Laser TV — the Death of Plasma? 351
spoco2 writes, "As reported in major news outlets yesterday in Australia (The Age, the Herald Sun), a new television technology has been developed which is touted (by the developers) as far and away superior to both plasma and LCD. From The Age: 'With a worldwide launch date scheduled for Christmas 2007, under recognisable brands like Mitsubishi and Samsung, Novalux chief executive Jean-Michel Pelaprat is so bold as to predict the death of plasma. "If you look at any screen today, the color content is roughly about 30-35 per cent of what the eye can see," he said. "But for the very first time with a laser TV we'll be able to see 90 per cent of what the eye can see. All of a sudden what you see is a lifelike image on display."' The developing company, Arasor International, is said to be listing on the Australian stock exchange shortly."
Re:That's intense (Score:5, Informative)
You can buy quite good TV set today (Score:1, Informative)
http://pro.jvc.com/prof/attributes/features.jsp?m
Re:That's intense (Score:3, Informative)
I am still quite certain they're talking about intensity range, not granularity.
Re:That's intense (Score:2, Informative)
Re:That's intense (Score:3, Informative)
Would it seem rather that the near 3-fold increase they are are talking about is the ratio of the areas of the two shapes in this [wikipedia.org] graph? So it's not all about brightness then...
I'd expect that many people, like me, are so used to subconsciously compensating for the inadequacies of normal displays that they hardly see the deficiencies compared to real life. I'm looking forward to seeing one of these now
Re:This line says it all... (Score:3, Informative)
And displayed beside a conventional 50 inch plasma TV this afternoon, the Mitsubishi-built prototype does appear brighter and clearer than its "older" rival.
Absolutely vapourware! No prototypes exist for this at all, and because they don't exist a company like, say, Mitsubishi could never have built one.
Re:More info on the optics (Score:3, Informative)
Speckle problem (Score:5, Informative)
Extended field trails on psychophysical effects are needed before such technology is approved by FDA or equivalent regulatory organizaiton.
Is it RP TV? (Score:1, Informative)
Think about ripping screen out and using it for parties...
But seriously: lasers make quite a lot of heat. If you use them for a while you need to switch them off and let them cool down. Other thing is that you need to direct laser in proper place. You need to use some kind of motorised mirrors (for rear projection like tv) or damn lot of small lasers (for lcd like tv). If you want to use mirrors - they're very delicate stuff, and if you live close to busy road - you'll finish with very blurry image everytime big lorry passes. If you use lot of small lasers - besically you'll have new flavour of LCD TV. So nothing really new.
So it doesn't sound so great after all.
Re:Don't expect miracles (Score:4, Informative)
They look kinda suspicious to me. Their page is nothing more than 3-4 template pages touting proud statements like "Industry sources estimate will be huge in 2009".
Their domain doesn't reflect their company name. Worst branding example yet? No sane company would use "lightbit.com" for their official company domain when their name is "arasor".
A normnal company might register a promotional domain but won't make that their main domnain.
Last but not least, they try to pull it off as if they have monopoly over laser TV technology, but they actually have a lot of competitors with actual products to show, such as Novalux, Mitsubishi etc.
Re:Colour gamut (Score:5, Informative)
Typically, the input file (usually a raw camera file) is transformed via a device profile (representing the camera's actual spectral response) into a working space (a device-independent space for editing). Whilst editing, the image is viewed using a transform to sRGB (or your display's output profile, if you've calibrated it), but this restriction is for viewing only and doesn't change the file. Then, when you print, the image is converted via a device profile for your printer to print to the extremes of its capabilities - which may exceed sRGB in some colours (e.g. cyan), and be even worse in others (e.g. pure blue).
Most 6 or 7 component inkjets can go well beyond sRGB gamut.
Life stops being simple and nice once you take that step, thought. With AdobeRGB for example, you cannot share any of your images with your friends or print them in commercial shops unless the recipient can handle color profiles properly. XP image preview actually can, but none of the browsers do.
True, you can change the profile but unless you've got full photoshop, it's more conversion steps as the freeware utilities that I'm aware of can only do TIFF and JPG.
2nd hurdle is actually getting the photos to print. You have to be able to bypass all windows color management (which uses sRGB) and use photoshop (or photoshop elements) to print, which needs to have the profile for your printer AND photo paper for things to work right.
As an end result, you *may* get images of a lagoon or something that has deeper hues your commercial print shop would print. But how many of images like that "ordinary" people have in the 1st place?
There are even wider gamuts as AdobeRGB still doesn't surpass what you can see. I think PhotoPro will show all the colors (reference) eye can see and in fact quite a lot it can't, since color vision is not nice and linear.
Bottom line is, unless you're absolutely sure what you're doing, stick with the sRGB! Going with AdobeRGB or similar will make your photos look WORSE unless the rest of the cain supports it.
Re:CRT (Score:3, Informative)
Same here. I've looked at many lcd and plasma TVs, but none of them look good enough to justify their cost. I'd rather stick with a CRT for now. Plus the CRT I have (non-HD) doesn't have that annoying high pitch coming from it.
My first question would be what the source was? Because if the source was non-HD, then certainly no advantage will be evident. My second question is where you checked them out. Usually, in the stores, either the sales staff doesn't know how to set the picture, or they set it on "nuclear" to make it pop. This evidently impresses a lot of people, but it really makes it look like crap. I got mine home and was really disappointed that it looked terrible, but within 5 minutes of changing the ridiculous default settings it looked fantastic.
I'd add that CRT TVs of the same screen size as your typical plasmas (42"-50") are HUUUUUGE. Definitely not an option for those living in smaller houses/apartments.
As for the high pitch, I can hear when any plasma/CRT monitor is on in a room (with no signal, obviously). Period. I haven't noticed it as being any worse with my plasma.
As for whether it's worth it...certainly that's up to you, as they are more expensive. For me, it's hard to deal with regular definition TV having had high-def. Especially for movies and sports. For regular TV like news and such, all you see is scars, moles, wrinkles and the like in higher resolution...yuk!
Where do those 30-35% and 90% numbers come from? (Score:4, Informative)
n the first place, I seriously doubt that there's any meaningful way of measuring the "percentage coverage" of a gamut of colors, since the mapping of colors into a plane is somewhat arbitrary and there are two very different systems in wide use. I notice that this comparison of Adobe RGB vs. sRGB [cambridgeincolour.com] doesn't try to estimate any "percentages."
Neither does Poynton's invaluable Color FAQ. [poynton.com]
Second, if we're talking about something like "area included in the CIE xy plane by thus and such system of reproduction" as a percentage of "area included by the entire spectrum," I seriously doubt that you can get a number anything like 90% with only three primaries. You're still trying to approximate a blobby blunt shape with an inscribed triangle.
The article is so vague on details that it's not clear how many primary colors are used. If it uses six primaries instead of three, I'm prepared to believe it could give meaningfully better color than traditional systems. How important that is remains to be seen. HDTV gives obviously, dramatically better picture quality (in terms of resolution) than traditional TV, but it doesn't seem to be setting the world on fire.
The big question, of course, is where one would find program material encoded with more than three primaries; it would need to be specially recorded for this system (requiring new video, broadcast, and optical disk standards).
Re:Speckle problem (Score:4, Informative)
single small aperture and that the collimated beam expands. The cop speed lasers found a trivial way around that test even though optics that give an equivalent beam at 100 meters wouldn't be allowed. Some lasers are allowed for use in public but only for about 20 minutes according to that finely worded law.
Re:This line says it all... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Is it RP TV? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:That's intense (Score:2, Informative)
Nice guess, but it's really just illuminating a "standard" Texas Instruments DLP chip with three lasers instead of a hot mercury lamp and a spinning color wheel.
It should be a huge improvement, but it'll still be DLP projection.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/03/business/03hdtv
Re:This line says it all... (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.cinetson.org/phpBB2/download.php?id=39
The Blue DPSS Laser Power? (Score:5, Informative)
The new breakthrough is that we have solid state Diode Pumped Solid State lasers (specifically high power DPSS), you should be familiar with the 532nm green laser pointers. The green is achived through frequency doubling 1064nm infared DPSS lasers. Red lasers need not be frequency doubled because they can manufacture Diode lasers to that frequency and is available in higher power ranges. Blue DPSS lasers were developed, usign 808nm infared lasers frequency doubled, the power available is still really low, (and I can't wait to rip apart a blue ray drive to get the laser out!) and the lasers are extremely expensive. Hopefully with greater production of blue lasers the prices will go down.
The next issue to deal with in the U.S. (I don't know austrailian law) lasers are regulated by the FDA and any laser over the power of 5mw that exposes radiation to the public has to have an FDA varience to legally operate. I am wondering how this TV would be classified. I really would prefer a solid state DPSS laser projector to replace easily broken, expensive to maintain, LCD projectors. If you need more information about this technology sam's laser faq, and the guys at alt.lasers are nice and answer questions.
Peace,
Adam