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Low-Power no-mercury LCD Monitors

380 points posted to Monitors and Displays by bluefoxicy 05/15/07

Mary Lou Jepsen developed a new type of LCD display for the OLPC that uses a prism and a white light source (a white LED) with a wide gamut to produce brillian, wide-gamut color ranges with lower power. Basically, it uses a prism and a reflector to direct the appropriate color of light to a pixel on the screen; rather than blasting a white fluorescent backlight and dimming out the red/green/blue channels to what you want.

This design can be easily manufactured (according to Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Machine#Display ) on existing LCD fabrication equipment; utilizes no mercury if you use a bright white LED for the light source; has a wider color gamut; and utilizes much less power (powering a bright white LED, getting full brightness out instead of blocking 85% of the light, can adjust brightness by dimming the LED...).

I'd like to see this sort of design replace modern LCD monitors. The technology utilized is interesting, and with more work it could become the standard LCD technology for a while; it may even meet or exceed visual quality in comparison with CRTs. I'm not a hardware engineer, so I can only speculate based on what I've read; but I find the design impressive from a logistics standpoint.

expatinasia
05/15/07		 Computers with an LCD panel with a white LED, as compared to a CCFT, backlight are currently available...though not from Dell.
bluefoxicy
05/16/07		 It's not exactly a backlight. I've seen the models available, using an array of 48 LEDs that have different wavelengths or something, and they cost $3000-$4000. They use the same LCD technology, filtering red/green/blue channels from white (combined from various LEDs) light into the appropriate intensity, in 3-component pixels. (This is the design http://videoediting.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=33128 )

This technology instead uses a single white LED and reflector to direct light to a pixel; as I understand, brightness is inherited from the LED's current intensity, and color is inherited from splitting the light prismatically to produce the proper color in a single-component pixel (i.e. the pixel is orange, not 100% RED 50% GREEN 0% BLUE). Color gamut is limited by the gamut of a white LED; white LEDs with wider gamut than mercury fluorescent tubes can be easily got.
expatinasia
05/16/07		 For notebook computers, it's exactly a backlight. Several dozen white LEDs (along the width of the LCD) are focused through a "prismatic reflector" (not a "prism") to provide even lighting the entire height of the LCD. I'ts very tricky to do. Individual LED color, focus, and brilliance vary. Too, the LED output degrades quicker than a CCFT.
bluefoxicy
05/16/07		 Ah, this design seems to result more in scanlines, where you start in the top left corner and draw a row at a time down to the bottom. This is how CRTs work, except the light source is a phosphor coating on the screen that glows when excited with electrons (or some such thing; I'm not an engineer).

How's the color gamut with that anyway? Also is it a sub-pixel type design (RGB components) or a single color per pixel design? Just curious.
expatinasia
05/17/07		 The LEDs aren't "scanning" - they are "on" all of the time. Although the implementation is more technologically advanced than this: simply assume that the CCFL is replaced by a series of LEDs. The function of the CCFL and the LEDs are identical.
rotthund
05/30/07		 iPods have LED backlights, and Apple is migrating to LED backlit displays.

How about transitive(?) displays? ...no back light needed.
 
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