough.):
The display consisted of a (glass) honeycomb of short individual "tubes".
Each "tube" had a single emitter "spike" (substitute "small forest") at the base.
A control electrode near the emitter (maybe substitute one per emitter in the "forest") switched it on/off and modulated the beam intensity. The voltage is near the cathode's and the voltage swing is just a couple volts, so you can use conventional transistor electronics.
(You can actually use two or more electrodes to do a matrix address and beam modulation, with the voltage gradient at the emitter tip or a space charge near it performing the computation so you don't need a separate switch per-pixel.)
The beam was accellerated along the narrow channel - the front portion of which contained an accelleration electrode with a constant high voltage - similar to a normal CRT. Difference: The beam could be bounced repeatedly between the channel walls, picking up additional electrodes by secondary emission.
The beam strikes a single phosphor dot at the end of the channel.
So you end up with something that can be fabricated (except for the cathode spike and maybe the modulation electrodes) by glass molding, vapor deposition of electrode metal, and micropipette phosphor-solution placement, and driven by essentially the same chips that run an LCD plus a single, unmodulated, high-voltage supply. The tubes are very short and the honeycomb of glass separating the individual tubes also supports the front screen, so you don't need thick heavy glass to fight 15 PSI of atmospheric pressure across more than a foot of unsupported span. Pixel placement is controlled by fabrication, so there's no sensitivity to local magnetic fields, no geometry adjustment. Of course in addition to no need to heat the cathodes there's no need to power and rapidly modulate an enormous magnetic deflection field.
And this new article tells you why we don't yet have either the cold-emission conventional CRT or the honeycomb flat-panel CRT: Positive ions from any impurities in the vacuum or kicked off the target or the sides of the channel are accellerated back toward the gun, slamming into the tip(s) and rapidly eroding it. RCA had a patent on field emission vacuum tubes but didn't feel like pursuing the technology with materials research. So the whole filed languished.
One of the biggest problems in the development of these things is that there isn't that much room between the electron emiter and the phosphorus, because of that they couldn't speedup the electron to the same speeds they get in a normal CRT and need to find new low-energy phosphoruses.
Huh? Space shouldn't be an issue. The final velocity of the electron only depends on the accelleration voltage, not the length of the path. The path only needs to be long enough to prevent arc-over along the surface of the glass (or in any residual gas in the "vacuum"), and that's a fraction of an inch.
With a conventional tube the voltage gradient also has to be low enough that the electrodes don't bend out of place. But that limit would be MUCH higher with the electrodes plated onto a glass surface or supported by the walls of a pixel-wide glass honeycomb cell, rather than by mica spacers and thin copper wire.
I expect the conventional-CRT style to come out first. It's only being held back by the RCA patent that just expired. The flat-panel might take longer, due to other patents, the need to build a "wafer" the size of the screen rather than the size of an electron-gun cathode, and possibly worse problems with tip erosion due to the limited number of tips per pixel.
Re:Two articles confused. (Score:2)
This page [atip.org] is a good primer on the different competing display technologies.
thad
Re:Two articles confused. (Score:2, Insightful)
Heated cathodes were originally devised to overcome the problem of the enormous field strength required to strip electrons from a cold, metal cathode. Once enough voltage was generated, electrons were stripped with enormous velocity, and passed through a much longer tube to produce x-rays. Generating visible light with these devices was difficult, and ultimately, dangerous to the viewer!
One problem with the cold cathode technology mentioned in this article would be ensuring that the electron striking the phosphor particles had sufficient velocity to cause an electron shell jump (ie. not enough energy and the phosphor won't emit photons.) By using these diamond tipped cathodes, they must be able to get the electrons off the cathode at lower field strength. Lower field strength = lower velocity, which would allow for a shorter deflection path and a shorter tube. But it won't gurantee that the phosphor will light up.
LCD vs CRT. (Score:1)
But, can we expect cheaper monitors out of this deal? For many of us a good LCD isn't an answer. And if you want a 17 or 19 inch LCD - you better sell your PC!
Maybe when my Proview [ouch!] dies I'll be able to get a 'cool' looking Cold CRT?
Let's hear from the experts.
--
Re:LCD vs CRT. (Score:1)
Are you trolling? My monitor is the single most expensive component in my system, and the one I went for the best quality in. I will use it for many years, and it will out last several systems including their upgrades. Anything that I have to stare at for many hours at a time had better be of high quality. Of course, the next most important component to me is my graphics card... a good monitor won't improve crap output from the system.
Re:LCD vs CRT. (Score:2)
:-)
Re:LCD vs CRT. (Score:2)
No, but I'd use a mouse I found in the garbage if I found one.
Lower Cost...Higher Quality (Score:4, Interesting)
This sounds like a cool technology.
-Pete
Re:Lower Cost...Higher Quality (Score:1)
Re:Lower Cost...Higher Quality (Score:1)
Re:Lower Cost...Higher Quality (Score:2)
Another possibility is a crummy video cable. I run a KDS VS-195 at only 1152x864 @ 85 Hz, but I was able to tell the difference between a straight VGA cable and a VGA-to-5BNC cable. The shielding of the latter cable is better, so text is a little bit sharper.
Re:Lower Cost...Higher Quality (Score:1)
A little too late? (Score:1)
Re:A little too late? (Score:1)
yupeee yahoo hoorray (Score:5, Funny)
Re:yupeee yahoo hoorray (Score:1)
who cares (Score:1)
Re:yupeee yahoo hoorray (Score:2)
A smaller vacuum tube has less material containing the vacuum, therefore less mass. Think of this- your TV has a vacuum inside it; now think of your entire bedroom holding a vacuum- which unit do you think would weigh less? This scale just magnifies the differences. The vacuum contained within does not scale with the material needed to contain the larger vacuum area.
Re:yupeee yahoo hoorray (Score:1)
Uh Oh, Staffed with Zenith employees (Score:5, Funny)
We can expect displays that will be encased in a big wood console.
Re:Uh Oh, Staffed with Zenith employees (Score:1)
I can already imagine the comments that 14yo boys will be making to each other and to Fry's salespeople (15yos):
"Uhh, I want a woody. Gimme a woody! Heh-heh-heh. Hey Beavis, did that guy give you a woody?"Re:Uh Oh, Staffed with Zenith employees (Score:1)
I know you say that like it's bad, but I have seen some case mods where they redid their case/monitor/keyboards in a nice woodgrain, and they are super-stylin'. I've thought about it more than once...
CRT's (Score:2, Insightful)
I have a nice Gateway 9500 series laptop with a 15.7" LCD on it. It's great, I will quite often stare at it for hours reading e-books and no fatigue whatsover.
While these LCDs are great for office applications, and text publishing, CRTs will continue to shine for computer gaming, and gfx publishing.
Lighter, smaller, and better looking CRTs are going to be great, now I can realistically tote a 19" monitor to the next LAN party.
almost makes flat screen technology easier (Score:5, Insightful)
By having a cold electron gun that allows wider dispersion angles, you can reduce the depth of the monitor, and thereby reduce the strength required from the front screen material.
Re:almost makes flat screen technology easier (Score:3, Informative)
This won't have much effect on the face of the tube. It still has to have the same surface area acted on by the external air pressure.
However, since the cold emission guns can work at greater deflection, the tube can be shorter, so the sides of the tube benefit from a reduced surface area and a shorter span..
The gun itself should be smaller since it won't need a bulky heater.
A big benefit comes from not having to power the heaters. While still requiring more energy than LCD displays, it's an improvement.
Given the less complex assembly (15 rather than 35 parts), reduced materials cost, and simplified and smaller power supply, it may be possable to produce monitors based on this technology for about the price of a conventional CRT (once retooling costs are covered).
Since this CRT will have some of the advantages of LCD (only to a lesser degree) over conventional CRT, it will apply more competitive pressure to LCD and the not yet here LED display developers.
Even if vastly improved and cheap LCD and LED screens come out tomorrow (hah!), the company will be OK. The cold emission technology still has applications for devices in high radiation environments AND military hardware than must withstand EMP. It might even shift the balance back to tubes (from power transistors) in some high power applications.
Re:almost makes flat screen technology easier (Score:2)
I guess you are assuming that every bit of electronics in the display (not to mention all the affiliated computers) are ALSO all based on tube tech?
Yes, the cold guns may survive, but howabout the driving electronics? I kinda doubt that this would be a purely mechanical device.
Re:almost makes flat screen technology easier (Score:2)
Yes, the cold guns may survive, but howabout the driving electronics? I kinda doubt that this would be a purely mechanical device.
Tubes man! The cold emitter technology could be applied to most any vacuum tube, not just a CRT. Think emergency radio communication and minimal radar, etc. Such devices would still be bulky and limited, but would at least not be AS bad about power consumption as conventional tubes.
Re:almost makes flat screen technology easier (Score:2)
I REALLY do not know (ie serious question)- so the wires in tubes do not absorb any energy from an EMP blast? I figured that an EMP would be multi-freq and therefore crush most electronics due to voltage spikes. Hell, I thought even lightbulbs would fry due to this, but I guess I'm wrong. Maybe I misunderstood the effects of an EMP blast.
Re:almost makes flat screen technology easier (Score:2)
Maybe I misunderstood the effects of an EMP blast.
The pulse will induce a voltage in the tubes. Because of the nature of tubes, they are unlikely to be adversely affected by a voltage spike. Lightbulb filiments would be OK as well. Most ICs will fry.
This is because the EMP would likely be a very sharp spike which would impart very little total energy. In the case of silicon devices, that's enough to do them in since there is very little actual matter in a transistor gate vs. that in a triode tube.
It is quite possable that due to the nature of the clod emitter, some degradation would take place while a conventional tube is likely to show no damage at all.
Multiple Guns in CRT's (Score:4, Interesting)
That got me thinking. Currently, all CRT's have one set of electron guns at the center of the screen. Would it be possible to partition the screen into, say, four areas, each of which is painted by it's own set of guns.
This would have many advantages. Displays could be thinner, larger screens with higher resolution could be made, and (possibly) less energy would be required since the electrons from the guns would not have to fly nearly as far.
It seems the only tricky part would be getting the borders of adjacent areas to line up properly.
Re:Multiple Guns in CRT's (Score:3, Interesting)
However, the electronics to drive it would not be simple. Currently we have 3 fairly high frequency signals, one for each gun (red, green and blue). For this idea you'd need a set of three signals for each separate gun. Assuming you split into 4 subdisplays, you'd need 12 signals (plus the various sync and other control channels). I don't think a common-or-garden graphics card is going to do that very well. Better to do it within the monitor, I'd guess it'd increase the price by about $100.
Now, the alignment. Not as hard as you imagine; at least all the parts are within one enclosure. The display could auto-calibrate by aligning signals off the edge of the viewable area.
Cross-talk between the different steering coils would be a far larger problem. You could either compensate for this automatically (increased electronics complexity, expensive, reliability issues) or put in some mu-metal to absorb the field (expensive, heavy)
I suggest you do a patent search, see if anyone's had this idea before. Personally, I don't think it's feasable
Oh, and as for energy saving, I don't think so! Electrons lose very little energy during flight.
Re:Multiple Guns in CRT's (Score:1)
As for saving energy, I agree that there'd be no savings from the distance the electrons have to travel. However, the deflecting electromagnets wouldn't have to be nearly as strong as they would on a bigger screen (it seems to me), so you might still save overall.
But like you said.. probably not worth it.
Re:Multiple Guns in CRT's (Score:2)
It's been done - this should make it practical. (Score:2)
That's been done. But it's a problem getting the pictures to join.
Better is gun-per-pixel. That's also been done but this should make it practical.
See another set of postings in this thred here [slashdot.org].
Re:It's been done - this should make it practical. (Score:1)
I suppose a version of SLI would do the trick.
Or, a type of "4 panel convergence" where the panels are aligned individually.
The SLI idea worked ok (to my recollection) when every other line was rendered, but less so when the top/bottom rendering was done (1/2 screen).
I admit the idea has merit (possible jafar voice inserted) and could best be done like the true-flat monitors where the apeture grill is "broken" in two places.
(side note...I got a 20inch monitor at work by pointing those "lines" out to someone who could not 'un-see' them...hehe...I'm such a snot, sometimes)
Only difference with the 'cold' ones would be 4 panels of "mini" monitors, perhaps.
I wonder what the metrics are? 6 inches from gun to screen makes a 17 inch monitor perhaps?
Damn, that'd be nice.
.
Re:Multiple Guns in CRT's (Score:1)
This could be VERY popular (Score:5, Interesting)
While the new LCD flat-panel displays are dropping in price, you still have to deal with three issues: 1) screen blurring on very fast motion (though this has gotten way better in the last year or so), 2) LCD's are optimized for one display resolution and 3) they're still fairly expensive (especially now with 19" CRT monitors now under US$200 in price).
Given the CRT monitors maintain their sharpness from 640x680 all the way up to 1600x1200 and beyond (depending on the dot pitch of the monitor) and can run at 85 Hz vertical refresh rate for true flicker-free viewing, I think they're still preferred for serious imaging processing work. The new very-low profile CRT's using this new technology will allow 17" to 21" monitors have less physical depth than even the old 14" monitors from way back, which means more room saved on your desk.
I think this company may license the technology to Samsung or LG Electronics, both of which now make excellent monitors at reasonable prices. Samsung could have a huge winner right here with high-resolution CRT monitors that have half the depth of their predecessors.
Cold CRT?! (Score:2, Funny)
Nothing like four CRTs to light and warm your room on a long and cold winter night...
An interesting note... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just a thought for the incredibally security paranoid
--
Patrick Cable II
CRT has its merits over LCD (Score:4, Informative)
Ill believe this when I see it.. (Score:1)
The problem is that, at least with computer screens crt really is a dead tech, Apple have even gone to the point of ditching crt for lcd's in their range. While the things will be around for years, development on them has all but stopped in favour of lcd, For one simple reasion: Everyone who need a crt has already got one and people are not going to buy a new crt when they could get an lcd (this is john q public we're talking about)
This company has done the equivant of inventing a slightly better video player when the world runs on DVD.
Re:Ill believe this when I see it.. (Score:2)
Re:Ill believe this when I see it.. (Score:2)
This company has done the equivant of inventing a slightly better video player when the world runs on DVD.
Given the price difference, my next display will probably be CRT.
Furthermore, given the price difference plus the region coding and other freedom subtracted drawbacks to DVD, my next video player will probably be VHS unless it's something based on an MPEG board for my PC. Given the cost and conflicting standards, such a system (if I bother) will be based on removable IDE DRIVES. Doing the math, IDE drives are cheaper than DVD for bulk storage.
Newer technology often slow to replace old (Score:1)
Flat CRTS (Score:1)
scarcity of engineers (Score:3, Interesting)
Part of this was the close down of many manufacturing sectors in the USA. Most TV makers are now non-US, or are US in name only, for example
I know of several folks who will rant at the drop of a hat on this subject alone.
Interesting sentence about patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Patent application in 1974, thus no reseach until the patent has expired.
Aren't patents supposed to promote research?
Digital In? (Score:1, Interesting)
Death to waves! Long live the 1/0 revolution!
Candescent (Score:1)
Re:Candescent (Score:1)
These are the joes I was expecting to save my table from breaking under the strain of a 21" Monitor!
Flat panel CRT's....mmmmmm....was so sweet an idea...too bad they only came out with dinky lil 11 inch displays (tops)...Damn.
Okay then...Back on the LCD Bus!
Keep all arms inside until the ride comes to a stop, or we find something holographic!
An open question... (Score:1)
Is this field emission (tunneling)? (Score:3, Interesting)
The article brings up a good point. Using thermoionic emission (as is done now) is a little outdated and almost barbaric :)
Not just for computer monitors (Score:4, Insightful)
I've not seen this mentioned here yet, but from my reading of the article they are intending to use this on televisions, too.
Yes, I can see the benefits of a shorter tube on a computer monitor (I'm using a 21" monitor right now that is nearly 20 inches deep and weighs nearly 65 pounds). The shorter tube would require less (heavy) glass and less plastic framing. So, smaller and lighter would be good. Also, instant on without requiring a warming circuit is a great plus, too.
BUT, these same benefits ALSO APPLY to conventional TVs, too! My current 27 inch TV sticks well out from my wall unit and weighs so much and is so bulky, I'm not ever going to try and move it again without help. It would be nice to be able to get a larger TV that would fit into the same space, weigh less, and would also not consume power just to keep the electron gun warm for "instant-on".
Other applications: shorter CRT tubes would be an advantage in any technical instruments that have a built-in display. Think: oscilliscope, medical instruments (pulse, BP, oxygen, etc. monitors), in-dash car displays, airplane cockpit displays, etc.
Now, to drool a bit for a more personal application... combine Cold CRT Gun with HDTV!
Why bother? (Score:2)
These guys are working on improving the horse-drawn cart, while people are whizzing past their lab in Porsches.
~Philly
Major players abandon the CRT (Score:1)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_145900
this article documents the fact that one of the major players are abandoning the manufacture of CRT as quote "There are no prospects for growth of the monitor CRT market."
while televisions may escape the death for the moment i fear its time has come also
The technology formerly known as microtip displays (Score:3, Informative)
SET MODE=OLD FART
Reading this article made me jump way back in time. At that time, I worked in a Big Company located in the same campus as PixTech, a startup that had a deal with Japanese display specialist Futaba to produce microtip displays in a European lab in Montpellier, France. Pixtech produced a monochrome prototype, then the price of LCD collapsed and the funding dried up. That was in 1993 or 94 if I remember correctly.
PixTech wanted to create a technology and then licence it to mass producers. They entered an agreement with Texas Instrument, but after LCDs started to be dirt cheap, the agreement collapsed.
The principle in these screens seems to be the same as the technology explained in the article. Behind each phosphorus dot (1/3 pixel roughly), a few dozens to a few hundreds cold cathode cones emit electrons and replace electron guns. The European technology was using silicon tips instead of diamond, but the principle stays the same: In an electrical field, a tip tends to concentrate charges, hence a cone easily releases electrons when negatively charged.
The beauty of the scheme is that even if the yield of the microtip fabrication is not perfect, you don't care because there are many of them behind each phophorus dot. Compare and contrast with LCD screens, where a single defective transistor will leave a permanent dead pixel.
I am a strong supporter of this technology, because it allies the advantages of CRTs with the flatness of LCDs. But I have seen several startups fail while trying to market microtip screens, so I am wondering if it's not jinxed or something...
Cold CRT (Score:1)
rm -r windows
This technology is better (Score:1)