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Technology

Light-Emitting Polymer Displays 271

Posted by michael from the it-always-comes-back-to-plastic dept.
BlackSol writes "Yahoo is covering a very cool piece on the development of roll-up screens. Possible uses from home televisions, to tele-watches, and military uses such as real-time satalite fed maps in the field."
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Light-Emitting Polymer Displays More

Light-Emitting Polymer Displays

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  • Multi-layer tv? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ignavus Anonymous ( 593054 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:23AM (#3916351)
    Will this open the possibility for 3D tv using multiple transparant layers?

    Or perhaps the multi-channel edition where you have a book with 100 pages: every page is another chanel. Nice and convenient during the commecial breaks :)

  • Here's a good idea (Score:4, Funny)

    by HiQ ( 159108 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:26AM (#3916374)
    "People are talking about weaving displays into clothing. Will there ever be a mass market for that? I doubt it. But it will probably be seized on by someone."
    Well, as long as it's a touch screen, I'm happy :)
    {and slowly a song from the Who sets in: See me, feel me, touch me...}

  • More info anyone? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Zordok ( 90071 ) <`doug' `at' `zordok.net'> on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:27AM (#3916380) Homepage
    Here's their website: http://www.cdtltd.co.uk/ [cdtltd.co.uk]

    I wonder if these can get high enough res. to be useful for laptop/handheld displays? That would sure be handy...

    -Zordok

  • the obnoxious ceareal box animations...

  • The uses.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Lord_Slepnir ( 585350 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:28AM (#3916394) Journal
    There are many uses for this in areas with political instability. Now instead of having to go through the problem of making new flags and banners every time an area changes hands, you can just have one of these up each flag pole, and just change the image as the situation warrents. I can see applications for this on the west bank / parts of Africa already.
  • "Roll-up televisions will allow viewers of the future to flip their sets out of sight like projector screens and will come with a similar price tag to bulkier boxes."

    Does anyone else find this a little silly? The plastic film costs maybe a few dollars, the printing process probably no more than $25 for a moderately sized set, and then another $50 (retail) for an acceptable interface/controller module.

    Alright, who wants to pay $1000 for a 48" screen that probably cost almost exactly the same to make as a 12" screen (for only $150)?
    • You're missing a basic but important point in manufacturing arrays of electronic components: Size Matters.

      Given that manufacturing is never 100% perfect, that means some (hopefully small) percentage of pixels will be defective. When you're talking about a 2.5" camcorder display with 240 x 180 pixels, if .0001% of pixels are faulty, that means one out of every 23 screens will have a bad pixel. If you then translate that into a 17" computer monitor with 1600 x 1200 pixels, then every monitor will have two bad pixels, on average. And if you translate that to a 48" screen with 4600 x 3400 pixels, each screen will have 16 bad pixels.

    • Wow, they're at least 18 months from having a commercially viable process, and you already know how much it's going to cost them to make it. That's pretty impressive.
      Given that so much about this is new (substrate, chemistry, packaging), I'd bet it will be years before they get yields like the (mature) technologies today. Low yields, need to pay for R&D, and warranty costs (no historical data, higher incidence of claims) all drive the price up.
      Besides, most consumers don't care what an item cost the manufacturer to make. They compare it's price to the cost of substitutes. If this has a price similar to the traditional alternative, people will consider it.

  • Adaptive Camo, anyone? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by CommieLib ( 468883 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:30AM (#3916405) Homepage
    Weave this bad boy into a full body suit, mount micro cameras throughout, project the image seen behind.

    Voila! Predator. From twenty feet or so, anyway.
    • Sorry, no. Well, it depends how good of camo you're talking about. What I'd like to believe is that technology like this can create a true "stealth suit" which creates a duplicate image of whatever's on the other side, effectively making the wearer invisible. But keep in mind, this is still a 2D display and you can't project a different image to viewers at different viewing angles. Not yet, anyway. Maybe eventually. The other big obstacle to this approach (microcameras, etc.) is that the shape of the suit would change as the wearer moves. So you need unprecedentedly high-res, low-latency motion tracking for every point on the wearer's body.

    • ... and Voila! The Body You Never Had - from twenty feet or so, anyway.

    • The main problem with this is that you would have to blend in from all angles....

      If you were just worried about the frontal side or if you were in a very repeating field of grass or something similarly "bland" then there would be greater effect. Probably would be better than regular camo.

      But a man standing up in clearing is just as likely to be seen if he is projecting his own background as if he were wearing camo.

      And lets not forget shadows....

      Now if you wanted to have camo that would determine a good set of colors to be based on the surrounding average colors... THAT is probably easy and probably even better than trying to project the exact image of what is around you.

    • Until... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by The Creator ( 4611 )
      Someone illuminates the whole area with a light that blinks at such a frequence, that you suit(due to the latency) is out of phase. : )

    • > Weave this bad boy into a full body suit, mount micro cameras throughout, project the image seen behind.

      No way man!
      Mine is gonna show 6-Pack Abs. ;-)
    • "Weave this bad boy into a full body suit..."

      TELETUBBIES!
  • Salesperson - We have this lovely floral design...

    Spork - Digital.

    Salesperson - This one comes in great pastel colors.

    Spork - Digital.

    Salesperson - Damn it! The morons in electronics get the commisions for digital wallpaper! Buy the damn Pastel!

    Spork backs slowly away.
  • Make a pair of pants out of this stuff, and you can have the pants flash cliff-notes during exams.

    Well, I am scrapping plans for #2 Linux pencils to focus on the pants now.

  • Paper maps can be good, too (Score:4, Funny)

    by dave_mcmillen ( 250780 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:30AM (#3916416)
    . . . military uses such as real-time satellite fed maps in the field.

    Better make sure those satellite connections are really secure:

    "All right, men, the enemy stronghold is dead ahead. Charge!"

    [ten minutes later] "Uh, Sarge, we must have gotten turned around somehow, now it's directly behind us."

    [fifteen minutes later] "Now it's saying we're in South-Central L.A. Stick together, men."

  • fuck that d00d, gimmie some movie-poster sized versions of that stuff to tack on my wall. or maybe i could stick some underneath my partially transparent tibook's keyboard! then i could finally see the damn keys in the dark... displaying porn on my keyboard would be nifty though :)

    probably a cheaper solution....they have indeglo watches...they have indeglo "nightlights....do they make poster-sized versions of the stuff? or is there a maximum size as to how larger it gets before you can't run current safely across the stuff (some sort of gas mixture i would assume)
    • Look in digikey. It's called electrolumonescent plastic. You can buy it in 12" square sheets, and you can build the inverter for ~$10 worth of parts.
      The chip that drives the inverter is the MC33441 [stts.edu] , and the datasheet tells you everything you need to know to build what you just described. The chip is tiny! I have some right here, and I can fit 4 of them on a dime. You shouldn't have any trouble squeezing it under your keyboard. (Good luck soldering to it though :)

  • Lifetime? (Score:2, Informative)

    by 216pi ( 461752 )
    according to this [wave-report.com] (rather old (2001)) paper, lifetime of polymer dislpays is around 10.000 hours against usual TFTs living around 50.000 hours.

    Let's assume they doubled it since 2001, its 20.000 hours.

    Unless they produce them for the half of the costs of usual TFTs, I wouldn't like to throw away my TV every 2 1/3 years...
    • Dude, turn off the set. If you spend 24/7 watching TV you should really consider spending any loose change you've got on a life ;-)

      Honestly though, I've got a digital projector I use to watch movies and TV and the rated lamp life is 1000 hours. I've owned it for 3 years and have about 600 hours on the lamp. Of course, the lamp is $500 so I don't leave it on just to keep me company while I do other things.

      10,000 hours is a lot of TV watching, IMHO.

  • Rollup laptop? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by ortholattice ( 175065 )
    Just add a roll-up keyboard [thinkgeek.com] and you almost have one. Not sure about the mouse or CPU...

  • Now I can... (Score:2, Funny)

    by daemones ( 188271 )
    ...hide interactive porn in my physics textbook just like I could comic books. Thanks science!

  • No need to have separate Desert/Jungle Camo suites, just turn a dial, and it becomes the one you need. Or, if the power requirements are to much for a personal version us it on buildings, vehicles, tents, etc.

    ttyl
    Farrell

  • Many interesting applications... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by eyepeepackets ( 33477 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:37AM (#3916474)
    ...for this technology.

    Cheap HUDs for autos (Heads Up Display) and bike helmets is an obvious application.

    Televisions everywhere. (Okay, this could really suck; who wants to see ads for Cheer everywhere you go.)

    And the big one: Wrap-around, full vision wearble displays. Granted, I'm stretching here, but one can dream, eh?

    If this technology really works well, it could solve a great many problems associated with computer displays (size, heat generation, cost, etc.)

    Lot's of really cool technology coming soon, makes the current despond somewhat more tolerable.
    • Many of the ideas mentioned here require optics to work properly.

      My first quibble is that nothing in the article suggests that this display is transparent. Most of the posts here assume plastic = transparent. Not necessarily.

      Secondly, the optics are always going to be a problem, until we have some form of holographic display.

      For example, a HUD is only useful if it's focused well out ahead of you - near infinity - and the ONLY way to do this is with substantial, and large, optics. I've BUILT a HUD before - I know what I'm talking about. A transparent display simply won't do any good for you. And to do a DECENT HUD, you have to have a very bright display - able to be seen in bright daylight, brighter than the background material. Finally, the optics of the primary lens MUST be as large as the viewable area - because the rays are parallel to appear focused at infinity, the width/height of the area where your eyes can see the image is exactly the same as the size of the lens. So you can see that a cheap display won't help a lot, and a transparent display is pointless.

      Also, a wearable display is a neat idea - but only if you focus it so your eyes can see it. Again, the transparency is no good if it's too close for your eyes to focus. Take a photographic slide, for example, and mount it three inches from your eye. Should be great, right? Super high resolution, bright clear colors, transparent... NOPE. You can't even see the image; it's just a dark blur obscuring your vision. You MUST have some optics to focus the image where your eye can focus on it.
      • Hmmm, yes, I see the problem with HUDs. Perhaps this technology can help with holographic displays by serving as the screen upon which banks of lasers paint images with the screen providing color information. Granted, lots of software work here coordinating information with pixels, but not much more complex than the cathode ray tube/software combination technology we already use.

        Anyway, cool technology all the same but I really don't look forward to the day when I can't get away from constant ad bombardment -- it's already really bad and getting worse all the time, ugh.

  • Welcome to the Diamond Age (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Myco ( 473173 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:39AM (#3916482) Homepage
    No mass-market for these screens on clothing? Hmm. Show of hands, who has read Niel Stephenson's _The Diamond Age_, with its vision of a future immersed in nanotechnology, and especially in a pervasive atmosphere of ever-changing displays (mostly ads) on damn near every surface.

    Imagine seeing a cityscape where every inch of every skyscraper is a billboard. Sound far-fetched? Read the article -- this is about printing televisions. These things are going to be cheap. Look at the end result of a technology such as the printing press becoming widely available -- we now have reams of printed matter everywhere we look. An active display technology that is so convenient to use and cheap to produce has just as much potential, if not more, for becoming pervasive and used everywhere.

    I think the biggest question for widespread use of these things, on a commodity level rather than an appliance level (toilet paper, not PDAs), is power. I don't think anything on the market today is truly a satisfactory answer to the question of how to power ubiquitous flexible displays like these, but we're close. See a very recent slashdot post (no link, so lazy...) about flexible solar cells being developed. Also, there is an incredible push for greatly improved battery technology, and great steps are being made there.

    Ultimately, there will be two kinds of uses for this technology. The first one we'll see will be the sort that is more or less permanently installed, and can therefore be plugged into the wall all or some of the time. Even the skyscraper-as-television fits into this category. But at some point you'll need batteries or solar cells or some other power source (some wacky nanotech?) to power more "disposable" applications like animated handbills, greeting cards, movie posters, etc.

    End result: advertising is about to get a lot more annoying. Let's just hope they haven't got paper-thin speakers to go with this.

    • Re:Welcome to the Diamond Age (Score:4, Interesting)

      by dschuetz ( 10924 ) <davidNO@SPAMdasnet.org> on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:03AM (#3916670)
      The first one we'll see will be the sort that is more or less permanently installed, and can therefore be plugged into the wall all or some of the time.

      That's what I want. I mean, ActiveDesktop is cool, and all, and I've got webcams and wether reports and traffic cameras and the like on my desktop, but at any given moment maybe 90% of my screen is covered with windows. And if I were to hook up a third monitor, I'd want to use it as more desktop space, not as a permanent "information poster."

      But, if I could have a 3x2 foot "poster" hanging on the wall of my office, plugged into the USB port on the computer, and feed data to it, then that'd be great. I could put up webcams, stock tickers, anything that'd be interesting to see but not important enough to keep in a foreground window.

      It'd be great to be able to simply glance up and say "ugh, traffic's getting bad, I'd better head home soon."

      So, where do I sign up?
      • Imagine being able to ... ...add a "window" into any cube. ...have a real time weather map. ...have a real time network map. ...have signs and placards in public places that change language every 10 seconds... or at the push of a button. ...as a teenager, have several poster in your room that immediately change as soon as your door is opened and don't change back until you hit a hidden button ...cubes with walls made out of this material could be in whatever internal color scheme/desktop theme you wanted and you could "hang pictures" on your "walls" that were nothing more than graphics files complete with frames. You could then hotel into any cube and get your pictures/home office effect/whatever. ...the police could change speed limits like in the Dukes of Hazard but easier. ...Walmart could change the prices of their merchandise without that singing smiley face guy. ...The seat back in front of you on a plane could be a full sized monitor for your ultra-personal computer. ...Keyboards that change character mappings and actually show the new characters. ...Harry Potter -esq pictures that move. ...Debit/Gift cards that show their running balance. ...Wall phones like in Spaceballs ...Don't repaint the inside of your house..... just change its color from the computer. ...Large Screen TV? Try the wall over here... no over there... no...that picture. ...Can you say psychadelic bed sheets?

        Ok... I'm done for now...

    • Paper Thin Speakers: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Tarindel ( 107177 )
      http://abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/f lat_speakers010418.html

      They've been working on them for a while now.

      It'll be really interesting when they manage to bundle the paper thin speakers, the paper thin monitor, embedded solar cells, and wireless networking all together into a single paper-thin sheet. Then you basically have a multimedia device that you can take and hang just about anywhere. And you thought telephone poles in the major cities were bad now... Just wait till they all play slide shows and video footage of someone's missing animal while playing sad music to tug on your heartstrings, beamed from said person's house nearby...
    • Imagine seeing a cityscape where every inch of every skyscraper is a billboard.

      Haven't been to Tokyo have you?
    • End result: advertising is about to get a lot more annoying.

      If you thought gratuitous Flash animations on the Web were obnoxious, you just wait until the marketing industry sees what they can do with these things.

      I mean, forget about blink tags. We'll be able to blink the side of an entire public bus.
    • aw - if these things were everywhere like that - spouting ads, then I have a formula to counter it:

      hacking+pr0n=no more ads! :)

  • Roll up TV Screens? lets get serious (Score:3, Interesting)

    by budgenator ( 254554 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:39AM (#3916485) Journal
    I doubt that a roll-up tv screen or monitor will ever be practical. Firstly, every pixel will have to be driven and that requires an electical connection. A 1024 X 768 will require atleast 786,433 electical contections, and wires made of metal. I expect serious problems with metal-fatigue induced conductor fractures, for roll-up displays. I'll admit that the ribbon cable inside a printer goes through a lot but it doesn't have a quarter of a million conductors either.
    This has a lot of cool potential applications, but roll-up displayed will not be marketable
    • Do the conductors have to be metal? They could ultimately be made of something more resistant to mechanical fatigue. Buckytubes spring readily to mind, though they've still got some R&D to be done before they're practical for an application such as this.

      I think you're underestimating materials science here. There have got to be good solutions to something as simple as metal fatigue. High redundancy, fancy lattice structures, exotic semiconductors or conductive polymers or ceramics, I don't know... something.

      Sorry, I don't like wet blankets on cool ideas. Nothing personal. :)

    • Wanna bet? (Score:5, Informative)

      by BeBoxer ( 14448 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:03AM (#3916673)
      It's not just the individual pixels which are made with polymers. It's the individual traces also. In fact, the whole field of polymer semiconducters is starting to ripen and bear fruit. The sheets of plastic they print won't only have light emitting portions, it can include power traces and even decoding logic! There might be a copper ribbon cable to connect the entire display to whatever external source provides data and power. But the entire display will be made from polymers.

      This really is amazing technology. The circuitry is basically printed out using ink jet style heads. Actually, one of the article says that it actually plots the traces out ala a good old fasioned plotter as opposed to line-by-line like a printer. It's not hard to imagine that this stuff will lead to a rebirth of the homebrew electronics hobbyist. Even if you couldn't afford to buy your own plotter, a prototyping shop which owned one should be able to produce custom circuits to your own design in an extremely fast and cheap manner. Imagine a semi-conductor Kinkos! Could be cool stuff.

    • Re:Roll up TV Screens? lets get serious (Score:4, Informative)

      by The Creator ( 4611 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:08AM (#3916713) Homepage Journal
      A 1024 X 768 will require atleast 786,433 electical contections

      Actually the minimum is not x*y it's x+y(well 3x+y anyway, or better x+3y for rgb). If you imagine all other contions being set to high impedance. One pair at a time used to illuminate a pixel and a scanning techinque used. That only makes it 3328 connections.

      • I think it could be fewer than x+3y if more complex logic can be built into the display somehow and if it can handle high bandwidth - VGA and DVI connections are 15 or fewer pins. There are a myriad ways to count all this.
      • The original logic should be 2359296 connections, one each for RGB and 1024x768.

        A little more on this subject...

        If you use scanlines, you could get away with a single wire carrying a signal (or a signal and power if power is being distributed over the same wire) and decode the signal at each pixel and distribute power (for intensities) at the contact point into the RGB plastics. That would reduce your calculation down to... 1792 connections (x+y) since some decoding is happening at the contact points.

        The disadvantage is you'd need decoder logic for every pixel, but this may be easier and more producable than individual wires. If the decoders were good enough, you could reduce the wires further by having 4 pixels decoded for each wire (providing the wire meets at a single contact point for the four pixels. A four pixel connection point without scanlines reduces the number of wires to 196608 for continuous updates (such as the original example) and with scanlines you halve the values in each direction ending with 896 wires (512+384).

        Fast scan conversion with long "burn" times would likely not be noticable (update takes a fraction of the "on screen" time - probably less noticable than a TV), and if some memory is available for each pixel and a clock is used, one could double buffer the display, and have a near 0 update time.

        I'm sure there are other possibilities. My main point is that wiring isn't the only option for each pixel or pixel component (RG or B), as long as there is enough space to stick in a small amount of circuitry to do some decoding at the end.
    • Get real. Aside from the power cord, *MY* TV has two conductors for input. Okay, I'll give you a hint. It's called RF. Not good enough? What about ethernet, 8 pins. Want true video instead of digital data? How about the 15 or so pins on a VGA display? If the decoding electronics are embedded, you don't need lots of connectors.

      If you can afford the millions of transistors for the display electronics, you can afford a million more for the decoding too.
      • The issue isn't signal delivery, it's pixel addressing. To get the right charges to the right place for production of the image.

        CRT's (TV's and Monitors) fire a magnetically redirected electron beam for its addressing. This makes it a very analoque device when you break it down, albeit a very high precission one.

        LCD's are addressed via a crosshatch scheme and do have actual pixels for a change.

        Unless that crosshatch or something similar can be reproduced, then yes it will take a high wire:pixel ration to get the job done.

    • Re:Roll up TV Screens? lets get serious (Score:4, Insightful)

      by spacefrog ( 313816 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:26AM (#3916820)
      Metal? Metal you say?

      Conductive Polymers [plasticlogic.com] should solve that whole problem pretty well.
    • The metal will roll up fine. It is so thin that it is like paper. As long as the radius of the roll is not too small it will be fine.

  • Animated T-shirts anyone? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Te1waz ( 453498 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:40AM (#3916501)
    I think I'd like one of a Penguin stomping on MS HQ...

    Better still, if the material could be made thin enough and safe to implant under the skin you could have animated tattoos you could reprogram at will.
    (I'd go for a penguin stomping on MS HQ again)

  • Printing Circuits (Score:4, Interesting)

    by icb1000 ( 239629 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:41AM (#3916513) Homepage
    One of the other pretty cool technologies being developed by the guys at Plastic Logic [plasticlogic.com] (a spin off company created by the same people from Cambridge University who formed CDT) is the ability to create full electronic devices by using an inkjet printer loaded with a cartridge of these conductive polymers. It would be pretty cool to be able to see a useful device on a web page, download the circuit, print it out of your inkjet and then have the working device straight away.

  • Refresh Rate? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Slothrop ( 22808 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @09:44AM (#3916535) Homepage
    I can't seem to find anything about what kind of refresh speeds they can get from this, or energy consumption. Has anyone seen any current figures released by these people?

    Regardless of how cool this could be, it'll be a dud unless it makes laptops last longer and has at least equal moving image quality compared with LCD screens.
    • I don't think this technology is meant to compete with high quality LCDs. It's meant to compete where cost is the biggest issue. They are not nearly as concerned with resolution, refresh rate, or lifetime as they are with cost. The goal is to produce a cheap process which can be integrated with current manufacturing methods used to create packaging. The holy grail of this field is to be able to produce an entire system (display complete with driver, logic, memory, power source) in this process, using high volume, nonprecision techniques. I wouldn't expect to see this in a laptop, it's a different market.

      Think flashing Doritos bags, cereal boxes with animated cartoons, etc. There's a lot of money to be made by calling attention to your product amongst a number of similar looking products. Just look at the boxes of kids' cereals these days: fancy inks, vivid colors -- they've even started incluing free CDROMs on the cereal box.
    • CDT (Cambridge Display Technology) was touting LEPs as the next LED that is capable of high refresh rates and the ability to see from angles, all because the technology doesn't use a backlight but instead the plastic itself emits light.

      Among some of the other advantages I remember highlighted was the ability to create strange pixel configurations, low power usage, and a relatively inexpensive manufacturing process.

      We'll have to see what promises it will live up to...

      Semiconducting Polymers on Display [aip.org]

      • . . .

        From that pdf you linked above, page 3, penultimate paragraph, er . . . I cite verbatim :

        "It is all about transferring low-level intelligence to everyday products," says Friend, adding that in the not-too-distant-future,
        "Your yogurt container will be able to tell the yogurt it should have been eaten a few days ago."

        wtf is the yogurt supposed to do, complain to the person who bought it?

        Beats the crap out of reading up on LEP display tech just thinking about that one . . .

  • Mmm... (Score:2, Funny)

    by bythescruff ( 522831 )

    "I think we'll see a lot of innovation," said Fyfe. "People are talking about weaving displays into clothing. Will there ever be a mass market for that? I doubt it. But it will probably be seized on by someone."

    So I'll finally get to shag someone in an AOL-style video-minidress - mmm, ohh...

  • This could be cool... change your clothes with the push of a button. Wear a new face (probably not a very realistic-looking one until the technology matures, but we're dreaming here...). Wear the skin of your favorite porn star. With adaptive padding it could modify the underlying shape as well.

  • The Whitepaper (Score:2, Informative)

    by jdclucidly ( 520630 )
    This is Cambrige Display Technology's white paper on how Light Emitting Polymers function. [cdtltd.co.uk]

  • Cambridge Display Technologies [cdtltd.co.uk] has a nice article [cdtltd.co.uk]
    describing the underlying physics and some technical issues involved with developing the material.

    --LP

  • Rollup screens = ultimate portable PCs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by pieterh ( 196118 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:02AM (#3916662) Homepage
    I've been dreaming of my ultimate portable for some time, and this - roll-up screens - was all that was missing. I have a roll-up waterproof keyboard that works quite well. Imagine the guts of a notebook PC (no CD, keyboard, screen), a kind of brick the size of a stack of CDs. Fits into your pocket. You can add a flat battery underneath for portable use. You can plug in a roll-up screen and keyboard when you're on the road. At the office you dock it into your main notebook or desktop - synchronizing all your data, updating your email, etc.

  • Don't assume this is transparent (Score:3, Informative)

    by Goldenhawk ( 242867 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:23AM (#3916800) Homepage
    Most of the posts here assume plastic = transparent. Yeah, that would be nice. But it's not necessarily the case here. Nothing in the article suggests that this display is transparent.

  • Anyone see Minority Report? Screens everywhere. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Goldenhawk ( 242867 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:26AM (#3916816) Homepage
    A number of the comments here about advertising and the proliferation of displays reminded me of Minority Report. Everywhere the characters went were advertising displays - wrapped around the walls of stores and malls, moving billboards, even animated cereal boxes (John Anderton angrily tosses one aside after being bothered by the distraction at one point). Obviously Spielberg has the same vision of the future as many of you.
    • No, e-ink is competing for the same goals and may get there first. E-ink has better characteristics for books, newspapers, posters (Ads), maps, i.e. the image is static for at least a few seconds. E-ink doesn't need to be refreshed set the pixels and it stays. Oled's are for active displays, i.e computer screens, TV's etc.... They can and probably will split the market. Motion on OLED, short period static on e-ink.

  • A printable screen... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nogami_Saeko ( 466595 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:31AM (#3916856)
    I want to be able to go into a store and say 'I'd like a screen 120" wide by 67" tall', and have them print it for me there on the spot, laminate it together, then just sell me a little re-usable "connection" module that clips on the edge of the screen to power/activate it.

    If you want a different size screen, you just toss out the old one, keep the module and get a new one printed up.

    And it's starting to sound very, very possible...

  • Just -7 years away! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rayd75 ( 258138 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:39AM (#3916901)
    I've read a number of articles on these and other flat, flexible displays such as "digital paper". It's amusing that all of this life-changing display technology is just months from everyday use... and has been for the past six or seven years.
  • The technology stems from the discovery in 1989 of the compound p-phenylenevinylene which glows greeny-yellow when given an electric charge.

    A little tweaking over the following decade produced compounds to emit blue and red light: the roll-up TV was born.

    Makes sense to focus on those specific wavelengths.

    With the flick of a switch the display could convert to infra-red ...

    I know you can't mix RGB to get infra-red.
    Is this LEP Vapourware?
    • The infra-red that they are talking about is merely a representation in visible wavelengths. Even if it did manage to output IR from RGB signals, it wouldn't be much use. You don't really imagine that people can ACTUALLY see infra-red do you? (or ultra-violet, for that matter)
  • roll-up stuff is fine and good until you have to carry something around -- i believe a very important aspect of this technology is its portability. however, if i decided to carry my 42" roll up screen around (say, on a road trip), it would still not fit into my briefcase because when it's rolled up it will be a large tube around 30 inches long.

    however, if such technology can be made so that the material can be folded (like paper) and does not cause distortions of the pixels at the edges of where i fold -- i am all for it. fine, everywhere i look there will probabbly be billboards because of this technology. but then, i can carry around my own and display stuff i want to see instead.
  • I'd love to have something like that .
    Play video clips, etc.

  • Lay Report on LEP's (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I did a lay report on this subject a few years ago for a university project. Have a read; I wrote it with a view to be easily digestible for the general masses :)

    http://www.chemsoc.org/exemplarchem/entries/2001/w illiamson/index.html [chemsoc.org]

    You will need a Chime plugin for viewing the 3D molecules.
    http://www.mdlchime.com/chime/ [mdlchime.com]


    regards,

    Mark

  • Blue polymers perfected? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by babymac ( 312364 ) <{ph33d} {at} {charter.net}> on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:56AM (#3917011) Homepage
    I've been following the development of CDT for some time now. The last I heard, they hadn't yet perfected a polymer for the color blue. They would degrade and die within a couple thousand hours of use. Considering the fact that normal CRTs last a lot longer than that, I don't see LEPs becoming popular or practical until this problem is overcome. Does anyone know anything about further development in this area?

    • >They would degrade and die within a couple
      >thousand hours of use. Considering the fact
      >that normal CRTs last a lot longer than that,
      >I don't see LEPs becoming popular or practical
      >until this problem is overcome

      This may not matter depending on the selling price of the display. A couple thousand hours of use translates to around a year of regular use. If the cost to produce something like this allows them to sell a unit comparable to a 19" CRT for less than say $75 I think they have a winner. Economically it works out. You replace a monitor every 4 years or so anyway. With something like this you would simply have more but cheaper upgrades, the total cash outlay would be the same. The difference being that you keep getting newer, better, and possibly cheaper versions each year, whereas with a CRT it just keeps getting more obsolete.
    • Not neccessarily... if you can buy them at $20 for a pack of ten, would a short lifespan matter that much? As long as the lifespan wasn't inconveniently short, the cost may mitigate those problems. Not to mention, if they do die of faster than CRT's, producers may be more interested in making them, knowing that you'll be replacing them (and paying the manufacturers) more often.

  • Hmmm I know one I'd like.. (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonvmous Coward ( 589068 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @10:58AM (#3917023)
    I'd love to buy a roll of TV, change the channel to WB, and then use it as TP.

    Who knows? that could displace Nielson ratings!

  • Roll-up TV? Why? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pedrito ( 94783 ) on Friday July 19, 2002 @11:20AM (#3917202)
    Why would I want a roll-up TV screen? Ever since I moved my 4 computers out of my living room and into the second bedroom, my living room has appeared empty. Now I'm supposed to roll-up my TV when I'm done watching? Maybe if it's on remote control, but otherwise, forget it. I like it the way it is.

    I like the "Maps in the field" kinda thing, though. Kinda like Red Planet.

    It's kinda cool watching some things from Sci-Fi come to reality. I just wish they'd get working on the damn holodeck. Talk about the ultimate in addictions. I'd never leave.
    • I'll tell you why:

      Recently at my work a demo of a pretty cool projector was given (it was small, lightweight - about the size of a book, and had great res - too bad I didn't find out who made it, but I couldn't afford one anyhow). While the projector was something to behold, the screen it was being projected on was even better.

      Imagine a tube with one side slightly "flattened" - this side had two "feet" that rotated perpendicular to tube, so that the tube was well supported. You sat the tube on the feet, flat with the floor, pull the handle on top and the screen unrolled - let go, and it just sat there, seemingly by magic. Grab the handle again, pull up slightly, then let it slide in the tube, fold the feet, and walk away.

      It was a great presentation system, all in all - the screen was pretty cheap (for what it did) - $300.00 for 60 inch diagonal.

      Now, imagine if instead of it being a simple projection screem, it was instead really THE SCREEN - maybe the video jack on the end or something. Can you say swwweeeetttt?

  • Some more uses... (Score:5, Funny)

    by teamhasnoi ( 554944 ) <teamhasnoi@yahoo. c o m> on Friday July 19, 2002 @11:26AM (#3917253) Journal
    ALL roadsigns adapt to current conditions. (Detours, construction, accidents, the Fair, the Fair!)

    Change the appearance of large items at will - make your house 'look' scary on Halloween, Waving flags and fireworks on the 4th. Give your house a stone wall, garden, or 'trees'. Make your house 'transparent' or 'invisible' for parties, exhibitionism or to get 'away'! (Screens on both inside and coutside of course.) Change 'wallpaper' at whim, decorate by era, place, or fetish. Make your apartment look like its huge! Play a 'real' game of quake, or nethack!

    Your car could be a different color every day, or adapt 'styling features' (camo trucks for hunters or the army) 'fake' turbo for all the Rice-Boys out there.

    Put 'windows' to the outside world or made up world in your office or cube. Your 'desktop' could be your desktop! Video conferencing could be far more personal, and body language would become useful.

    A VR Holodeck of sorts could be be possible, embed into all surfaces in a room.

    One *real book - any book contained within!

    Graffitti could become an accepted artform. Leave it there a week and then *poof*

    Learn to dance with the 'magic' footprints appearing at the proper times and positions.

    The Hoover dam could be the biggest theater in the world!

    Of course, by the time this comes to pass, the **AAs will probably have legislated that a user cannot view these screens without pervasive advertising. The Hoover dam will play McDonalds and Disney commercials 7 out of 8 hours, some 'Avatar' will follow you around offering product suggestions every two minutes, and someone will get pissed at you for something and hack your house, car and t-shirt to show goatse.cx at random intervals.

    Don't want to think about that on the Hoover dam

  • Now you can stick a large display on the ceiling, for that simulated mirror on the ceiling effect with the porno actress/actor of your choice! (not responsible for emotional damages in the event Ron Jeremy appears upon your ceiling)
  • Okay... imagine walking into a house or building where every squaare inch of ceiling, floor, and wall was covered in this stuff -- put some sort of display on it like one of the more funky visualizations for winamp and you can't tell me that simply being inside such a place wouldn't be a most interesting sensation. :)

  • Wallpaper! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by C60 ( 546704 ) <salad@carbon6 0 . net> on Friday July 19, 2002 @02:06PM (#3918487) Homepage
    I've been waiting for this one for a long time. Once this is mass produced how long do you think it's going to take until someone turns it into addressable wallpaper for your home? Screw rolling the thing up, just return the wall to your favorite pattern/color when you're done watching TV.

    Now you go and take this stuff and combine it with the See-Through, Paper-Thin Speakers [slashdot.org] and you've got your media where ever you go.

    Just makes me wonder how long it's going to be until movies are made from a central perspective, like IMAX in your home.

    At the very least it should be a cheaper method for bringing those remaining 34,940 movie theatres into the digital age [slashdot.org]

  • BBC Radio - 11 July (Score:2, Informative)

    by 80N ( 591022 )
    The BBC's Radio channel 'Radio 4' featured CDT in their 'Material World' programme on 11 July. It can be heard here [bbc.co.uk] using a Real Audio player. The web-page summarising this transmission is here [bbc.co.uk].
  • Polymer or otherwise, light-emission sure is a nice feature for a display :-)
  • for the pr0n industry!

    You want to enhance your appearance? You want to "advertise" when out for a night on the town? Why bother with transparent flaps, when you can just put your favourite pr0n star's anatomy in just the right place to catch that cute girl or guy's eye!

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