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."
That's intense (Score:1, Interesting)
The ability to have such intensities would be great for having a screen that is still clearly visible outdoors or in bright light, but I wonder if they're going to build in ambient light sensors which automatically dim the display to an acceptible intensity?
Or did I get the wrong end of the rod / cone?
White paper? (Score:3, Interesting)
More info on the optics (Score:3, Interesting)
I found this link on the optical information [optics.org]: red, green & blue lasers.
This is real, and currently the only barrier is that red lasers aren't as stable / powerful / easy to create as blue & green ones.
If Novalux have overcome this, then real TVs using this tech will be on the market in 12-24 months.
Don't expect miracles (Score:4, Interesting)
We have incredibly humongous content in digital RGB, YUV, PAL, NTSC, movie reel formats. These formats contain only what you can see on an existing TV. Hence an DVD would look as vibrant on a normal plasma as on this laser.
Now of course things are not as simple, since for advertising purposes they'll scale the range up to demo the colors. If they overdo it though, they'll just skew the picture too much and receive at grotesque results.
There's a point where a tech is just "good enough" and color representation of a *modern* TFT (notice the stress) or plasma is sufficient.
Laser TV's may succeed if one or more of the following are met though:
- longer life, more durable
- less power consumption
- more portable (?)
- cheaper
Re:Don't expect miracles (Score:3, Interesting)
If they can do this and this alone, it'll sell the TVs.
They also claim less power consumption and less depth, so it's 'more portable' as well. And cheaper.
But then, they've made a lot of claims without a lot of proof. We'll know if it's vaporware sometime before Duke Nukem Forever is released.
Re:CRT (Score:5, Interesting)
The thing about LCDs and plasma is that they are consistent. There's less art to making a decent one or scaling it up in size, its simply a matter of cost.
Cheap but consistent mediocrity is usually an engineering win. If it can be marketed as "high end", it spells big margins. Think SUV.
Colour gamut (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem with the extended colour gamut of the new system is that existing source material is based on the sRGB colour space, which encompasses roughly 35% of the eye's gamut. Anything shorter wavelength than blue, such as spectral violet; many saturated greens and oranges, and most cyans are not available, and the nearest colour is used.
We're all used to this, so when a violet flower is shown as purple (red + blue) on our displays, we don't question it. But try putting a vase of violets next to your TV and you'll see the difference.
Some proper digital photography setups try to improve on the situation using colour profiles, which is simply a lookup table to transform the RGB colours in the file to absolute colour values.
Digital cameras can record colours outside sRGB, so if you ensure your workflow never enforces that constraint, you can end up with a file that can be printed using colours your monitor can't see.
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).
To make use of this new TV system, we'd need something similar - wide-gamut source material, and device profiles for each set (or simply assume sRGB as default, for backwards-compatibility). Otherwise, it's like listening to music mixed for cheap portable radios (i.e. most current CDs) on a real hi-fi system.
Re:That's intense (Score:3, Interesting)
Current displays including LCD, plasma, and CRT are all based on each pixel creating coloured light by mixing light from three separate colour sources. The generic problem with colour mixtures is that for any given triple of colour light sources, there are always certain colours that cannot be created by any mixture of the three light sources.
The new laser tv display is different because each pixel is created by light from a tunable laser [wikipedia.org]. The tunable laser can emit light at any wavelength in the spectrum of visible light. Each pixel gets precisely the correct wavelength for the particular colour that is required at that pixel, thus avoiding the problem of the limited set of colours that can be created by light mixtures of three different sources
Re:That's intense (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That's intense (Score:4, Interesting)
I was wondering about that! It didn't seem feasible to me (given my limited knowledge on the technology) that they would've been able to "tune" a laser's frequency rapidly enough to scan the entire display. That's many millions of different "frequencies" per second! That's exactly what I was hoping for until I read TFA, which didn't seem to mentioned that at all.
Re:This line says it all... (Score:3, Interesting)
I live in a mountainous state and if I wanted to buy a plasma to take into the mountains to a relative that lives there, it ain't happening. I have to buy a different rated plasma for the altitude (So says Best Buy, Circuit City, and Frys Electronics in the metropolitan area that has dealt with returns because of people doing exactly that)
Re:Don't expect miracles (Score:3, Interesting)
you miss a very important point....
Nothing we have ca CAPTURE an image at 99.99% of what we can see. not even the absolute best digital film camera on the planet can even get close to what the eye can see.
so having a display that can show something that can not be captured... yay! that is useful!
Mitsubishi demoed this in February (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:This line says it all... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This line says it all... (Score:0, Interesting)
Nevermind the truth in what I say.
Whatever you do, do not mark my comment Insightful or Informative or Interesting.
In fact, do not read this as it may poison your mind with disloyal thoughts.
"Please help Slashdot by taking this survey [slashdot.org] about our recent redesign."
Problems:
1 - This survey link has been at the top of my slashdot page everyday for some time now. No matter how many times I take it, it does not go away. I don't just get the "meta-moderate" link like I used to. I have to post an anonymous comment like this just to get the meta-moderate link.
2- Everytime I click the survey link, I am logged out. How do I know if someone isn't submitting results a million times anonymously, invalidating my one time taking it?
3- Clicking Finish opens a new window. Why can't it just redirect me to the completion page in the same window? Is this not making it easy for anyone to anonymously submit answers over and over?
4- "Click here to continue this survey later"- this javascripted link also opens an unnecessary new window where I'm prompted to enter an email address and click "Send URL". If I click Send URL without entering an email address, I still get a success message. What The Fuck. One would expect a site like slashdot would not make such a stupid mistake, nor employ dunderheads who are stupid enough to make such a mistake.
5- Neither the survey owner [mailto] nor technical support [mailto] have responded to notification of these problems in weeks.
In conclusion, the idiots who designed and implemented this survey should be strung up by their toehairs.
I will continue petitioning for this until these problems are fixed.
Thanks for your time.
Re:That's intense (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What we want in a TV (Score:3, Interesting)
As for frame rate, I'm happy with 24 - though response time of the screen is a serious issue with LCDs -- not so much for my professional work, but as a comsumer the lag really bothers me.
As for content -- I agree, but I think that discussion is orthoganal to this one.
Re:That's intense (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:This line says it all... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd rate them as not vapor.
Re:Colour gamut (Score:3, Interesting)
As to the browers, you are correct. However, this is more a problem of a lack of web standards than a browser issue. In fact, the www standard IS sRGB, and I hope that changes someday. There is no reason that browsers couldn't support embedded profiles in JPG's. A better solution would be some sort of HTML attribute which lets the browsers download an ICC profile and apply it to an image. You could spec it in an image tag. The browser would not need to download the profile but once and cache it.
As one who works in one of those commercial wide-gamut digital color shops, I am chomping at the bit for a wide-gamut laser display such as this. If it lives up, the display would exceed the gamut of even our 8 color high-gamut ink-jet printers. Must current displays are very poor at reaching even Adobe98's gamut.
Yes, there are wider gamuts than Adobe98. However the problem with virtually all software in the desktop-to-press chain (including most high-end rips), is that they are all 8 bit. You are stuck with 256 shades or Red Green and Blue no matter how wide your profile is. That makes the wide gamut profiles LESS accurate, not more. It is particularly noticeable in the darker areas of a picture. Stippling and solarization are common side effects. 16 bit solves the problem by allowing over 65,000 shades.
Besides this, most printing devices, even the high-gamut ones, do not have gamuts significantly beyond Adobe98. The exception being when spot color inks are used, but then you are bypassing ICC profiling anyway. For this reason it is almost always more of a headache to use something beyond Adobe98 for source images.
Everything above is subject to rapid change, of course. The color printing and profiling industry is in a state of flux right now. The technical advances are coming hard and fast. It should be a fun ride.
Re:This line says it all... (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, some entrepeneurs will push the envelope when trying to introduce something new. I used to work at Mitel Corp, which made business telephone systems. After much pre-announcement, we were supposed to roll out our SX-200 at a major trade show. Unfortunately, the software wasn't fully debugged, and so the thing didn't work properly. So Terry Matthews (that's Sir Terry now, of course) went out, bought a NorTel SL-1, and installed it at the back of the booth behind a curtain. They ran cables out to the SX-200, which was to all intents and purposes an empty shell. Everyone thought the SX-200 was fantastic, we got a lot of pre-orders, and when the software was debugged just a few months later, the SX-200 became one of the most successful PBX's of all time.
So there's certainly precedent for the idea of presenting something as a "done deal" while it's still in development. The question is, will the Laser TV actually appear in the market, as the SX-200 did?
And will we need goggles to watch it? The goggles.. they do nothing!
Re:That's intense (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure what this has to do with a laser display, though. They may be able to get further from the center (more toward the rounded corners) of the gamut with their lasers, which would increase coverage.
Popular science graphics diagram (Score:3, Interesting)
It does work (Score:2, Interesting)
The technology is amazing - the demo (ie, not production) version they had there was incredible, even without comparing it to any other screens or technology.
Whether they can get it out by Christmas 2007 at the price point they claim is something I will believe when I see. However, the tech is real and quite remarkable.
Re:White paper? (Score:2, Interesting)
The display uses standard Red, Blue and Green lasers. The delay is trying to improve on the color of the green, and possibly find a way to eliminate the frequency doubling crystal needed for green solid state lasers.
Power savings were due to being able to pulse the LEDs for low light pixels or even shut them off completely for black pixels, instead of blocking the light as is done with LCD technologies. This also improves the contrast.
Cost savings are because they can use a plastic screen instead of glass, as is currently required in LCD and Plasma units. And solid state lasers will last theoretically longer than the HDTV technology, reducing Ownership cost with no expensive replacement bulbs needed as curent DLP displays do.
Additional benefits... This also means that they can have a display that is lighter weight and doesn't need a large steel frame. This will allow them to eliminate the traditional 2 inch border around the display allowing for a picture that goes almost to the edge, and make wall mounting much more practical.
All of this sounds great, but time will tell if this technology goes to 11 or not. ........
Moral of the story for people on a budget is
WAIT and WAIT some more.