Jim Louderback tours the SID trade show with demos of cutting-edge displays: LG's 2.4 mm thin TV, a holographic 3D box, transparent touch screens, Sharp's yellow-subpixel panel for richer color, and bendable E Ink prototypes. The hosts discuss potential uses in cars, ads, and e-readers while noting cost and support remain obstacles.
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Hey guys, it's Jim. I'm here at SID, which is the Society for Information Displays, which by the way is a show I've always wanted to go to because all the cool new flat panels and other sort of TV stuff gets rolled out here first. This year was exactly what I expected. Cool stuff, thin, light, couple surprises too. Let's go see what I found.
Alright, this was definitely one of the coolest things there. It's a holographic display. Now what you're gonna see is a box, a 3-dimensional box with a baseball player and a couple of buildings and this 3D logo virtually rotating in front of it.
Really, really cool.
They're gonna show the Samsung logo in a minute too. I mean, this could revolutionize advertising if and when they get it to work, or all sorts of different things. I thought this was really cool.
Samsung had another really cool thing, this transparent LCD. Again, a 3-dimensional box, in this case with a wine bottle and some grapes, and a display on top of it that changes. Now, not only does the display change, but it's touch sensitive, so it's like an interactive kiosk where you can see things behind it, you can interact with it. Imagine this for a store or even for your car. Imagine a speedometer on your windshield that allowed you to do that, or you could just hit your windshield to make things happen.
Oh, now we're going over to LG where they had also one of the coolest things there.
This is the thinnest screen ever, 2.4 millimeters thick, or in.
You put this on your wall, it would practically disappear. I definitely want one of these. LG also had an 84-inch 3D TV which, you know, looked pretty good. It was bright, it was big, it was compelling. Certainly can't see it because you're only in a 2D world, but you know, bring the glasses up just to give you an idea of what that screen looks like, and it looks pretty nice.
Over at Sharp, they're taking the 3-pixel screen to 4. RGB now has yellow, and it makes those sunflowers look more yellow. The blue sky was much bluer. It definitely provided richer colors, more like what you would see, and you can see with a loop that yes indeed, there are actually yellow pixels in there.
And I don't know, cool idea, but I just wonder how much it's gonna cost to have a 4-pixel, plus who's gonna support it? E Ink was everywhere. Everybody had their color screens, so as we go from black and white to color on these E Ink displays, note they are transflective, so there's no light behind them, so they were kinda washed out and dim.
Bridgestone the tire maker had some, a bunch of other companies.
Of course E Ink, the leaders in the field, were showing off their color screens.
Stuff as well. This is what the Kindle and the Sony use and the Barnes Noble reader. Made me wonder why Amazon says there's not gonna be a color Kindle anytime soon.
I thought Samsung had the best-looking display of the color e-ink, so very bright vibrant colors that look really, really good. This is the one I would buy if I had to buy one today.
And finally, this is cool, using that same e-ink technology to change the color of your phone or another consumer device. Hit the button and your phone goes from a purple phone to a green phone on the back.
Finally, what I really want with one of these readers is one that I can fold up and put in my pocket, and the guys at Bridgestone were showing this bendable technology as well.
Very, very cool. Finally, two last things.
Patrick Norton, this is for you. I found an LCD screen inside of an aquarium, so it's waterproof.
Then, a large LCD monitor from Samsung that hooks up to a PC only through single USB connection.
Pretty neat because it means that you can add additional displays to some of these netbooks and other things, and you can do it pretty easily just with 1L USB. A lot of good stuff, it said.
