Color Kinetics Lights Up Philips
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The LED lighting specialist agrees to merge with a giant in traditional lighting.
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(InfoWorld) - lTwo of the world's biggest flat-panel display makers, Sony and LG.Philips LCD Co., unveiled flexible full-color displays at a display industry show in California this week. Sony took the wraps off its prototype on Thursday and released an impressive video showing the display being bent to form a semi-circle while still displaying a moving video image. The 2.5-inch display has a resolution of 160 pixels by 120 pixels making it a little larger than the typical cell phone screen and a little lower resolution. The screen from LG.Philips LCD is larger at 4 inches in diagonal width and has a higher resolution of 320 pixels by 240 pixels. In contrast to Sony's video, LG.Philips LCD released only a photo that showed the display curved at a slight angle. Typically flat-panel displays are built onto thin sheets of glass but the Sony and LG.Philips screens are made on thin sheets of plastic and metal, respectively. That allows them to be bent but also introduces a range of other problems such as keeping everything aligned and working while the panel is flexed. Indeed the video of Sony's prototype showed several bad pixels and other problems. Neither company has said when it thinks the displays will be ready to go on sale but early customers might be attracted to them for reasons other than their flexibility, said Paul Semenza, an analyst with iSuppli, who attended the Society for Information Display conference where they were announced. "What tends to get forgotten is that these displays are also rugged and lightweight," he said. "Those are valuable properties." Sony sees OLED technology as important for its future products and is putting a lot of research and development resources behind screens like that unveiled this week. The screens are different from today's LCD (liquid crystal display) and PDP (plasma display panel) screens in that OLED pixels use an organic material that emits its own light, so no backlight is needed. That means the screens consume less power and can be made thinner. OLEDs also handle fast-moving images better and offer good color reproduction. At theÂ Consumer Electronics ShowÂ in Las Vegas in January the company showed off prototype televisions based on larger, non-flexible 11-inch and 27-inch OLED panels. Thanks to the lack of a backlight the 11-inch prototype was just 11 millimeters thick but displayed a vibrant, colorful image. Sony plans to have its first OLED TVs on sale in Japan this year. Last week in Tokyo Sony unveiled its latest OLED TV prototypes, which appeared to be close to commercialization. The sets had an integrated digital TV tuner and could also accept a high-definition input via an HDMI (high definition multimedia interface) connector. Â
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The Consumer Electronics Show is on in full force in Las Vegas. Here are just some of Tuesday's highlights from the giant gadget show.
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New hard-drive based devices feature color screens, support for WMP 10.
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An electronic device that uses spinach to convert light into electrical charge has been developed by US researchers. Shuguang Zhang at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US, and research collaborators
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Heliodisplay projects a convincing mid-air display.
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The company continues to bet heavily on the future of the technology with a $688 million deal for Color Kinetics.
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The LED maker fulfills its promise.
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The humble LED goes from strength to strength
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Sharp designs and colors fight the impression made by older devices.
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Palette breakthrough Swiss researchers are developing a colourful new technology that allows televisions to display every hue the human eye can detect.â¦
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The Consumer Electronics Show is on in full force in Las Vegas. Here are just some of Wednesday's highlights from the giant gadget show.
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Pacific Bioscienceâs sequencer lets the DNA chain grow continuously and records a movie of flashing lights.
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LG.Philips LCD, the world&#39;s second-largest liquid crystal display (LCD) maker, said Tuesday that it has developed the world&#39;s biggest active-matrix (AM) organic light emitting diode (OLED) display
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New 2300MP digital model offers high brightness and resolution, at a low price.
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South Korea's LG.Philips LCD will show a high-resolution 14.3-inch color electronic paper display at CES.
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The MP3 players get a splash of color -- and better earbuds. In Listening Post.