X-bit labs

March 2004 Hardware News Overview (page 11)

Category: Editorial

by Andy Yaschenko

[ 03/15/2004 | 02:11 AM ]

Monitors

This time we will return to the past, from 3D monitors to CRT dinosaurs. This approach is no worse than any other and Hitachi announced its Transpost technology in the end of February that allows producing true three-dimensional images viewed from any point without any glasses or other gadgets.

This technology, however, suits mostly for static images as it requires 24 snapshots of the object, which are then projected onto a cylindrical system of rotating mirrors. In fact, we deal with optical mechanics here with a small pinch of modern technologies.

Intel’s offer, Cayley, is closer to reality. Of course, the semiconductor giant is not interested in display devices, but chips for such equipment are another matter. Cayley is Intel’s implementation of LCOS technology (Liquid Crystal on Silicon), which starts to be employed in production of HDTV projection sets with diagonals over 40 inches. The screen brightness should be higher than with the competitor offers, and at a lower cost. Of course, Intel seems not in its place in this market, but they caught at the opportunity of using the side results of their research concerning communication chips working with optical fiber.

Such things don’t concern computer monitors much, as classical LCD panels rule this market. They are not rock-solid in their design, though. February, Mitsubishi introduced an interesting variant adding another backlight unit to the classical combination of the matrix and the backlight, but on the other side of the matrix, and making both backlight units transparent. As a result, we have an LCD monitor, perfectly transparent from both sides.

This would be an ideal solution for cell phones with two screens as well as for PDAs and notebooks. For example, it would be excellent for a notebook to be able to display images on the closed lid, giving the tablet PC concept another push. It’s also pleasant that none of this should tell negatively on the price, as there are no extreme innovations to be implemented, just Mitsubishi’s resolution in pushing the technology into the market.

Toshiba Matsushita came up with their own vision of a notebook screen: a 14” matrix in versions with XGA resolution (1024x768) and SXGA+ (1400x1050). Their appeal is in the power consumption: record-breaking 2.5W and 2.7W, respectively, while current SXGA+ screens consume about 3.5-4.3W. A good accompaniment for the Centrino.

Nothing very interesting happened with respect to ordinary LCD monitors for desktop computers. 17 inches have become the minimum standard from which manufacturers start up. In February, Sharp unveiled two such models: LL-T17D4 (analog and digital inputs) and LL-171A (only an analog output). They refreshed the design, improved the contrast ratio of the 1280x1024 image to 430:1, and have 170 horizontal and 150 vertical viewing angles with a response time of 20msec. Overall, there is nothing extraordinary, so the prices of $500 and $480 seem to be somewhat too high.