Nice! Sony Develops Razor-thin, Bendable TV Screen

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jp1064

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#1


Associated Press: May 25, 2007

TOKYO — In the race for ever-thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all — a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video.

Sony Corp. released video of the new 2.5-inch display Friday. In it, a hand squeezes a display that is 0.3 millimeters, or 0***1 inch, thick. The display shows color images of a bicyclist stuntman and a picturesque lake.

Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that's so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough.Sony said it has yet to decide on commercial products using the technology.

"In the future, it could get wrapped around a lamppost or a person's wrist, even worn as clothing," said Sony spokesman Chisato Kitsukawa. "Perhaps it can be put up like wallpaper."

Tatsuo Mori, an engineering and computer science professor at Nagoya University, said some hurdles remained, including making the display bigger, ensuring durability and cutting costs.
But he said the display's pliancy is extremely difficult to imitate with liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels — the two main display technologies now on the market.

"To come up with a flexible screen at that image quality is groundbreaking," Mori said. "You can drop it, and it won't break because it's as thin as paper."

The new display combines two technologies: Sony's organic thin film transistor, which is required to make flexible displays, and organic electroluminescent display.

Other companies, including LG. Philips LCD Co. and Seiko Epson Corp., are also working on a different kind of "electronic paper" technology, but Sony said the organic electroluminescent display delivers better color images and is more suited for video.

Sony President Ryoji Chubachi has said a film-like display is a major technology his company is working on to boost its status as a technological powerhouse.

Full article here.
http://www.startribune.com/535/story/1206876.html
 
O

Ozzy

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#2
They also call this OCD (Organic Crystal Display). It's actually been out for sometime but not in such a ply-able version. This version has been out for a few months, was at the recent Vegas CES show. It's in the LCD family and uses a light source much the same way fiber optics carry light. It's been used in some cell phone models and in that lucite picture frame some of you may have seen in a Hammaker and Schlemmer catalog that has the ability to change pictures on a see-thru screen. But it lacks the quality and durability to crack into any of the other markets for miniature screens. It tends to burn out or fade rather quickly. Also the light source is not as stable or evenly distributed. It's a novel idea but impractical for any of the functions we currently use LCD for.
 
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elmo16

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#3
I’ve done some research on Organic Crystal Display technology. It seems the Sony has just scratched the surface of this technology. Engineers at Mitsubishi Electronics are working on a version of Organic Crystal Display technology that can be applied as a printed circuit with a printer similar to a common ink jet printer (although the ink, as you would imagine is kind of special).

Ozzy, this technology will never be used in large screen TV’s, or any other application LCD screens are currently used in today. Consider instead, a 50-page magazine that could sell 1000 or more pages of full color advertising by using this technology along with equally inexpensive printed flash memory. Consider being able to buy current pop hits from a vending machine. The music would come on a piece of cardboard about the size of a credit card. You plug your ear-buds into it and it plays like an IPod. The songs would only play for maybe 5 to10 times, and it would be copy protected, so you won’t be able to steal it. The card would sell for about 50 cents. I’m sure that there could be thousands of more applications that people who are much smarted then you or I will come up with.

Like I said before, these are interesting times we live in.
 
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elmo16

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beep9 said:
And this is the beginning of the invisibility cloak
Click to expand...
Clothes that are like TV screens, with a video camera mounted behind you. This would allow people to see what’s behind you, giving the effect that you are invisible. Very cleaver Beep9. Now this is the kind of bright idea I’m talking about!
 
O

Ozzy

#7
#7
The US military already has a cloaking device.

It's in it's early stages, and it only cloaks two dimensional items the size of a postage stamp.
 
O

Ozzy

#8
#8
Actually it was US and Brit scientists....

But the Defense Dept funded some of the project so they'll have it soon enough


http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=061020170453.em0doxnf&show_article=1


For fans of the fictional Harry Potter, US and British scientists have demonstrated a working "invisibility cloak" that could, in time, make wearers disappear.
Initial tests focused on making objects invisible to microwaves, but the scientists said the same principles could theoretically apply to visible frequencies, making a true invisibility cloak like storybook hero Potter's possible.

Scientists at Duke University in North Carolina sought to put into practice the design theory revealed earlier this year by Sir John Pendry of Imperial College London.

They made a five-inch cloak (12.7 centimeters) from a complex artificial composite, or metamaterial, of copper rings and wires patterned onto fiberglass composite sheets.

The material is designed to distort space so that microwaves are not reflected back, but are instead bent around the cloaked object, whatever its shape, and allowed to flow on as if it didn't exist.

The result is that the beams are deflected like water flowing around a rock in a river, without noticeably interrupting the main current.

"By incorporating complex material properties, our cloak allows a concealed volume, plus the cloak, to appear to have properties similar to free space when viewed externally," said Duke scientist David Smith.

"The cloak reduces both an object's reflection and its shadow, either of which would enable its detection."

The effect is different from, for instance, stealth technology which protects US Air Force bombers from radar. That technology simply deflects the radar in ways to disguise the jets, while not making them invisible.

The invisibility cloak has potential applications in wireless communications or radar -- preventing objects from blocking waves or being disturbed by them or, for instance in military use, hiding them from waves. Indeed, some of the funding for the research came from the US Defense Department's high-tech research unit, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

But the scientists said it's still a long leap to a real Harry Potter-like cloak which would allow someone to walk around unseen. It would take a much greater advance in engineering metamaterials that do to the whole spectrum of visible wavelengths what the existing cloak material now only does to microwaves.

"It's not yet clear that you're going to get the invisibility that everyone thinks about with Harry Potter's cloak," said Smith.
 
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elmo16

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#9
The Klingons and Romulans have had cloaking technology for over 100 years, so I would have to say that we are way behind.
 
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Ozzy

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elmo16 said:
The Klingons and Romulans have had cloaking technology for over 100 years, so I would have to say that we are way behind.
Click to expand...
You sure about that? I thought when the Romulans developed a cloaking device it was in The Next Generation series.... So wasn't that like stardate 2270 or something? That would put them about 260 years in the future. I also don't recall the Klingons ever having cloaking technology.
 
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humsuplo

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#12
The Klingons do have cloaking technology; however, they did not develop that on their own. They acquired it through an alliance with the Romulans. The Romulan device you're thinking about that was developed in the TNG was probably a cloaking device that could fire a weapon while remaining cloaked if I remember correctly.
 
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Ozzy

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#13
humsuplo said:
The Klingons do have cloaking technology; however, they did not develop that on their own. They acquired it through an alliance with the Romulans. The Romulan device you're thinking about that was developed in the TNG was probably a cloaking device that could fire a weapon while remaining cloaked if I remember correctly.
Click to expand...

Regardless... If we're talking TNG, it's about several hundred years in the future.
 
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elmo16

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Ozzy said:
You sure about that? I thought when the Romulans developed a cloaking device it was in The Next Generation series.... So wasn't that like stardate 2270 or something? That would put them about 260 years in the future. I also don't recall the Klingons ever having cloaking technology.
Click to expand...
The trouble with you is that you get out way too much.
 
T

tomjohnson

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#16
This is going to be so cool, but how expensive will it be for a regular joe making 40,000 a year? Seems as technology gets better the poor have less of a chance of touching these things.
 
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jseah

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#17
If you want to stay on the bleeding edge of technology, you are always going to be paying a huge premium. However, that new technology does drive down the price of older technology for those who can't afford it. And eventually, even the price of new technology goes down. Who would have thought 10 years ago when DVD players first came out that you would be able to get DVD players for $30? And when LCD and plasma TV's came out, the prices of picture tube TV's dropped, so now you can find a cheap 26 inch TV for under $100. Even the price of plasmas have dropped. I remember when plasma TV's first came out in the mid 90's, a 50 inch Pioneer I saw at a high end video store had a price tag of $14,000 for it. You can now find one for under $2,000.

And for the regular joe making $40,000 a year, he should be more concerned with keeping a roof over his family's head and food on the table, than concerned with keeping up with the Joneses by buying expensive luxury items.
 
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