New LCD display tech -- a la Foveon X3!!!

matsu

I've been looking for a digital Camera, so I've spent some time reading the reviews and threads at DP Review. As I looked at one on the models I can't really afford to do more than drool over, I noticed an interesting tidbit on <a href="http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/minoltadimage7/page4.asp"; target="_blank">this page</a>.



"The EVF on the DiMAGE 7 uses a new type of LCD technology (Ferroelectric LCD) on which Minolta apparently hold some patents. It has 71,000 pixels each of which is capable of reproducing a full colour (rather than just red/green/blue of a normal LCD)."



Seems to be the same principle as Foveon, but a different tech geared toward image display and not capture.



Instead of having 3 pixel elements, you could have one that produced the full range of color. This means you could have 3 times as many pixels for a given display, and possibly better scaling too! I've read just a little about it and there are some problems but some cool potential benefits too.



The pixels keep their orientation when power is shut off. Cool for power saving displays. A passive matrix could theoretically drive them with similar speed and brightness to a current TFT-screen, making it more economical to produce and run. The close pixel spacing and orienation gives it a naturally wide viewing angle.



This looks like some pretty interesting technology. And it's out there now too! Albeit in a very small form.

macsrgood4u

Organic displays are also out there in cell phones available in Japan. These technologies are in their infancy... it will be two years or more until they get into larger computer screen applications. There is just not enough manufacturing capacity yet (there isn't enough for standard LCD displays either). IBM , I believe, is putting on line some kind of LCD display manufacturing that will make them easier to make and cheaper as well.

matsu

Oh, I know it's not coming in 15"+ sizes for a good while yet. However, the tech concept seems interesting. No color OLED display that I've heard of uses less than 3 sub pixels to produce one full color pixel. The arrangement of this technology makes higher definition more possible.

cdhostage

So... is this "new" tech an LCD or an LED?

Liquid Crystal Displays are nothing new - most portable electronics use something based on LCDs. calculators and such use simple LCDs with "pixels" centimeters long. They require a backlight, and only do two colors - clear or almost-black. Electricity running through the liquid crystal turns it black. Sunlight goes and reflects off the back of the display and can't pass through the black, and you see numbers.



iBook displays are a little more sophisticated. Each pizxel is tiny - I dunno the number. But each is composed of a different liquid crystal that tturns from clear to red, green, or blue. It too requires a backlight, and this is provided by a light behind the screen. The LCDs don't actually make any light; they block it selectively.



Light Emitting Diodes are mor eintersting. They actually produce light. Different tyles produce different colors. if you make them small enough, you can make a display out of them.

I think LEDs use more electricity than LCDs, which is why LCDs are used in portables. But an LED can be brighter and sharper than an LCD dispaly.



Thesee Organic LEDs use little power, and have charactistics just as good as modern LCDs.

matsu

OLED's have problems too, but they sure will make a good display tech if/when those problems get sorted. Mostly it's to do with the way the pixel elements wear out: too fast, and unevenly -- I think blue dies first.



What I'm talking about here is a new kind of LCD tech that does away with sub-pixel elements. With a Ferroelectric LCD, a point on your screen is not made up of three (R, G, sub-pixels, it is made up of one pixel that produces the entire color spectrum. This would allow for a tripling of current pixel densities without a significant improvement in fab technology. Like Foveon, it's as much a subtle paradigm shift as it is a "new" technology.



Contrast, speed, and viewing angle are all said to be better, as well as the aforementioned possibilities for higher resolutions.

moogs

Foveon is going to change the face of digital photography. Now if someone besides Sigma (a mediocre photo company IMO) would produce an SLR with it, that would be great. The theory goes that Nikon's replacement for the D1-X will use a Foveon chip but that's more or less like speculating on the G5 and its component specs. Pretty useless.



For this year though, it looks like the Fuji S2 is going to make even recent SLR offerings look pretty ordinary. We shall see.