This blog contains posts from Chris Chinnock, the founder and President of Insight Media. These posts reflect his opinions, commentary and non-proprietary information gleaned from work with clients and general industry interaction.
- Samsung Display Will Highlight QD-OLED Improvements at CES 2023
We met with Samsung Display a the SMPTE conference in Hollywood where they were showcasing their current QD-OLED TV vs. a white OLED TV. The QD-OLED TV was the Sony A95K model while the white OLED TV was the G2 from LGE. While specifics of QD-OLED performance improvements will have to wait until the CES time frame, representatives did reveal that there will be a new and improved OLED stack that will increase brightness and contrast even higher. In the demo, they also had a colorimeter and so I asked if they could measure some color patches on both sets to see ...Read more - Camera-to-Cloud Solves Some, but Not All Production Needs
Adobe’s Frame.io subsidiary recently announced new capabilities for the Camera-to-Cloud (C2C) service. New is the ability to support C2C without the need for the external Teradek CUBE 655 encoder/recorder/media gateway. This functionality is now built into the RED V-Raptor and V-Raptor XL cameras to upload REDCODE RAW files directly to the cloud – even up to 8K! In addition, the 8K-capable FUJIFILM X-H2S becomes the world’s first digital still camera to natively integrate with Frame.io C2C. While the new C2C capabilities can support the upload of 8K original camera files (OCF), the wired or wireless bandwidth to do this will be challenging for most applications today. The C2C solution featuring ...Read more - John Fan Focuses His Role at Kopin
On September 7, 2022, Kopin announced a new CEO for the company – Michael Murray. As John Fan has led the company since its inception in 1985, we wanted to know more about his plans, so he kindly provided answers to the questions below. I understand you have appointed a new CEO to take over the day-to-day operations of Kopin. Why now? Are you retiring, semi-retiring, or making a transition to a new role? We have many opportunities at the moment, particularly around the Metaverse, that require a focused attention. These opportunities, along with a number of defense programs that are ...Read more - 8K is the Perfect Platform for Next UI Innovations
MediaTek sees the TV evolving to become an even more important part of connecting people to new media and evolving online services and experiences. The User Interface (UI) of the future will feature multiple applications running simultaneously, and for that to be an intuitive experience, bigger screens with 8K resolution offer the perfect platform. According to Alfred Chan, Vice President of MediaTek’s TV division in the Smart Home Business Group, TV makers continue to expand the audio and visual performance of their products, but they now see services and applications becoming more important going forward. For example, live content can be ...Read more - TrueCut Motion Gets Big Endorsement from James Cameron
Pixelworks issued a press release the other day announcing that James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment will be using TrueCut Motion technology to remaster multiple movies. The initial movies are remasters of Avatar and Titanic which will be released theatrically in 4K/HDR in September and next February respectively. Avatar: The Way of Water is planned for a December release, but the use of TrueCut on this film was not announced (although it would seem likely it will be used). TrueCut Motion is a technology that Pixelworks has been working on for many years. The problem it attempts to solve is judder, strobing and motion ...Read more - Is the VR Industry Settling on a Next Gen Architecture?
Based on recent news reports, it sure seems like the VR industry is moving away from Fresnel lenses to Pancake® optics and switching from glass-based OLEDs or LCDs to microdisplays based on OLED-on-silicon. And major display makers seem to be getting the message too. LG Display used DisplayWeek to showcase their new OLED-on-silicon microdisplay and a report in The Elec says that Apple has asked Samsung Display to develop similar OLED microdisplays. If all this sounds a bit familiar, it should. Kopin has been developing OLED microdisplays on Si and all-plastic Pancake optics for a while – and evangelizing on the ...Read more - What’s the Best Display Architecture for VR?
A new blog on the wearables-era.com web site features an interview with Kopin CEO John Fan. It provides a very nice summary of the thinking of Fan and Kopin and their approach to developing the VR market. The full-length interview is reprinted below with their permission. I want to highlight a couple of key elements in their discussion, however. First, Fan believes that microOLED displays will be the dominant display technology for these headsets for some time as it will take years for microLED technology to become cost competitive, and for VR, the brightness of MicroOLED displays would be fine. Secondly, he ...Read more - Kopin and Partners Showcase Metaverse Now and Future
By Chris Chinnock Kopin used a penthouse suite at CES 2022 to showcase its display and optics technology along with multiple customer implementations of AR and VR designs. They also live streamed a fireside chat with CEO Dr. John Fan along with key partners – all discussing products and prospects for metaverse products and applications. In-person attendance was about 60 people – quite good considering the Covid restrictions, with another 200 on-line. The live stream can be accessed here with the discussion starting at the 10:00 minute mark of the video. In the Fireside Chat, Dr. Fan first talked about the 30-year ...Read more - Dimenco-Acer in Big Deal for 3D DisplaysBy Chris Chinnock, Insight Media 3D display maker Dimenco has announced that Acer will launch new laptops with its Simulated Reality (SR) technology built-in. This is an eye-tracked stereoscopic display which uses an actively-switched lenticular lens technology. While not a new approach, the solution represents a level of maturity not seen before. And perhaps more importantly, a great deal of content is now readily available for easy presentation. With the Metaverse all the craze right now, the timing of the product launch could not be better. The new laptop is the latest in their Concept D line and called the ConceptD 7 ...Read more
- HMDmd and Kopin: A Powerful Partnership for State-of-the-Art Surgical Visualization
According to a recent press release, start-up HMDmd is announcing the availability of their Development and Evaluation Kits (DEK21) – a pre-clinical prototype wearable display designed specifically for use in surgical and interventional medicine applications. Dubbed a “combined reality” headset, the unit presents high-resolution 3D video view of the real-time surgical anatomy plus relevant case information while also providing a look-down and peripheral vision capability critical for situational awareness. While wearable medical devices have been commercialized before, none have gained widespread or consistent adoption. Often this is because they have been products designed primarily for consumer use. But the underlying technology ...Read more - Kopin Pushes State-of-the-Art with New Military Display Solution
Chris Chinnock, Insight Media In the Nov. 18, 2021 press release from Kopin, they announced a production order for displays for the U.S. Army’s Common Helmet Mounted Display (CHMD) System. There are two important takeaways from this news. One is the performance of the display, which is a new milestone, and two, that the display has transitioned from development to mass production. U.S. Army’s Common Helmet Mounted Display (CHMD) System (credit Elbit Systems America) Let’s start with display performance. It is common knowledge that all pilot helmet-mounted display (HMD) solutions are monochrome. The reason is that monochrome displays can deliver super high brightness ...Read more - VividQ and iView Partnership to Realize Real Holographic HUD and More
Holographic software provider VividQ and optical modules manufacturer iView have expanded their relationship into a new partnership that will go beyond their current efforts in automotive Head-up Displays (HUDs) (see full press release here). The new partnership will look to expand the use of this innovation engine, coupled with new waveguide technology, into AR applications in commercial, gaming and medical applications. According to VividQ CEO Darran Milne, the company has been working with iView since 2018 on both automotive HUD designs as well as wearable AR designs. The HUD application is the most mature as the two are working with a ...Read more - Jade Bird WaveOptics Partnership to Enable microLED SmartglassesJade Bird Display, a key developer of microLED microdisplays, has partnered with WaveOptics, a major supplier of waveguide optics to create a new reference design for AR smartglasses. Dubbed Leopard, the development kit includes the microLED display, optics, waveguide, electronics, battery and eye frame design to allow ODM or OEM customers to quickly get to market. Last May, the 125-person team at WaveOptics was acquired by Snap, the owners of Snapchat, for over $500 million. Snap has been working with the company for several years. While Snap has its eyes set on AR smartglasses, it will allow WaveOptics to continue to ...Read more
- 8K Camera Enables New Multi-Purpose Movie WorkflowThe use of 8K camera for film or movie capture is not new, but their use to create the three-screen content for a ScreenX or 4DX theater is new. According to CJ 4DPlex, the developers of these theatrical formats, the new film GUIMOON: The Lightness Door is the first one developed from the beginning with these venues in mind – and the first to be shot with a single 8K camera. A ScreenX screen is a theatrical venue that features a standard main screen but adds side screens that can expand the visual impact of the film. A 4DX theater expands ...Read more
- Kopin’s Ambitious microLED Project
Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Kopin has announced a new agreement to develop a 2Kx2K full color microLED display in a 1-inch form factor with a 100K nits target. That’s the kind of performance level that many have been saying microLED technology has the potential to achieve, but now there is a clear and public development effort underway to achieve this goal. It will still take some time to achieve this goal, but the partners clearly believe it is achievable. Kopin did not reveal the development partner other than to say they were a “leading Japanese consumer electronics company,” nor did they reveal ...Read more - Commentary on Kopin’s 35K Nit micro-OLED
Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Kopin has issued a press release announcing the development of a micro-OLED display with 35,000 nits of green luminance, which I think is world record for a micro-OLED display, but please let me know if I am wrong. While monochrome green is not the solution for all AR applications, it is certainly fine for many applications in defense and industrial markets. Not only is the luminance level a milestone, but I believe the ability to drive the display with 14-bit gray scale is also an industry first. This is now clearly in High Dynamic Range (HDR) territory, but ...Read more - Commentary on All-Plastic Pancake Optics from Kopin
Chris Chinnock, Insight Media For context, please read this press release The development of an all-plastic pancake optical solution for a VR headset is a pretty big deal not only for the weight reduction, but as Kopin claims, it actually offers improvements in image quality while lowering costs. Optical systems with large magnification tend to have large image distortions. In order to suppress the distortion, multiple lenses need to be combined, resulting in a thicker VR optical system. The pancake optical system uses the aspherical concave mirror that generates less aberration, thus reducing the number of lenses required for a VR headset and ...Read more - Commentary on Wooptix and poLight SDK Release
Chris Chinnock, Insight Media For context, please see this press release As some of you know, light field capture is usually done with an array of cameras or a plenoptic camera (single lens camera fitted with a microlens array capture multiple sub-images). Wooptix has developed an algorithm that can use a series of depth based RGB images to reconstruct the light field data (a new, third capture technique). The liquid tunable lens solution used in their prototype cameras worked well enough, but the speed of capture is a bit limited due to having to move a liquid. The new solid-state tunable lens ...Read more - DisplayWeek 8K Symposium Short TakesThe Society of Information Displays (SID) recently had a virtual version of its main annual symposium and trade expo called DisplayWeek. This conference covers a wide range of display topics with some going deep into the display technology weeds. Below we summarize some of the highlights related to 8K displays from the symposium part of the event. Those interested in more details need to register to access the papers. 13.4 – Adaptive Threshold Method for Dither Noise Reduction in Response Time Acceleration for 8K LCD TV – While HDR 8K content almost always uses 10-bit color, some 8K panels use 8-bit drivers and ...Read more
- TCL CSOT Shows New 8K Panels and TechnologyTCL CSOT, the world’s second-largest display panel maker, used the 2021 World UHD video industrial conference to unveil a number of new display solutions including two 8K panels and new backplane technology. The event was held May 8-10th in Guangzhou, China with the theme: “Ultra HD world, more colors in life”. The first innovation has to do with a display’s backplane technology – i.e. the transistors, capacitors and leads fabricated on glass to modulate the light transmitted through each LCD pixel. Transistors can be fabricated with semiconductor materials such as amorphous silicon (a-Si), low-temperature polysilicon (LTPS), or more recently, Indium Gallium ...Read more
- LaSAR Alliance Formed to Advance Laser ScanningA new industry organization has been formed called the LaSAR Alliance with the aim of bringing together a community around laser scanning technology and applications in the AR market. According the press release describing their formation, LaSAR’s goal is to provide an environment to facilitate a marketplace for ideas where members can exchange and share information, collaborate, and partner to create, build, and grow effective and compelling LBS (Laser-Beam Scanning)-based solutions, share best practices, and help drive the growth of the market for Augmented Reality wearables. Bharath Rajagopalan, Chair of the LaSAR Alliance, told us that it has taken 2 years ...Read more
- Better Distribution Methods Needed to Support Large ProAV CanvasesLED-based video walls are getting bigger and bigger and pixel pitches continue to shrink. That means these large canvases can have a lot more pixels. 30M, 50M even 100M pixels are not uncommon. The problem becomes delivering high quality pixels to these canvases over the existing distribution methods. To understand more about these issues, we spoke with Chris Fulton, CEO of Future Software, a UK-based independent software developer and integrator that has been on the cutting edge of ProAV and Broadcast installations for more than 30 years. “Large LED-based usage is coming in exhibition or special events where there is a transient ...Read more
- A Conversation with Kopin’s John Fan, Early Innovator in microLEDsJohn Fan, Founder & CEO, Kopin Corporation Chris Chinnock, President, Insight Media Chris: I recently learned that you were one of the inventors of the monolithic microLED process with patents dating back to the early 1990s. The approach that most of the companies currently working on microLED microdisplays are bonding an LED wafer to a silicon wafer using a process that is similar to the one Kopin patented almost 30 years ago. Can you tell us a little more about the reason why you developed the technology and what you were trying to solve at the time? John: In the early 1990’s, we were working ...Read more
- Is it Time to Standardize Metadata in the Broadcast Environment?The addition of metadata in the capturing, production and distribution of file-based content has been a thing for years that has aided in reducing errors and production time while maintaining creative intent to the end user. But broadcasts and producers of live content have not used, and in fact, have resisted the introduction of metadata into their production workflows. However, as HDR production moves into more mainstream broadcast applications, there is increasing need to have a metadata solution to provide consistent HDR and SDR feeds to consumers. Sony has taken a leading role in developing a metadata solution that they have ...Read more
- UHD Tracker Service Reveals Interesting TrendsThe Ultra HD Forum has spent several years developing a UHD tracking service that they recently discussed in a wide-ranging webinar and panel discussion produced by the DVB (Digital Video Broadcast) organization. The database tracks over 150 commercial UHD service offerings with 21 fields of data, although not all are visible to the public on their web site. There are many interesting ways to slice the data but one of my first revelations was that perhaps half of these UHD service still broadcast in standard dynamic range and a BT.709 color gamut – so not an HDR experience, just one ...Read more
- Changhong is All In on 8KChinese TV maker Changhong had a special launch event last month in China where it disclosed its plans to launch 5 series of 8K TVs. These models will launch first in China, but Changhong is a huge TV exporter so expect these to be rolled out worldwide soon thereafter as well. In January 2020, Changhong said it had completed a new “5G+industrial Internet” production line in Mianyang, China for these next generation products. Details on the TV products and production plans remain thin, however. The graphic below summarizes the model series, sizes and prices in yuan. We believe all models, except the ...Read more
- Volumetric Capture, Monitor and 8K Camera Updates from CanonCanon held a virtual press conference to disclose what they would have shown at NAB had it gone forward as usual. While much of the event focused on professional camera updates, I will focus on three items more of interest to Display Daily readers, as the headline suggests. In professional monitors, no new products were announced but there were improvements disclosed. For example, the 24” DP-V2411 and the 17” DP-V1710 and 1711 all improved their black level performance from 0.005 nits to a very impressive 0.001 nits. The VP 2411 improved its peak luminance from 600 to 1000 nits while the ...Read more
- Dolby Vision IQ ExplainedDolby Vision IQ is an update that is designed to adjust the picture based on the ambient room light levels, while trying to maintain the creative intent of the content creator. Ambient illumination has the effect of reducing the dynamic range of the display making it difficult to discern dark details. LG and Panasonic TVs are the first to implement Dolby Vision IQ. Solutions to this problem have been developed using the TV’s light sensor to first measure the level of ambient light and then boost the backlight to increase overall display brightness. This works to some degree with the result ...Read more
- These are the next generation TV technologies you’ll be able to buy very soon (part 1)The drive for 8K continues unabated, but these new technologies offer a lot more advantages than just resolution, and you’ll be able to purchase televisions that use some of them later this year. 8K was clearly a high-profile TV trend at CES 2020 but fuelling TV advancements are several underlying display technologies that will continue to drive innovation and, hopefully, sales in the future. I am talking about new direct-view displays powered by microLEDs, LCDs powered by miniLED backlights and an alternative LCD architecture called dual-cell. All these are being used to make 4K and 8K TVs. In this part, I ...Read more
- AR and AR HMDs continue to improve, despite apparent indifference from the mass marketAR and VR were pretty big this year at CES. Here’s our look at two of the most promising new headsets that were on show, and what they mean for the immediate future of the technology. Needless to say, there were dozens of companies at CES showing off AR/VR headsets or related technology. I certainly did not see or try them all, so I will highlight a VR and AR headset I did check out. One of the most talked about was the new VR headset debuted by Panasonic, and fortunately, I was able to get an invitation to give it a ...Read more
- Samsung Reveals Much at First Look Event Prior to CES 2020Samsung ran their First Look event at Ceasar’s just prior to the opening of CES and offer a cornucopia of technology news – some to be expected and some surprises too. Here is a quick summary of first impressions from the First Look event. Jong-hee Han, President of Visual Displays at Samsung Electronics opened the event by proclaiming the 2020 theme for Samsung – Screens Everywhere. Samsung will do this focusing on four key themes. First is microLEDs where their modular capability means there are no boundaries in terms of resolution, aspect ratio and size. Secondly, Samsung will think about how ...Read more
- A New Kind of Light Field Camera from WooptixMany, including myself, think light field acquisition, processing and display is the future of natural 3D visualizations. One method for light field image acquisition is to place a microlens array in front of an image sensor. This is the approach used by Lytro in their consumer and cinema-grade cameras. The trade off for acquiring all of these different viewports from the microlens array is a big reduction in image resolution. Now, a new company, Wooptix, has a different way of light field acquisition that alleviates the loss in resolution trade-off. They will be at CES 2020 if you want to ...Read more
- Yes, You Really Can See 8K in Your FutureWE MIGHT BE IN THE MIDDLE OF THE 4K ERA, BUT THE 8K era has already begun. How can that be? For starters, consider what Sonia Chen, Samsung’s director of display marketing, said in June at the 8K Display Summit in New York City. Addressing representatives from the content, broadcast technology, and consumer electronics industries who came together to discuss the current and future prospects of the 8K format, Chen noted that there is a consistent history of transitions to higher resolution. Citing Information Handling Services (IHS) Markit data, she said it takes seven years to go from market introduction to ...Read more
- HFR is Not a Dirty Word – At Least it Shouldn’t beHigh Frame Rate or HFR, especially in a cinema setting, evokes some pretty strong emotions in people from love to hate. This debate was stirred up again recently with the release of Gemini Man, a new Ang Lee film. The movie was shot in 4K 3D HDR at 120 frames per second as was his last movie, Billy Lynn’s Long Half Time Walk. I had a chance to see the Dolby Cinema 2K 3D 120 fps version in London the other week– something that is nearly impossible to do in the US (only 14 theaters showed it in this format in ...Read more
- IDEA Releases Light Field Distribution Documents and Demonstrates FunctionalityThe Immersive Digital Experiences Alliance (IDEA) used the 2019 Light Field and Holographic Display Summit to release three new documents that describe how advanced media formats, including full light field data, can be packaged for delivery over commercial networks. The group also proved the format works by showing the same content presented on several type of advanced displays. Called the Immersive Technology Media Format (ITMF), the royalty-free specification is a display-agnostic interchange format for conveying high-quality and complex image scenes to a wide variety of immersive displays. In an impressive piece of collaborative work, IDEA released the first set of ITMF ...Read more
- Forget 32K, are you ready for light field displays?It will eventually be one of the most transformative display technologies since the invention of the television. The race is currently on to produce the world’s first practical high resolution Light Field display. Adrian, please forgive me for hijacking the title of your recent article: “Forget 8K, are you ready for 32K?”, but there is more to the advancements coming in display technology than you had time to delve into in any depth. I am referring to the light field display which offers the promise to create natural 3D viewing without eyewear or any of the drawbacks of stereoscopic or auto-stereoscopic ...Read more
- 8K Live Encoding at IBC 2019IBC 2019 saw several innovations in 8K delivery including new options for 8K live encoding and 8K streaming (including 8K/50p down-sampled to 4K and delivered at data rates as low as 14.5 Mbps with impressive image quality – we were told). Currently, NHK is broadcasting 8K content for 12 hours per day using a satellite delivery system which requires HEVC encoding at 100 Mbps for an 8K/60p, 10-bit, 4:2:0 signal. To reduce this data rate, NHK is looking to Versatile Video Encoding (VVC), the successor to HEVC, to lower the bit rate to the 30-35 Mbps range in the 2022 timeframe. ...Read more
- Innovative TV Designs from IFA 2019There were a number of key trends in evidence at IFA this year. Some that I saw included: miniLED backlights Dual-Cell TVs 8K TVs New Picture Modes Transparent Displays Laser TVs Innovative Designs In this Display Daily, I’ll take a look at the last trend mentioned – innovative TV designs. First, it seems clear that picture quality is already at a very high level with 4K HDR and only getting better with 8K sets coming. But the TV market is a crowded, competitive space with new and aggressive Chinese brands making good headway. And, with overall TV sales basically flat, TV brands need ways to drive sales and market share ...Read more
- MiniLED and MicroLEDs at Touch TaiwanAt least three companies will be at Touch Taiwan to showcase new miniLED and microLED devices: AUO, Innolux and Lextar. Here’s a summary of what each expects to show. Most of the miniLED activity is focused on backlights for improved performance or direct-view applications, while the microLED efforts are direct-view displays. AUO says they will unveil a series if displays with miniLED backlight technology. This includes: 65” 4K model with 1000 local dimming zones and 2500 nits of brightness and 144 Hz refresh rate 32” 4K model with 1000 local dimming zones and 1500 nits of brightness and 144 Hz refresh rate 17.3” 4K ...Read more
- The New Honor TV and Other Chinese MusingsI have just returned from a trip to China and then I saw a recent announcement about a new TV from Honor. Honor is a Huawei company and a major supplier of smartphones. The Honor Vision is the first TV the company has offered and leverages many smartphone features to create a smartTV. Let’s start with the TV’s features then step back and look at this development from a more geopolitical perspective. The Honor Vision TV will be offered in two versions: Vanilla and Pro. Both will feature 55” IPS panels with 4K resolution, 400 cd/m² of peak luminance and 87% NTSC color ...Read more
- Digital Humans are Closer Than You ThinkWell, they are closer than I thought anyway. In talking to possible presenters for the upcoming Light Field and Holographic Display Summit, I was speaking with Digital Domain’s John Canning, who pointed me to a TED Talk (Digital Humans that Look Just Like Us). You might want to view the full talk (12.35 minutes) which shows a real human (Doug Roble) driving a digital version of himself (DigiDoug) with a high level of fidelity. Such fidelity has been routinely achieved by special effects houses like Digital Domain for movies, but the real revelation for me was that this can now be done ...Read more
- Hayden Planetarium and Christie Lead the Way to HDR Domed SolutionsThe New York-based American Museum of Natural History, where the famous Hayden Planetarium is housed, held a press event on July 17 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing, along with the 150th anniversary of the founding of the museum. If you have never been there, you need to if in New York. It is one of the best museums and planetariums on the planet. During the event we learned about the moon rocks and meteorites on exhibit and then traveled to the Hayden Planetarium for a special presentation on the moon landing. The presentation pulled together 3D photogrammetry ...Read more
- Envisics Shows Impressive Augmented Reality Auto HUDAfter working for a year in stealth mode, holography pioneer and auto head-up display (HUD) developer Envisics showed off their advanced solution at CES 2019. I missed that demo, but the company invited me to their Detroit office to discuss the technology. What I saw was clearly the best auto HUD I have seen to date. Envisics was created as a spin out from AR headset developer Daqri in January 2018. This team, headed by Jamison Christmas, was formed to continue development on a Generation 2 HUD that they had stopped work on when their previous company, Two Tree Photonics, was ...Read more
- A Different Way of Looking at LED DevelopmentsWhen considering the trends in LEDs, we often divide our discussion in to categories like microLED, miniLED and Narrow Pixel Pitch (NPP) LED. Let me throw out the idea of discussing trends based upon the final display backplane technology. The four categories I suggest are silicon, transparent, PCB (printed circuit board) and flexible. Below are some initial thoughts on such a categorization that I welcome comments on. NPP LED displays are traditional digital signage solutions that place LEDs on PCB substrates. These are typically passively driven using a multiplexed drive scheme. LED size and pitch vary, but NPP LED displays are ...Read more
- 8K – It’s Not Just About More PixelsIn preparing for the 8K Display Summit on June 11, one of the presenters, Mark Henninger, the editor of AVS Forum, gave me an abstract that makes a really good point. While many fixate on the 8K movement as simply more pixels, like the 4K transition, it will turn out to be much more than just a pixel count upgrade. The 4K transition started as simply a pixel increase, but it soon added HDR and wide color gamut to the mix to create a step change in displayed images. He contends the same thing will happen with the 8K transition. Initial ...Read more
- The Nanosys View on the State of Electroluminescent Quantum Dot TechnologyBy Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Quantum Dots are amazing particles. They can emit light when pumped with higher energy light (photoluminescent). They can emit electrons when pumped with light (photoelectric) and they can emit light when pumped with electrons (electroluminescent). I want to talk about this latter use, ELQDs, in this article. Many Universities and display companies are working on ELQDs as a next generation emissive display technology. They hold great potential for bright, high contrast, wide color gamut displays. But to be successful, they will need to reach mass production with cost and performance levels that can rival competing technologies. And the competition seems to keep growing ...Read more
- 8K TVs Top TV Line-ups for a ReasonBy Chris Chinnock, Insight Media The latest and greatest thing in TVs are new models with 8K resolution. That’s 7680×4320 pixels or four times as many pixels as a 4K TV and 16 times as many as a 1080p TV. Do these new 8K TVs offer a differentiated experience? Can you see the difference? Is there 8K content and does it matter? Is it worth the higher price? These are all valid questions to ask if you are in the market for a new TV. In this article, I’ll talk about some of the common misconceptions around 8K, discuss what is ...Read more
- Are Haptics the Next Big Thing for Mobile Devices?By Chris Chinnock, Insight Media We have seen a lot of new technology adopted in smartphones and mobile devices over the last five years or so. But I now think the industry is ready to adopt a technology that has not met industry needs to date: haptics. What is bolstering this optimism are the maturity of piezoelectric actuators and specialized drivers that can now meet the low-power requirement along with a customizable haptic interface. Leading the charge are TDK Electronics, a subsidiary of Japan-based TDK Corp. and Canada-based Boréas Technologies, Inc. At SID Display Week 2019, the two announced a new cooperation agreement to ...Read more
- How Game of Thrones Broke Streaming and Why We Need to Fix ItIn case you have been under a rock lately, the most popular streaming TV show of all time, Game of Thrones, created a chorus of complaints about how dim “The Long Night” episode was. This episode was shot at night and was intentionally graded to be dark. However, an unfortunate series of decisions resulted in scenes that were so dark in people’s home that you literally could not see anything. Needless to say, this sent up a hue and a cry around the land. I can be pretty certain that no TV fared well for the debut of this episode as ...Read more
- IDEA Group Formed for Advanced Display Distribution StandardsA press conference at the 2019 NAB Show was used to launch the Immersive Digital Experiences Alliance (IDEA). Its mission is to create a suite of royalty-free specifications that address all immersive media formats, including emerging light field technology. Founding members, including CableLabs, Charter Communications, Light Field Lab Inc, Otoy, and Visby, created IDEA to serve as an alliance of like-minded technology, infrastructure, and creative innovators working to facilitate the development of an end-to-end ecosystem for the capture, distribution, and display of immersive media. So why is another standards-focused organization needed, you ask? Although this is not the official response from ...Read more
- CY Vision Developing Next Gen HUD TechnologyCY Vision (San Jose, CA) is a company that has been quietly developing advanced Head-up Display (HUD) technology but is now ready to start talking about what they have been doing. In a call with co-founder and Koç University (Istanbul) Professor, Hakan Urey, I learned a lot more about their approach. In essence, it is a next-generation augmented reality HUD that provides full-color binocular images with variable focal points. That’s a mouthful so let’s dig a little deeper. Let’s start with basic architectures for HUDs. Almost all HUDs today are image based. That means they create an image on a direct-view ...Read more
- A Visit to Plessey SemiconductorWho is Plessey Semiconductor, you may ask? This does not sound like a display company, but it is. Based in Plymouth, UK, Plessey Semiconductor is developing wafer-scale microLEDs ideally suited for AR, VR and HUD applications, but with the right mass-transfer technique, may also be suitable for larger, direct-view displays as well. On a recent visit to their facility I received a full tour of their factory. It is impressive. And one of the best things they have going it that nearly all the processing is done in-house allowing for more control and faster development times. So what is Plessey’s approach? ...Read more
- A Tour of the Vuzix Waveguide FactoryBy Chris Chinnock I recently had the opportunity to meet with Vuzix CEO Paul Travers and get a tour of their waveguide manufacturing and AR headset assembly facility in Rochester, New York. These waveguides are the key optical element in their new Blade AR headsets. I am aware of only a few companies that have the ability to make these waveguides, so having this technology in-house is a huge advantage for the integration of the AR headset Traver’s history with near-to-eye, VR and AR headsets goes back about 30 years and the 5 companies he has founded along the way. Vuzix is ...Read more
- Glasses-free Displays at CESby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media We met with four companies at CES: Vision Engineering, Creal 3D, Dimenco and StreamTV. StreamTV had a very good location right in central hall next to the LG Electronics booth. They were highlighting their latest large format glass-free 3D displays along with some smaller notebook and phone-sized versions. StreamTV has been developing its technology for eight years and always seems to be getting ready for volume manufacture. We were told the same story again this year. They realize that they can’t reach their goal so have recently done some changes in the company. The Eindhoven team called SeeCubic, was ...Read more
- MicroTiles LED Offers Nice Innovations that Could be Disruptiveby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Christie has just introduced a new LED-based MicroTile solution that will replace the DLP-based version it introduced in 2010 time frame. Just as the DLP-based version offered a new form factor and design options with leading edge technology, so too does the new LED-based version. To dig a little deeper into this new product category, we spoke with Dave Veroba, Manager, Marketing Programs – Enterprise at Christie Digital. What was innovative about the DLP-based MicroTiles was their small square form factor. It was basically a scaled down cube design, but the small size and form factor opened up ...Read more
- VR I Didn’t See at CESby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media At CES 2019, I had a chance to see some of the AR innovations, but there was not enough time to check out VR as well. And I missed a ton of stuff. According to a DigiTimes report, a total of 393 AR/VR firms attended CES 2019, among which 261 exhibited at the LVCC (mostly South Hall) and 132 exhibited at Eureka Park at the Sands Convention Center. Below, I’ll summarize some of the VR developments that others reported on since I didn’t get a chance to see them. In VR headsets, I actually got to try the ...Read more
- 8K: Here We Go Againby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Apologies for tooting my own horn a little, but I am taking on a new role as Executive Director of the newly-formed 8K Association – in addition to my normal activities of tech writing, event organization and industry consulting. The founding members of the 8K Association (8KA) are AUO, Hisense, Panasonic, Samsung and TCL – panel and TV makers, but we hope to expand to include more brands and component suppliers over the next year. The initial mission of 8KA is: Promote 8K TVs/Content Help educate consumers and professionals in the 8K ecosystem Help secure 8K native content for members Encourage service providers (especially ...Read more
- INT is a New Player for High-Density Displaysby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media I recently had a chance to speak with executives from a new company, Taiwan-based INT Tech, which is short for Innovation and Transformation. They are a technology development house that has created AMOLED displays on glass with an industry-leading 2228 pixels per inch (ppi). That’s in the range of AMOLED on silicon substrates and 4-5X higher density than conventional AMOLED displays for smartphones fabricated on glass substrates (Samsung S8 display is around 572 ppi). Called Ultra-High Pixel Density (UHPD) technology by the company, founder and Chairman David Chu explained that they use a low temperature poly-silicon backplane technology ...Read more
- Microsoft Scores with $480M Hololens Army Contractby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Microsoft announced they have received a $480M contract from the U.S. Army to develop special versions of their Hololens device dubbed the Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS). The contract calls for the delivery of 2550 units in the next two years, but options could enable the Army to purchase up to 100K units, although this could take many years. Nevertheless, this may be the biggest win to date for Microsoft and their Hololens device. Microsoft has done an excellent job of showing many use cases for Hololens in a wide variety of industries. This has clearly established ...Read more
- Is Better Supply Chain Coordination the Key to AR/VR Adoption?by Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Adoption of VR has been a rocky road. Early estimates of headset sales fell by the wayside, although they are respectable in the low millions range. The same can be said of the AR market where early consumer enthusiasm is giving way a belief that enterprise applications will lead the way in the short term. But AR headset sales are much less than in the VR market. Nearly everyone in the AR/VR space wants to sales of hardware and software soar as valuable use cases emerge where people want to use the headset for entertainment or to ...Read more
- Edgehog Offering Robust Anti-Reflection Technology using Nanostructuresby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Edgehog is a Montreal-based start-up that has developed a better mousetrap – i.e. a better anti-reflection technology that is robust and offers low reflectance over wide viewing angles and over the full visible spectrum. Their claims intrigued us, so we had a nice conversation with co-founder Calvin Cheng and Business Development Manager, Kris Manipon. As most readers know, anti-reflection on displays is typically accomplished with thin film coatings designed to create destructive interference. But to cover the full visible spectrum required lots of coating layers, with over 100 layers not uncommon for high-performance films, leading to high ...Read more
- New Standards Emerging to Reduce Complexity of Streaming Contentby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has been actively developing a new streaming standard called CMAF (Common Media Application Format). With 60 participants and 3 years of effort, the group is nearly done with final specifications expected in early 2019. What it promises to do is to streamline how content is encoded and delivered and improve the end-user experience by helping ensure this content plays correctly on more devices. This effort addressed major issues in the streaming media ecosystem: complexity, compatibility and cost. For example, content distributors have to create client player apps supporting multiple versions of the ...Read more
- Enterprise Survey: AR Adoption Coming Faster than you Thinkby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media I had a chance to speak with Geof Wheelwright, the Director of Marketing Communications at Atheer the other day regarding the results of an internal survey they did focusing on the use of Augmented Reality in the Enterprise market. There were a number of interesting results but here is one clear highlight: 70% believe that AR technology will see wide spread adoption in the organization within 3 years. That’s huge and an indicator that awareness of AR is maturing and that trials are proving successful, leading to full deployments. The survey was emailed to a wide audience ...Read more
- Lumenari Developing Wide Color Gamut Phosphor Materialsby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media One of the most popular ways to achieve a wide color gamut LCD display is with narrow-band red and green phosphors deposited directly on top of blue LEDs to create the LED backlight unit. Now, a new company, Lumenari, has developed a new and narrower green phosphor that can expand the LCD display’s color gamut 10-20% over the current phosphor-converted LED-backlit LCD displays. We recently spoke with Robert Nordsell, Co-founder and CEO of the company. He explained that their green phosphor material, called Emerald, is actually tunable from 505 to 545 nm, but the feedback they have ...Read more
- iBeam Materials Working on GaN-on-Metal Process for LEDsby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media One of the more interesting presentation at the recent Display Summit (proceedings available soon), was a paper from Vladimir Matias at iBeam Materials. His company works closely with Sandia National Labs where they leveraged thin metal foil technology used for superconductors to develop a novel microLED approach called GaN-on-Metal. This could be quite a breakthrough in LED/microLED fabrication as it may transform how LEDs are made and used. The key is an ion-beam processed crystal alignment layer that sits between the metal foil and the epitaxial growth layer of GaN. The process is shown below. The Ion Beam ...Read more
- HDR on Projectors can be Trickyby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media You may have noticed that a lot of home theater and some ProAV projectors are now advertising HDR support. That should mean that they are able to detect and HDR signal and switch into a mode that will properly display the images. That may sound easy, but the devil is in the details. First, there are multiple flavors of HDR: HLG, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. HDR content must contain some sort of flag to identify which type of HDR content it is. Such flags can be embedded in the HEVC stream, carried over HDMI as metadata, ...Read more
- Media Turmoil and the Future of Displaysby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media There has a been a lot of news lately about the rapidly changing media market. This will have an indirect impact on the future of displays, so I thought I would summarize some of the recent news and maybe add some thoughts on what this means for the display industry. I think it is fair to say that the success of Netflix has ushered in a new wave of consolidation, investment and changing of business models in the media industry that has not been seen for decades. What impressed me was a report in a recent Variety article ...Read more
- Cable Industry Gearing up for High Bandwidth Needs of Light Field Displaysby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media CableLabs, the development group funding by the cable industry, held their summer conference last week in Colorado. A number of topics were discussed, but I want to focus on their views of display use in the future. The video below, called The Near Future, Ready for Anything, was produced specifically for the event and provides a compelling vision of interaction with displays. It takes the perspective of a child to give some relevance to the applications they will be using and how displays will be a central part of that experience. The message? Advanced 3D displays ...Read more
- Sony Seeks Kando with New Master Series TVsby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Sony Electronics used a major media event in New York on July 31th to unveil a new line of TVs dubbed the Master Series that will be offered in OLED and LED-LCD models. The TVs are designed to have picture quality that is as close as possible to the Sony X-300 RGB OLED professional monitor that is the mastering standard for most movie and episodic content today. Such audio and image quality is intended to elicit an emotional response, or ‘Kando’, as Sony likes to describe it. True to Sony form, very few specifications and technical details were ...Read more
- DCI Takes First Step to Define HDR Cinemaby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media The Digital Cinema Initiative (DCI) group was formed at the beginning of the film-to-digital transition to help develop the specifications and interchange formats needed for an orderly transition. Now, it has released a statement saying it plans to work on specifications for the next stage in theatrical exhibition: HDR Cinema. The motivation for this activity is the emergence of LED-based theatrical solutions that can deliver a much wider dynamic range than most projection solutions. The memorandum was issued to put a stake in the ground to let manufacturers know that DCI will be working on a host ...Read more
- 8K is Right on Trackby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media 8K is right on track. That was the key conclusion of Michael Cioni, SVP Innovation at Panavision in a talk given at the QLED & Advanced Display Summit in Hollywood last week. He based this on an analysis of previous generations of technology from multiple disciplines. Not only is 8K right on track, its adoption is essentially inevitable and he is now starting to think about 16K and even 32K! Image:Jordan Strauss for the Associated Press Panavision currently sells an 8K camera, the Millenium DXL2 which is based upon the 46mm RED weapon sensor with 16 f-stops of dynamic ...Read more
- Vuzix may be Early with a Real microLED Productby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Vuzix, the maker of Augmented Reality smart glasses, is working with Plessey Semiconductor and Jasper Display to create a new display device to drive their AR smart glasses. The development roadmap calls for monochrome devices this summer and full color by the end of the year. That could mean a new smartglass product would become available in 2019. According to the developers, the microLED light engine would be about half the size of competitive solutions and would be very bright and power efficient – all the right attributes for a next generation AR display. At CES 2019, we had ...Read more
- Nanosys has Broad Presence at SID 2018by Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Speakers from Nanosys gave several presentations, conducted a quantum dot workshop and had a booth on the tradeshow floor. They were clearly the most visible and pro-active quantum dot maker at SID this year. Business Conference Presentation Russell Kempt, VP of WW Sales and Marketing gave a presentation at the Business Conference ( YouTube video of presentation). It was titled: Quantum Dots: The Technology Platform for All Displays. This pretty much summed up the company’s message at SID. The presentation was all about presenting their roadmap for QD materials development to support various applications. Today, that means QD films (QDEF) ...Read more
- Is the Red Hydrogen One Phone the Start of Something Bigger?by Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Cinema camera maker Red is going into the smartphone business with the Hydrogen One phone that features what they call a 4V light field display made by Leia. Red disrupted the cinema camera market when they introduced a high-quality camera at much lower pricing than the market rate, propelling them to success. But can they disrupt the market again? To understand what Red is doing – and I don’t profess to have any inside knowledge – don’t think of the Hydrogen One as a phone; think of it as a new camera platform. In Red’s own words, ...Read more
- A Visit with IMAX’s David Keighleyby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media I am out in LA for DisplayWeek, but came in early for some extra meetings. One of them was to visit with David Keighley, President and Chief Quality Officer at IMAX, and to get a demo of the new RGB laser projection system. To many, Keighley is IMAX. He and his wife Patricia have been with the firm since the early 1970s when there was only one IMAX theater. There are now more than 1000 IMax theaters in over 66 countries (over 500 in China alone). Keighley always carries a booklet of every IMAX theater, which he quickly pulled ...Read more
- Should HDR Displays Follow the PQ Curve?by Chris Chinnock, Insight Media This topic of discussion started as an email thread in the HDR work group of the International Committee of Display Metrology (ICDM) and then sparked a long discussion in the recent face-to-face meeting in Mt. View, California. Per agreement with ICDM, they agreed to allow me to write this article. Many in the group believed that since the Perceptual Quantizer (PQ) curve is a display-referred Electro-Optic Transfer Function (EOTF) the answer is yes – one should follow the PQ curve as well as possible. It turns out the answer is a more nebulous: it depends. For example, if ...Read more
- Samsung Launches First U.S. LED Cinema Screen along with Post Production Facilityby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media I had a chance to visit the first U.S.-based post production facility and commercial theaters in Los Angeles just prior to CinemaCon – both featuring Samsung’s LED technology. These are important milestones for Samsung and the visit highlighted the potential for the technology. It also highlighted the need to develop an HDR cinema solution acceptable to filmmakers, Hollywood studios and production facilities, exhibitors and manufacturers. The post production house is Roundabout with the new 2K LED screen located in its Santa Monica facility (they also have a much larger facility in Burbank). A select group of media representatives ...Read more
- Sony Impresses with 8K CLED Displayby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media In its NAB opening press conference, the media were able to get a full briefing on all of Sony’s new equipment for broadcast and cinema production. Most of the event was focused on cameras and other workflow equipment for broadcast production. But not all of it! While we won’t get into the details suffice it to say that broadcasting is becoming far more agile, flexible and efficient with trends for cloud operations, remote production, and IP solutions. All of Sony’s equipment will get SMPTE ST-2110 support for video over IP very soon, for example. For me the biggest ...Read more
- Google Releases “Welcome to Light Fields” for Certain VR Headsetsby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Google has been investing quite a lot into VR technologies. The latest release is what Senior Research, Paul Debevec at Google VR calls “Welcome to Light Fields”. It is a free app designed to show what light field capture technology can do for VR headsets. The app is available on the Steam VR web site for the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Windows Mixed Reality headsets. I don’t have one of these headsets so can provide a personal perspective on what they are showing, so let me try to describe what it offers. What is a Light Field? First of all, ...Read more
- Can Electronic Viewfinders Match Optical Versions?by Chris Chinnock, Insight Media “Can Electronic Viewfinders Match Optical Versions?” That was the question that a panel of experts attempted to address at a recent SID-SMPTE joint meeting in New York on March 20, 2018. Speakers included David Leitner, an Oscar-nominated producer, director, and Emmy-nominated cinematographer; Jason Druss, a Product Specialist at Blackmagic Design; and Steve Weiss and Jens Bogehegn, product designers from Zacuto, who participated remotely. At the end of the night, one of the speakers wondered if the speakers had addressed the central question of the evening? A simple yes/no answer was not forthcoming, with some believing they are just different ...Read more
- PyeongChang Olympics Showcase Next Generation Broadcasting Options (Part 2) by Chris Chinnock, Insight Media In part 1, I talked about 4K and 8K production but in this part, let’s focus on VR, 5G ATSC 3.0 and more. While VR content was pioneered at the Rio 2016 games, supporters say it is improved in 2018 especially due to the corporate support of Intel, which is working in collaboration with Olympic Broadcasting Services (OBS), NBC Sports and Eurosport. Live and on-demand VR content for 30 events was being delivered to viewers using Oculus Rift, Google Daydream, Windows Mixed Reality and Samsung Gear VR headsets. Intel’s True VR rig contained 12 cameras in a 180º configuration with ...Read more
- PyeongChang Olympics Showcase Next Generation Broadcasting Options (Part 1)by Chris Chinnock, Insight Media The PyeongChang Olympics in Korea provided an incredible platform for demonstrating the potential of next generation broadcast options. This included 8K, HDR, Dolby Atmos, Virtual Reality, ATSC 3.0 and 5G live broadcasting, plus an amazing drone demo. Unfortunately, the recently held SuperBowl was a big disappointment on that front with it not even available in 4K. What’s up with that?In part 1 of this report, I’ll talk about 4K/8K production. In Part 2, I’ll talk about VR and 5G in more depth. The role of the Olympic Broadcasting Service (OBS) is to create audio/video feeds that meet ...Read more
- BitAnimate Shows Value of Stereoscopic 3D in Mapping and Navigation Applicationsby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media I recently had the opportunity to meet with a Portland, Oregon-based company called BitAnimate to discuss what they are doing regarding the creation of 3D content. I would classify what they are doing as solid engineering that combines their extensive expertise and patent portfolio. The first application they wish to engage customers on is a stereoscopic 3D mapping and navigation application for the automotive industry, although many other segments can benefit from what they have developed as well. Bit Animate has been around for some time. We first reported on their 2D-to-3D conversion technology back in 2011 ...Read more
- Micro LEDs Getting Funding, but IP Situation is Messyby Chris Chinnock, Insight Media Several micro LED companies received funding recently, an encouraging sign of the continuing interest in this segment. But in a new report from Yole looking at the patent situation, the authors warn that things will be messy – especially for displays that require a mass transfer approach. Let’s start with the funding news. Samsung has announced a long-term agreement with San’an Optoelectronics, who is apparently one of China’s largest LED suppliers. Samsung has now agreed to pay the company $16.83M to secure “micro LED chips.” The agreement spans three years and it will take some time to ...Read more
- Light Field Displays are ComingIf you haven’t been following activities in Light Field displays, here’s a quick update – there is a lot of activity in this area with products likely to be commercialized in 2018. Investments are flowing and standards organizations are getting serious about finding ways to distribute the vast amounts of data that will be needed for real light field displays. They will offer a glasses-free 3D image with look-around capability that should be superior to what you may have experienced with lenticular or parallax-barrier type glasses-free 3D displays. One big announcement came last week from Light Field Labs, a firm started by ...Read more
- Kopin Debuts New 720p OLED PanelKopin used CES 2018 to introduce a new OLED panel, showcase a new headset for video viewing, and provide some insight into how it sees the AR/VR market shaping up in 2018. In OLED microdisplays, Kopin announced a new 1280×720 resolution OLED-on-Silicon panel in a 0.49″ diagonal form factor. This follows the 2Kx2K OLED-on-Silicon panel that is 1″ in diagonal introduced at CES 2017. The 720p panel uses the same Lightning silicon backplane design as the 2Kx2K display and reaches over 1000 nits of luminance. This is a color filter OLED display, not a direct patterned device. Kopin’s patented Lightning’s architecture has ...Read more
- The Voice Wars: Amazon vs. Google at CES 2018We are in the thick of writing up what we saw and heard at CES 2018, but I wanted to use this Display Daily column to identify some of my highlights and do a little deeper dive in the war shaping up between Google and Amazon over voice control of, well, everything. Topping my highlight list is the “8K Full Spec HDR” display shown as a prototype in the Sony booth. This is reportedly capable of showing pixels at a luminance of up to 10,000 cd/m². Of course Sony has not revealed how many pixels can do that and for how ...Read more
- HDR PC Monitor Market ComingHigh Dynamic Range (HDR) is now becoming well established in the TV market, but it is now as well established in the PC segment. Here, HDR-capable PCs and monitors can be useful for gaming, HDR content editing or production, and streaming of HDR movies and episodic content. Here’s a quick rundown just prior to CES 2018. HDR games are mostly played from game consoles onto HDR TVs. For example, the Microsoft Xbox S and Xbox X models, as well as the Sony PlayStation 4 Pro, all support 4K resolutions and a HDR10 output. Many titles that are available for console gaming ...Read more
- BOE, Olightek and Kopin form JV for OLED-on-Silicon ManufacturingOne of the display technologies that is being used in Virtual Reality (VR) headsets is OLED-on-Silicon. Recently, a new partnership was formed between US-based Kopin and two Chinese partners: BOE and Olightek. The three have agreed to form a Joint Venture (JV) to build new state-of-the-art OLED-on-Silicon manufacturing facility in China to serve anticipated needs for displays in VR and AR headsets. So why have these three joined forces? Kopin’s expertise lies in microdisplay design and manufacture (LCD, LCoS and now OLED) having produced over 30M devices so far. The company is strong in backplane design and has manufacturing experience with ...Read more
- Christie Tries to Separate from the Herd with New Apex 0.9mm LED Video WallChristie has added a new 0.9mm pitch model to their Apex lineup of LED video walls. They are not the first to commercialize 0.9mm cabinets as they wanted to be sure they could deliver top level quality consistent with their Apex brand of LED video walls. The new 0.9mm cabinet/tile has a resolution of 640×360 in a 16:9 aspect ratio and a footprint of 24.2” x 13.6” (27.6” diagonal). It joins others in the Apex series with pixel pitches of 1.2, 1.6, 1.9, and 2.5mm. All of these are positioned as premium product solutions because of the technical specs, quality, features ...Read more
- Highlights from I/ITSEC 2017The Interservice/ Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) is the world’s largest modeling, simulation, and training conference. Held near the beginning of December in Orlando, Florida, USA, I/ITSEC consists of peer-reviewed paper presentations, tutorials, special events, professional workshops, a commercial exhibit hall, a serious games competition, and STEM events for teachers and secondary students. I/ITSEC is organized by the National Training and Simulation Association (NTSA), which promotes international and interdisciplinary cooperation within the fields of modeling and simulation (M&S), training, education, analysis, and related disciplines at this annual meeting. The NTSA is an affiliate subsidiary of the National Defense Industrial Association ...Read more
- News Appetizers for ThanksgivingYes, it is Thanksgiving tomorrow in the U.S. In thinking about a topic to cover for the day before Thanksgiving, I reviewed some recent news for ideas. Rather than expand on one of the topics, I thought I might summarize a few items I found of interest – and make some comments. For example, I saw conflicting reports that Apple would be starting low volume production of microLED watches by the end of the year vs. one that said Apple was down-sizing its Taiwanese microLED operations – maybe to bring some of that activity back to the U.S. I have no idea which ...Read more
- Is Improved Scaling the Key to the 8K Content Void?I have been thinking more about 8K recently. Many will agree that the increase from 4K to 8K pixels will be of marginal benefit for those watching TVs at standard distances on 65” TVs. It will help a bit for larger displays and a lot if you are very close to the display – but that is not a TV watching mode. But I think 8K TVs will come anyway. There are two driving forces. One is the 2020 Olympics in Japan where NHK has been working steadily to produce, distribute and display in 8K. Their efforts have created a full ...Read more
- Highlights from the 2017 SMPTE ConferenceAs has been the case for several years, the SMPTE conference was held above the Dolby Theater in Hollywood California. There was a record turnout this year and because of the growth of the conference and exhibition, it will move to downtown LA next year. There are always a number of very good and very deep technical papers presented at the conference that I often need to study in some depth before writing about what they were about and why they were important (full coverage will be available soon as part of the subscription service). However, let me quickly summarize some ...Read more
- My First Movie on an LED Cinema ScreenI recently had the opportunity to go see a full length movie on the Samsung LED-based CinemaScreen in a commercial theater. This is the first one installed by the company in the Lotte World Tower in Seoul. I had seen a demo of the system at CinemaCon in Las Vegas last April and was very impressed. But how would it hold up watching a full length movie? The simple answer is “Extremely well”. While this is the first LED cinema screen in operation, a second screen just became operational in Busan, Korea and the company just announced that the Siam Paragon Cineplex ...Read more
- Light Field Ecosystem Workshop UpdatesStreaming Media for Field of Light Displays (SMFoLD) workshop Oct. 3 Display Summit Oct. 4-5 Rockwell Collins facility, Sterling Virginia The workshop on Streaming Media for Field of Light Displays (SMFoLD) is set to take place on Oct. 3rd in Sterling, Virginia, followed directly by Display Summit on Oct. 4-5. The workshop and part of Display Summit, is devoted to understanding the needs of non-consumer applications for advanced visualization, the methods for delivering these disparate data sets, and the displays to visualize the data. The agenda is posted below: Company Speaker Abstract Insight Media Chris Chinnock Introduction to SMFoLD Workshop 2017 Avalon Holographics Matthew Hamilton Light Field Displays: From Current Developments to ...Read more
- Advanced Technologies for Projection-based Training and SimulationA myriad of advanced technologies all come together to create a projection-based solution for training, visualization and simulation. At Display Summit, some of these visual technologies will be discussed and explored. For example, increasing resolution is always a key factor in immersiveness and image fidelity. To get there, one can add more projectors or increase the resolution of a fixed number of projectors. The first solution usually adds too much cost, so increasing resolution on the projector is preferred. 4K and even 8K native resolution projectors now exist along with a class of projectors that use image shifting optics. The merits or ...Read more
- HDR/WCG TV Messaging is Going to be a MessI had a feeling that the education and selling of consumers on the idea of HDR/WCG TVs was going to be problematic. After seeing what the major TV brands are saying about their TV products at IFA, it seems inevitable that confusion will reign. It’s going to be ‘alphabet soup’: HDR, PQ, HLG, Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, HDR400, HDR2000, wide color gamut, quantum dots, QLED, DCI-P3, BT.2020, color volume, static metadata, dynamic metadata – not to mention all the brand-specific names TV makers will be tempted to attach to these terms. Professionals in the industry can get confused by these terms ...Read more
- How Will Advanced Display Technology Drive AR/VR Adoption?That is one of the key questions that will be addressed at the Streaming Media for Field of Light Displays (SMFoLD) workshop to be held on Oct. 3 followed by Display Summit on Oct. 4-5. Both will be held in Sterling, Virginia and will feature leading technologists discussing the state and future of immersive displays and the infrastructure needed to deliver these compelling images. At Display Summit, we will be looking at component technology, headset designs and application requirements for AR and VR. Most of the focus will be on non-consumer applications and trying to understand how advancements in consumer-facing products ...Read more
- Focus on Light Field Displays and StreamingLight field displays, volumetric displays and eventually, holographic displays are all in development with the first commercial products coming soon. Such displays require a lot of image points (some call them voxels or volume pixels) and a lot of data. As a result, methods to format, encode and deliver these intense data streams are also in development. Two upcoming events will focus on commercial activities in these areas. At the Display Summit, for example, a company called SeeReal will describe their approach to a holographic display. One of the issues with holographic displays today is their limited field of view, resolution and ...Read more
- Is New Leadership Needed for Next Generation Cinema?In a previous Display Daily, I claimed that the LED Cinema Era has Started. But what are the ramifications of this new technology entering a space that has so far been the exclusive domain of projection technology? The new LED screen technology will offer HDR capabilities and a wide color gamut. But there are no cinema specs to describe what HDR in cinema means – whether from a production/mastering point of view; from a display point of view or a distribution point of view Yes, Dolby Cinema offers a wider dynamic range and higher peak luminance than conventional theatrical content/projection, but this is ...Read more
- 8K Connectivity is ReadyMost industry attention today is on 4K and UHD/WCG, but the 8K ecosystem has been progressing over the year driven largely by NHK in Japan. The plan is to broadcast the 2020 Summer Olympics in 8K/HDR/WCG to special venues and even homes with 8K TVs. While we can certainly debate the value of more pixels in content capture and display, the big consequence is the need for bandwidth and moving all those pixels around. In this column, I want to talk about 8K connectivity in a production studio, professional or home environment. 8K images have 4X UHD and 16x FullHD pixels, but ...Read more
- The LED Cinema Era has StartedLast week, the first commercial DCI-compliant theater screen opened using LED instead of projection technology. The LED screens were supplied by Samsung for the high-end Lotte Cinema World Tower complex in Seoul. A 2K DCI-compliant version of the new Spiderman movie was shown on this 4K resolution screen, but we don’t believe it was mastered differently to take advantage of the high dynamic range offered by this screen –not yet anyway. This is an historic event. Only last March, at CinemaCon, Samsung stunned the cinema community with private showings of their new LED “CinemaScreen” technology in a specially outfitted theater. I ...Read more
- Is it Time to Consider Measuring Displays in their Use Case Environment?Display performance is always measured in a very dark room, which is important if you want to know the limits of their performance. But display-based products are rarely viewed in real applications in a very dark room. Even cinemas and home theaters are rarely as dark as the testing environment. So, should we consider having additional spec sheets that detail performance in one or more ambient light conditions? This would certainly provide a better indication of actual performance for the intended use case, but defining the environment for each application can be tricky. I am just back from helping to organize the QLED ...Read more
- Christie Taking RGB Laser Projection to Mainstream CinemasOne of the more interesting pieces of news coming from CineEurope this week was the European debut of Christie’s CP-4325 digital cinema projector. This is the company’s first standalone RGB laser projector that it plans to offer for mainstream theatrical projection – not just the Premium Large Format (PLF) part of the market where RGB laser projectors have thrived so far. Clearly, getting the cost of an RGB laser projector is the key to moving the technology beyond the PLF market. So what has Christie done to get there? The big thing is moving from a frequency-doubled green laser solution to ...Read more
- Nanosys Details the Future of Quantum DotsQuantum dot manufacturer Nanosys was at SID DisplayWeek speaking about quantum dots in the Business Conference, presenting papers in the symposium session and showcasing its technology on the exhibit floor while also revealing some future innovation in backroom discussions. In all, the take away is that quantum dots hold great promise to provide a range of new innovations for displays in the coming years. Most of the quantum dots that Nanosys makes today are Cd-based. These go into films produced by 3M that have shown up in TVs to date. At last year’s SID, Nanosys introduced a hybrid quantum dot solution ...Read more
- Location-based VR is the Right Next StepThis is a feeling I have had for some time, but this was driven home today based on my tour of the brand new IMAX VR Center in New York. This is the second center and the first inside a multiplex (the AMC Kips Bay 15 venue). According the IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond (center in photo), who spoke at the event, eight more will be added before the end of the year in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., France, the Middle East, China and Japan. What was clear from the comments of Gelfrond and Adam Aron, CEO and President, AMC Theatres (left ...Read more
- Which is Better: Higher Pixel Density or Wider Field of View?This is one of the key VR headset design decisions that product developers have been wrestling with. So far, most have chosen a wider field of view leading to images that can look pixelated or have a “screen door effect”. But with recent hardware advancements, it may be time to rethink this trade-off. In a recent Display Daily article, What’s the Definition of an Immersive Display?, I discussed a number of elements that can contribute to “immersiveness” in a VR or AR headset. In this article, let’s explore one of these elements of immersiveness a bit more: pixels per degree. Pixels per ...Read more
- First Metrology Workshop was Well ReceivedMetrology is the art and practice of measurement and the International Committee on Display Metrology (ICDM) is devoted to developing display measurement methods. At the SID DisplayWeek in LA this week, the group organized their first all-day workshop on the topic. Over 90 people showed up, far exceeding the workshop organizers’ expectations. I asked a number of people what they thought of content and all agreed is was high quality and it was a worthwhile event. The day started with an introduction to light measurement basics by Ed Kelley, a former NIST staffer who was the editor behind the 500+ page ...Read more
- What’s the Definition of an Immersive Display?I have been talking to people a lot about immersive displays lately. That’s because the next Display Summit will have this as a focus theme. Most people think of Virtual Reality when you say immersive display, but I think the definition should be broader than that. But what should the definition be? Certainly one aspect should be field of view. If it is wide, maybe 90 to 100 degrees, that is, more immersive than looking at a display that covers a small field of view or field of vision. Therefore, VR headsets qualify as immersive displays as would a TV viewed ...Read more
- Samsung and Amazon Video to Rollout HDR10+ VideoWhat is HDR10+, you ask? It is the HDR10 standard augmented with dynamic metadata. In this case, Samsung’s dynamic metadata format as approved in SMPTE ST-2094-40. Three other methods for adding dynamic metadata to an HDR10 format are specified in the same SMPTE document. The four are: Dolby (Parametric Tone Mapping) Philips (Parameter-based Color Volume Reconstruction) Technicolor (Reference-based Color Volume Remapping) Samsung (Scene-based Color Volume Mapping) The HDR10 standard (ST-2084) only requires static metadata to be included with the HDR content. That means the following parameters should be attached to each piece of HDR content. Mastering display chromaticity primaries White point chromaticity primaries of mastering display Maximum mastering display ...Read more
- Movie Industry Flat for 2016Based on studio presentations at CinemaCon and the release of statistics from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), there were 718 films released in 2016 and the global box office reached $38.6B, an increase of 1%. The U.S./Canada market increased 2% to reach $11.2B, but attendance was flat with the slight increase in box office revenues due to a 3% increase in average ticket price to $8.65. The spin Hollywood put on this: that’s better than most predicted. The total number of cinema screens increased 8% worldwide in 2016 to nearly 164K due in large part to continued double digit ...Read more
- LightSpace Back with Volumetric DisplaySome long time readers may remember the volumetric display developed by LightSpace Technologies. The company never found a solid market for its product and went out of business. Well, they are back with new models and improved performance. Is the technology ready for applications now? To find out, we initiated a conversation with LightSpace Technologies, CEO, Ilmars Osmanis. He started by explaining that in 2012, EUROLCD signed an exclusive agreement with the holders of the LightSpace Technologies IP portfolio. If the technology looked good, they would then decide on further development. The team decided further development was warranted so in 2014, ...Read more
- Theatrical Trends from CinemaCon 2017CinemaCon runs this week in Las Vegas, which is always a fun show to attend as there are free screenings and previews of upcoming movies – if you have time to see them. The show highlights advanced audio-video technology to popcorn machines as well as the business aspects of the exhibition and movie industries. I am writing this on my first day of the event, but already some key themes are evident. Trend one is projection technology. Here, the major projector companies: Barco, Christie, NEC, Dolby and Sony all showed their newest RGB laser and laser-phosphor projectors. These solutions are gaining ...Read more
- Samsung’s TV Launch EventSamsung Electronics was planning a TV launch event in New York City on March 14. A major snowstorm forced the cancellation of the media-focused meeting, but they launched the products anyway with a virtual event. Apparently, the Samsung team had considered a webcast of the launch event, but getting people to the New York venue for the planned time was too difficult. As a result, the internal team did assemble later in the day at the 837 venue where they recorded video of speakers giving presentations as planned – but to an internal audience only. You can see the full 34-minute ...Read more
- Philips to Focus ColorSpark Technology on home Cinema SegmentAbout a year and a half ago, Philips Lighting debuted a new LED-based light source for projectors called ColorSpark HLD LED (High Lumen Density LED). In 2016 this technology rolled out in mainstream projection products in the 3000 to 4000 lumen range. For 2017, Philips is focusing on enabling projection customers to create new 1000 and 2000 lumen products within the “pocket screenless TV” projection segment that can offer compelling performance for home-based TV and video watching. The HLD technology was developed to address one of the big challenges with LED projectors – they were limited in brightness to around 500 ...Read more
- TriLite’s Laser-based Engine Going to Mass ProductionTwo years ago we told you about TriLite’s first demonstration of an RGB laser scanning system that it was targeting for large-area 3D without glasses in digital signage applications. (Giant 3D Displays from TriLite). At Photonics West 2017, the company showed a sample of the projector. In addition, they debuted a pico projection engine that they hope to work on with a partner, to service the AR and HUD markets. To review, TriLite has developed a tiny RGB laser source that they couple to a MEMS-based scanning mirror. These RGB laser beams arrive at the mirror as separate beams, but are combined ...Read more
- Lars Borg Explains Dynamic MetadataSMPTE organized a webinar conducted by Lars Borg, a principle scientist at Adobe, but who was also very active in the development of SMPTE standard ST-2094. In the webcast, Borg describes the various versions of dynamic metadata described in ST-2094 and why these will improve the viewing experience for HDR content. Borg started with some basics on High Dynamic Range (HDR), color volume and Wide Color Gamut (WCG). He came up with a very nice way to describe these concepts in terms of current ITU standards and TV systems as shown in the graphic below. HD content has a slim color volume ...Read more
- Sony Mobile Projector ReviewSony asked if I wanted to review their MP-CL1A mobile projector so I said yes. It is based on the Microvision pico engine which consists of an RGB laser source and a 2 axis scanning MEMS mirror. Overall, I cannot say I would find this projector useful in any activities I might want to use it for. The best application seems to be watching movie or video content in a dim to dark room where the viewer is not too picky about image quality. My grandson would find this cool as he can watch YouTube videos on the ceiling in ...Read more
- Ostendo Develops First Vertically Integrated RGB LEDMost readers know Ostendo Technologies as the company that developed LED-based light field displays with significant support from the Air Force Research Labs (AFRL). That effort has not received additional funding from AFRL, but the company has continued to work on advanced microLED technology. Now, the company is reporting a bit of a breakthrough in microLEDs – a vertically integrated LED that can emit light from red to blue, including white – from a single LED device. Details of the research results were recently published in AIP Advances under the title “Growth of monolithic full-color GaN-based LED with intermediate carrier blocking ...Read more
- A Visit to Trumbull StudiosMovie visionary, Doug Trumbull, has developed an advanced capture and display solution called Magi. It is based upon images captured and displayed in stereoscopic 3D, 4K and 120 frames per second. It is a solution that can be used in many areas, not just theaters, and he has been working hard to develop the concept and gain advocates. It is a huge task to develop a whole new capture and display format and roll it out successfully. But he has done it before – with IMax, so maybe he can do it again. After seeing some test footage in his Magi ...Read more
- TI Releases New 0.33-inch 1080p Pico ChipsetIf you thought pico projectors and related products were a small backwater in the projection industry, think again. PMA Research projects sales to reach close to 3.5M units this year, which is not chicken feed in this market. Mobile smart TVs, pico projectors, smart home displays as well as commercial and industrial products, plus AR and VR headsets and HUDs are all powered by pico class microdisplays. Now, TI has announced a new 1080p chip set and engine development partners that will add additional momentum to this segment. The new chip set consists of the DLP3310 DMD and DLPC3437 controller. TI ...Read more
- DigiLens Secures $22M from Key Strategic PartnersDigiLens, a provider of diffractive waveguide technology for Augmented Reality (AR) and Head-up Displays (HUD), announced they have closed a Series B round of investment to the tune of $22M. “The round was oversubscribed and met our key objectives of securing investment from strategic partners in the market segments we are focused on, namely AR HUD’s for transportation, enterprise and consumer applications” said DigiLens CEO Jonathan Waldern in a phone conversation. Strategic investors include Sony, Foxconn, Continental, and Panasonic, along with venture investors Alsop Louie Partners, Bold Capital, Nautilus Venture Partners, and Dolby Family Ventures among others. “Aside our contract and ...Read more
- New White Paper Discusses QD vs. OLED TV BattleA new white paper from Display Supply Chain Consultants (DSCC) provides an analysis of quantum dot (QD) TVs vs. OLED TVs. It discusses the technology trends of the two but adds some unique perspective on the manufacturing capabilities of the two technologies – which can indeed be a determining factor in establishing a leadership position. The paper also provides a forecast and can be downloaded for free HERE. In the paper, the authors looked at the manufacturing processes of each technology concluding that: “The impact of the more complex circuits needed for OLED shows itself in lower manufacturing yields”. “Samsung has ...Read more
- Kopin’s New 2Kx2K OLED-on-Si Panel to Advance VR Image QualityAt CES 2017, Kopin released a new 1-inch OLED microdisplay panel, branded Lightning, with a resolution of 2048×2048 and a fast 120 Hz frame rate. Both are firsts for the VR industry and will raise the bar on performance. I and many others have said for some time that resolution, frame rate and latency in VR headsets need to improve quite a bit to offer truly compelling image quality. This new display takes a good step in this direction and should power high-end VR products. The display is an OLED-on-silicon type that uses a white emitting OLED material with RGB color filters. ...Read more
- Nanosys to Show Color Volume Demo at CES 2017To get a jump on our CES coverage, we decided to have a call with Jason Hartlove, CEO of quantum dot supplier, Nanosys, to learn more about their activities, what they will show at CES and their expectations for quantum dot development. One of the key demos Nanosys will be showcasing in their suite in the Westgate will be a color volume demo. Many are now coming around to the notion that using color volume to describe an HDR display’s color performance as a function of luminance is a much better way that simply showing a two-dimensional CIE color gamut chart. ...Read more
- Do We Need Better Names for Various Quantum Dot Devices?I recently wrote a white paper on the various types of quantum dot platforms being used for or considered for display devices (Quantum Dots will Power Display Products to the Next Level). With all the varieties of potential solutions, that got me thinking. How are professionals and consumers going to understand all these varieties? As a result, I would like to put forth some names for these categories of device. In the market today are two types of quantum dot-based displays: those that use a film of sheet with quantum dots and those that place the quantum dots in a tube ...Read more
- Kopin’s New OLED Microdisplay Foundry Model is InnovativeKopin has just issued a press release that states their intention to enter the OLED microdisplay market, offering panels that will serve augmented and virtual reality applications. At CES 2017, they will announce more detail on the first panel and demonstrate it in novel optical solutions as well. I will get a sneak peak at these devices before CES, but you will have to wait until January 2017 before I can say more. In the meantime, I can talk about Kopin’s path to get to this point and their new business model. To learn more, I had a conversation with Kopin ...Read more
- Samsung QD TVs Could be a Game ChangerSamsung has not officially revealed any details about it TV plans for 2017, which they will unveil at CES. But a news story in the ET Times of Korea and some info from other sources suggests the company’s new TVs will offer some impressive gains. So impressive, I suspect their performance will be one of the hot topics of discussion at CES. The first clue came at IFA 2016 where the Samsung booth was all about quantum dots. It would not be surprising if Samsung is “all in” on quantum dots at CES in 2017. According to the ET Times article, Samsung ...Read more
- Rockwell Collins Shows Multiple AR/MR DemosRockwell Collins showed several mixed reality (MR) and augmented reality (AR) applications at I/ITSEC 2016 that were good. In the mixed reality camp was a new product they call Coalescence. This is a commercially available Oculus rift headset and tracker system which has been enhanced with a small set of stereo cameras on the front of the headset. The cameras allow a view of the world in front including your own hands and feet, which is the definition of a mixed reality (MR) experience. To showcase the possibilities of this new tool, they had different demonstrations (at least two). In one ...Read more
- IRYStec to Optimize Your Display to the Ambient ConditionsA display’s performance is measured in a dark or dim room, but the display’s performance does not often account for the fact that it will be viewed in dark room, normal ambient illumination and in bright light. For example, as ambient illumination goes up, the perceivable black level rises, darker tones are harder to see, colors become desaturated and overall contrast decreases. IRYStec Software has come up with a solution to address these and other ambient-related shortcomings in a software platform they call Perceptual Display Platform (PDP). To learn more about the company, its technology and plans, we spoke with company ...Read more
- Creating Derivatives from the 4K/120/3D “Billy Lynn” MasterThat was the topic of discussion I had with Ben Gervais, the technical supervisor on “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”, a film directed by Ang Lee and captured in 3D, 120 frames per second and 4K resolution. But the film will only be shown in this format on a few select screens, so for more mainstream distribution, derivative versions are needed. The question is: Can you maintain a similar emotional impact when showing the film in 2D, 2K and lower frame rates? We started the conversation by first asking where the movie will be screened in 4K/120/3D. In North America, only ...Read more
- Is the Era of “CompCine” at Hand?The term “CompCine stands for Computational Cinematography, a term SMPTE Director of Engineering and Standards, Howard Lukk used to describe a new category of image capture at the recent Streaming Media for Field of Light Displays (SMFoLD) workshop held at the SMPTE conference last week. It describes a style of image capture that blends optics with image processing to enable new capabilities that conventional optical camera systems cannot achieve. Light field cameras are one type of CompCine device and they capture light from the scene from multiple perspectives. Light field cameras fall into three main types: plenoptic, camera arrays and moving ...Read more
- BBC Describes Gamut Compression MethodOne of the important topics covered at the SMPTE conference was conversion from one color gamut to another. This is particularly important when content is encoded using XYZ or BT.2020 coefficients. Such content may be played back on displays with a variety of color gamut support so compressing the original content gamut to the particular display gamut is an emerging need. The simplest way to do this is to simply clip source colors that are outside of the display’s color gamut. That is, for color outside of the display gamut, the idea is to project the color of that point back ...Read more
- First “True 8K” 120fps Dome DemoThat was the headline that enticed me to fly to Toronto and the annual Giant Screen Cinema Association International Conference and Trade Show (GSCA). This event is all about the latest planetarium, IMax and other larger format curved screens – primarily in a dome or partial dome configuration. It attracts content creators, technology suppliers and operators of these theaters to see new content and discuss technology trends. The session that was held in the Ontario Science Center featured a temporary “True 8K” resolution installation in the existing 15/70 film-based OmniMax 24-meter domed theater. This allowed side-by-side comparisons of this new digital ...Read more
- Are VRcades the Next Big Opportunity?There is mounting evidence that VR is not necessarily an isolating experience, but one which can and will become very social. Virtual Reality Arcades or VRcades may indeed be one of the next big ideas that drives VR into the mainstream. Clearly, the availability of reasonably-priced VR headsets from Sony, HTC, Oculus – together with smartphone-based devices, are creating a feeding frenzy around VR. Some see gaming as the major driver; others view short-form entertainment as the key to mass adoption. Less visible, but perhaps just as compelling, is the emerging VR arcade and theme park opportunity. Last July, a company called ...Read more
- ASC Announces Plan to Evaluate Theatrical Performance ParametersCinema technology is advancing rapidly including higher contrast, wider colors and higher frame rates (as seen in yesterday’s Display Daily – Ang Lee Shows the Future of Cinema Display). Solutions offering a range of these parameters are entering the market and will evolve. But from a creative point of view, where do these technical improvements have their limits in terms of human perception and for storytelling? For example, are projectors with a million-to-one contrast ratio needed, if normal lighting and reflections in the cinema reduce this level dramatically? What is a practical black level? How about peak luminance? What is the best ...Read more
- What we Learned (or Didn’t Learn) from IFA Press DaysThe press day at CES is 1 day long – at IFA it’s two days. Bob Raikes and I attended this year and frankly, it is too much and the value is marginal. And even if something useful is revealed, it is high level or a summary of what is being shown in the booth. That may be fine for the mainstream consumer press, but our readers want more. That invariably means a visit to the booth/stand and a nice chat with the technical folks. These press conferences are more like brand theater. They all seem to follow the same formula ...Read more
- HDR Production Needs Monitoring Tools – Tektronix has a SolutionCapture and production of HDR content is a hot topic of discussion – and we expect a great deal of developments at IBC shortly. But how do you know you are capturing signals correctly? That’s where waveform monitors and rasterizers come in – and Tektronix has two new models that support High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Color Gamut (WCG). According to Mike Waidson, Principle Engineer, Video Test at Tektronix, SDR (Standard Dynamic Range) cameras are designed to capture 5-7 f-stops of dynamic range but HDR cameras need to capture an 12-15 f-stop range. If SDR-based waveform monitors are used to ...Read more
- A Day with Charles PoyntonI recently had the opportunity to attend a workshop with Charles Poynton, a renowned mathematician and video expert. The informal workshop took place in New York with just a few others, providing a great opportunity to listen and discuss hot button issue around High Dynamic Range (HDR). Poynton prepared a thick handout of content and had this prepared as slides to review – but we may have looked at a half dozen during the whole day. The time was spent with Poynton verbally explaining the topics and fielding questions along the way. This can be an effective learning technique, but it ...Read more
- JDI Adopts New Backplane Simulator Tool from SilvacoWe don’t often talk about Electronic Design Automation (EDA) tools for displays, but they are essential to be able to model new designs and new processes. Probably the premier supplier of backplane modeling tools is Silvaco. According to Amit Nanda, the VP of Global Marketing at Silvaco, “one or more of the company’s modeling and simulation tools are used by 90% of the LCD industry.” That’s a pretty high penetration. We recently had a chance to talk to Nanda about their latest tool and learn a bit more about backplane design for displays. The new tool is called Clever LCD and ...Read more
- Quested Provides Perspective on ITU-2100 HDR SpecThe chairman of the ITU-R subcommittee responsible for the recent release of IUT-2100 is Andy Quested, who is also an employee of the BBC. We had a chance to speak with him recently to gain his perspective on the new document. We caught up with him while he was attending the London-based HPA Retreat event (We had a reporter at that event, so for more coverage see our report for subscribers – Man. Ed.). He noted that this was the first time the SMPTE-backed event had been produced in Europe. While he found the content stimulating, it was quite Hollywood centric. ...Read more
- Incom Fused Fiber Optics Powers Lytro Light Field CameraFused fiber optics provider Incom has told us recently that they are a key component supplier to Lytro and their new cinema light field camera debuted at NAB 2016. What are fused fiber optics and why are they important for a light field camera, you ask? I was curious too, so I arranged a call with Michael A. Detarando, the president and CEO of the Charlton, Massachusetts-based company. Fused fiber optics are a bundle of tiny fiber optics that are extremely closely packed and then melted together. They are an optical grade element that is often used to transfer light from ...Read more
- A New Way to Create Projected HDR?With High Dynamic Range (HDR) TVs offering 600 to 1000 cd/m² of peak luminance and various levels of black, many are concerned that the experience in the cinema is starting to lag behind the home experience. IMAX and Dolby offer HDR cinematic experiences, but a solution for mainstream theaters is needed, too. But a new approach may be possible – and Barco is the one that plans to nurture the technology via a recent acquisition of MTT Innovations. We spoke with MTT Innovations CEO, Anders Ballestad, to get his take on the deal with Barco. “The acquisition was actually initiated by ...Read more
- Sony’s Canvas Display – Best of Show at InfoComm 2016?I can’t really crown Sony’s CLEDIS display my best of show winner, as I have only been here one day and have not seen all the cool stuff yet – but this one will be hard to top. It truly is a new display category, as it is the first commercial product using a new class of LEDs: microLEDs. The display (Sony Returns to Crystal LED With CLEDIS – subscription required) was officially unveiled in a press conference on the opening morning of InfoComm. Image quality is stunning. It is a tiled solution much like conventional LED modules, but there were only ...Read more
- SID’s Display Week Opens with Lots of Quantum Dot NewsI have not had a chance to spend much time on the show floor or paper sessions, so I don’t have the full perspective of SID’s DisplayWeek yet. It is my turn to write a Display Daily column, however, so I will focus on one hot topic at SID: quantum dots. Quantum dot news is big here already with Nanosys, Quantum Materials and QD Vision making announcements and Nanoco giving a paper (that I have not reviewed). Nanosys, for example, has developed a “hybrid” solution they call Hyperion Quantum Dots, which mixes cadmium-free red and cadmium-based green quantum dots into a ...Read more
- Display Summit China Identifies Projection Industry Successes and ChallengesThe Insight Media produced event, Display Summit China, has just concluded here in Yixing, China. I can’t speak for what the Chinese participants took away from the event, but I had some clear expected and not-expected take aways that I want to share below. Compound Photonics used the event to publicly describe for the first time some of the technologies and products they are working on. The company told us when we visited their Phoenix facility in March, the company is working to introduce a 4K RGB laser projector with 3000 lumens for the corporate market at price points that will ...Read more
- Highlights of NAB 2016I recently attended the Future of Cinema Conference and NAB to learn more about UHD, HDR, WCG, VR and more. And did I get an eye and ear full…. One of the highlights was the Lytro Cinema camera. This is a monster at nearly 7 feet long (>2m) that can capture 755 megapixels at 120 fps. But being a light field camera, it is also capturing the angle of light at each pixel allowing a post production process that can change the focus, depth of field, point of view, frame rate, shutter angle and more. The light field data can create accurate ...Read more
- Technicolor and Vubiquity Lay Groundwork for HDR Channels in 2016HDR content for consumers has so far consisted of a few movies and episodic TV content specifically mastered for HDR and delivered over a small number of OTT services and via the newly released Ultra HD Blu-ray format. But more HDR content delivered via conventional video delivery platforms is coming quickly as Technicolor and Vubiquity have now teamed up to accelerate this process. It might even mean the potential for the first HDR channel to surface in 2016. The two issued a press release yesterday on their plans and I also listened to a webinar presented by Technicolor and Philips about ...Read more
- Aixtron Deposition Tool Enabling OLED TV ProductionTo reduce the costs of OLED TV production, producers need to move to Gen 8 size substrates at a minimum. To get there, Aixtron has developed and is now doing demonstration runs on it new OLED deposition tool fully capable of processing Gen 8.5 substrates (2250 mm x 2250 mm). The tool set creates the OLED frontplane organic stack fabrication part, not the backplane – both of which are critical elements. The tool is massive yet has a compact footprint. As shown in the video link below, the Gen 8.5 tool set was installed in the company’s development facility in Herzogenrath (near ...Read more
- Lattice and MediaTek Want to Drive 4K Video over USB Type-CUSB is probably the most ubiquitous wired connector worldwide and the addition of the new Type-C version is opening it up to incredible new capabilities. With 24 contact points and 10 configurable conductors (see pin out diagram below), it can deliver 4K 60 fps video. This allows your mobile device to essentially become a set top box, PC or a game console, delivering content to your 4K TV or monitor. Now, Lattice Semiconductor and MediaTek have teamed up to offer a new reference platform design that will help speed adoption of this USB Type-C. We had a chance to learn more in ...Read more
- Third-Gen Volumetric Display Coming from HoloxicaHoloxica is a Scottish company which has just received €1.28million from the European Commission’s Horizon2020 SME Instrument to develop its third generation holographic display. It will be aimed at providing volumetric display of slice-based medical images from CT, MRI and ultrasound devices. Three years ago, we wrote about Holoxica’s second generation holographic device. This created three floating-image planes showing three sets of numbers that were imaged at different distances from the viewer (photo). The third generation device will increase the number of image planes and seek to integrate real medical image data into the display. The motivation for this type of display ...Read more
- Sony Shows Latest HDR/WCG UHD TVsAt a special Sony press and installer meeting in New York in early February, we had a chance to get some updates and demos of the latest Sony UHD TVs sets. Picture quality was compared in a nice side-by-side demo and pricing was released. The demo was nicely done. It consisted of Sony’s $30K RGB OLED monitor (BVM 4200) as the reference image (it can go to 1000 nits). Above it were three commercial UHD TVs – all getting the same signal. The TVs consisted of the LG EF9500 OLED, Sony 940D LCD and Samsung 9500 SUHD LCD – all in ...Read more
- Laser Light Farm Concept Offers Good ROI, Says Power TechnologyPower Technology Inc. (PTI) has introduced a “laser light farm” designed to provide light to power multiple cinema screens (Power Tech Distributes Light). The light is delivered by fiber optics to each projector head from a central location, where all the RGB lasers are housed. It is an interesting concept that we discussed in more detail with VP of Engineering, Walter Burgess. The concept of a central laser light farm is not new and was first proposed by Bill Beck at the Projection Summit some years ago when he ran a company called Laser Light Engines. PTI is the first to ...Read more
- HDR and WCG to Become MainstreamI spent almost the entire time at CES looking at the High Dynamic Range (HDR) and Wide Color Gamut (WCG) ecosystem. One tutorial white paper on these technologies, along with a table of current and announced UHD TVs with these features, has just been published. A second report with the news on the HDR/WCG value chain will be ready next week. I am not done yet, but some conclusions are already clear. Here is what the industry seems to saying. Nearly every UHD TV in 2016 will support some the basic HDR-10 level of HDR. Most will have HDMI 2.0a connectors ...Read more
- The Perception of Motorcycle HUDs May be About to ChangeNew motorcycle Head-up Display (HUD) technology has just been introduced at CES that may indeed begin to change the perception of the utility of such devices. Driving this is new waveguide display technology from DigiLens that was debuted in a motorcycle helmet from BMW. BMW plans to commercialize the wide field of view device in about a year. The design is more like the HUDs in automobiles than the current crop of motorcycle HUDs, which is why the introduction is likely to get close scrutiny by the industry – and maybe change some minds on the utility of a HUD in ...Read more
- Dolby Discusses Strategy in Analyst MeetingDolby Laboratories invited a number of industry analyst to spend the day with them in San Francisco showing off technology and discussing their business. It was an open and informative day. First, Dolby is doing well. We met in the company’s new headquarters building on fashionable Market Street in downtown San Francisco. It is a 16-storey building (with three basement floors) with over 100 labs that brings together over 750 employees under one roof. A full-sized Dolby Cinema for 200 people is under construction for the site. Dolby also installed 36 unique pieces of art throughout the building to help inspire ...Read more
- Displays Remain Vital for Training and SimulationI have just returned from the I/ITSEC 2015 trade show, North America’s big event for training and simulation. As expected, solutions continue to become more complex and more realistic, and displays play a key role – from collimated Level D flight simulators to virtual and augmented reality headsets. The other major element of great simulation is the database and Image Generator (IG) hardware. These synthetic databases can be constructed many ways and are increasingly being based around game engines. They build upon many different types of databases like Landsat data, road data, 2D photography and 3D models of buildings and other ...Read more
- ITRI Reports Breakthru in OLED LifetimeTaiwan-based ITRI has reported the development of a new OLED device architecture that significantly increases the lifetime of RGB OLED displays. The new structure, called a Plasmon-Coupled Organic Light Emitting Diode (PCOLED), boosts the lifetime by 27 times, compared to the conventional blue fluorescent/red & green phosphorescent structure. The figure below shows the PCOLED architecture compared to the traditional one. In the conventional architecture, red and green phosphorescent layers are stacked on top of a blue fluorescent layer to emit white light. However, the blue fluorescent layer has poor efficiency and lifetime, which limits the overall device lifetime. The PCOLED replaces the ...Read more
- QD Vision Discusses Developments and Competition
Quantum dot developer QD Vision has received a new round of investment led by Tsing Capital and BASF Venture Capital totaling approximately $22 million from both existing investors and new investors. The funds will be used to advance R&D efforts and support commercialization of new products. Quantum dots are semiconductor materials. When designed for displays, they accept blue LED light and re-emit in the green or red range. The size of the quantum dot determines the peak wavelengths and the distribution of sizes determines the Full Width Half Maximum (FWHM or the ‘peakiness’ of the output). To learn more, we had a ...Read more - We Need a Definition for a High Dynamic Range Display
I am at the SMPTE Fall Conference in Hollywood, where I am learning all about the ecosystem for High Dynamic Range (HDR), Wide Color Gamut (WCG) and High Frame Rate (HFR), among other topics. That means ways to capture, process and produce, encode, deliver and display such content. This of course, is a hot topic and there are rapid developments happening almost on a daily basis. But lots of definitions and standards are still evolving. Let’s just focus on the definition of an HDR display, for example. Here is a tentative partial definition, which mostly follows the definition put forward by ...Read more - TI to Bring 4K DLP to the MassesTexas Instruments has had a 4K 3-chip DLP solution for some time, but it’s a big, 1.4” device that allows high brightness 4K projection at a hefty price. Meanwhile, Sony has made great headway offering a line of 4K projectors at more reasonable price points for the home and commercial markets. At CEDIA 2015, TI finally revealed its answer to a more affordable 4K solution. Insight Media and other special guests were invited to a demo presented by TI in a meeting room in the nearby Omni hotel. TI’s Roger Carver showed us the current DLP 4K chip and then he ...Read more
- SpectraCal Seeks to Solve HDR Monitor Evaluation NeedA number of companies in Hollywood and beyond are already developing High Dynamic Range (HDR) content. But do they have accurate and calibrated HDR displays to master on? That’s the problem that SpectraCal is seeking to solve with its latest display evaluation software, CalMAN v5.6. To be clear, CalMAN v5.6 is not just for HDR displays – it can be used to evaluate, calibrate and certify any reference monitor. In a recent conversation with SpectraCal President, L.A. Heberlein, we learned more about the needs of HDR monitor evaluation. First of all, new HDR content also includes a wider color gamut than the ...Read more
- Masterpiece Paintings Reproduced with Incredible 3D Printing ProcessCanon held their special EXPO in the Javits Center in New York last week. Over 9,000 people attended the cavernous exhibit. There were so many different aspects of Canon on display, it was a real tour de force. The event is held once every 5 years and is a showcase for current and future products and technology. After you enter the main expo area, you have about a dozen different zones to explore, with each zone having multiple aspects to it. We did not get to see everything in our one day on site, so we will have to focus on ...Read more
- 3M to Propose Changes to New BT2020 Color Standard at SMPTE Fall EventThe new UHD TV specification calls for an expanded color gamut called BT2020. But no current TVs can meet the specification because the red, green and blue primaries are specified without a tolerance. And, since they are located on the spectral locus, only laser sources can produce the full color gamut – but with speckle, which is unacceptable. At SID’s DisplayWeek, 3M showed the results of testing it had done to look at the range of tolerances around these 2020 primaries to find out how much these primaries can move to be “visually indistinguishable” to an observer. This work has been ...Read more
- Business as Usual for Sharp ProfessionalThat’s the message that Gary Bailer, Sharp’s Director of Product Management, Information Display Products told us in a phone interview. “It is important to communicate this message to our customer base following a lot of misinformation that has spread as a result of the acquisition of the Sharp assembly plant in Mexico by Hisense. On the professional side, the sale will have no impact whatsoever,” noted Bailer. “In fact, there may even be a silver lining because some Japan-based resources will now become available to help us on the B2B side.” The news of the sale broke last week with Hisense ...Read more
- Netflix has Very Ambitious PlansNetflix has grown by leaps and bounds from a distributor of DVDs to a major content creation and distribution powerhouse. It is leading the pack in the distribution of UHD content and now looks like it plans to become the largest producer of content, powering past rivals HBO, Showtime and others. The transition to UHD content is probably going to have more of a disruptive effect than the transition from standard definition to high definition. Not only does the transition require new content capture, infrastructure and distribution investments, now there are new OTT rivals that will seriously challenge the incumbents. Netflix is ...Read more
- Infocomm Issues Draft Standard for Contrast on Direct View Displays – But is it Right?
InfoComm has issued (July 9, 2015) a new draft standard called “Direct View Display Image Systems Contrast Ratio”. It can be reviewed here. But some believe the system contrast specification for watching movies is just plain wrong – and they have posted a video showing side-by-side examples to prove the point (see videohere). You should take a look and weigh in on this debate if you care about image quality. The new standard from Infocomm is based in large part on the Projected Image System Contrast Ratio (PISCR) standard released about 5 years ago. This standard uses the ANSI 16-zone (4×4) checkerboard ...Read more - AptoVision is the Silicon Driving New 4K AV over IP Products
Ever noticed that development of key communication silicon leads to whole new categories of connectivity? Consider Silicon Image (now Lattice Semiconductor) and the HDMI and MHL interfaces. How about Valens and the HDBaseT ecosystem? Now we have AptoVision providing FPGA-based chipsets to drive video, audio, Ethernet and more over conventional IP switches. AptoVision calls their FPGA solution BlueRiver NT. As shown in the figure below, the idea is to use standard Ethernet infrastructure and equipment to move audio, video, control, USB and even Ethernet signals from source to sink. To do this, each source must have a transmit box to encode ...Read more - SID Wrap-up Interview on TWiT TVScott Wilkinson interviews Chris Chinnock from SID to get a summary of key innovations introduced or demonstrated at the event. Topic covered include quantum dots, electronic holographic displays, light field display, high density displays, AR, VR, wide color gamut, cutting edge displays, etc. http://twit.tv/show/home-theater-geeks/258Read more
- “Internet of Display” …Are you Viewing Your Information Through a Straw?
Most of you have probably heard of the term Internet of Things (IoT) which refers to the fact that millions and soon, probably billions of devices will be connected to information via the Internet. Recently Andrew (Drew) Jamison at Scalable Displays has been chirping about what he calls the “Internet of Display” (IoD). Since reading his article introducing the concept, I have been having spirited debates with a number of people about this concept – and trying to decide if the term has merit and if so, a concise way to describe it. In this article, I will lay out ...Read more - High Dynamic Range (HDR) is Coming, but How Will it Impact Your Business?
By now you have probably heard the buzz about high dynamic range, or HDR. But you may also be wondering if this is something you need to know more about, how it might impact your business and when. This article may help a little in answering these questions. First of all, what is HDR? In simple terms, most would agree that it is an expansion of the contrast of an image and the display coupled with a significant elevation of overall image brightness. When done correctly, it means that the peak luminance of the display expands while the black level decreases ...Read more - New Technologies Driving Innovation in Professional Display MarketsHDR, BT2020, VR, AR, LED, Laser, Laser-Phosphor, QD, HLD, UHD, 4K, 8K. If you know what are these terms mean and how they will impact your business – you are ahead of the curve. If not, then you have a great opportunity to learn all about these technologies and how they will reshape professional markets by attending the Display Summit (www.displaysummit.com). Produced by Insight Media in cooperation with InfoComm, this is a pre-show thought-leader event that focuses on the cutting edge technologies that will drive new products, markets, applications and opportunities. Display Summit focuses on the entire pixel pipeline from pixel ...Read more
- Options for Wired Infrastructure Multiply Creating New OpportunitiesIt used to be that organizations would set up multiple wired infrastructure networks to handle phone, data, video, audio, control, security, KVM, etc. Now, multiple options are emerging that can allow one or two networks to do all the stuff of multiple networks in the past. That is creating lots of new opportunities for hardware, software and installation providers and offering real benefits to end users. Multiple networks are not uncommon in broadcast, government, control centers and corporate environments. Each can require its own hardware, software and dedicated technicians to maintain, upgrade and operate the network. Audio guys don’t talk IT ...Read more
- Can LEDs Challenge LCDs for Indoor Signage?Indoor stand alone and video wall displays have been dominated by LCD technology having successfully vanquished CRT and Plasma display options. But now, fine pitch LED in tiled or modular formats under 2mm are in the market today and offer compelling images – even up close. Can LEDs make a chink in the LCD armor? Can OLEDs or light rejecting projection solutions gain a foothold? Many have bet against LCDs and almost all have lost. Can it be different in this market segment, in particular as high resolution LED flat panels with interactive capabilities vie to compete? The logical answer is ...Read more
- 360-Degree Capture of NBA All-Star GameThought the capture of 180- and 360-degree video content was a recent phenomenon driven be the capabilities of the Oculus Rift and Samsung GearVR? BigLook360 did their first production way back in 1999 and just recently shot the NBA All-Star game in the format. Content should be ready for viewing on the GearVR at the Samsung Milk VR web site in the March/April time frame. In talking with Founder/CEO Lance Loesberg of BigLook360, he explained that they got started when General Motors asked them to shoot a 360-degree video as an experiential marketing tool that would be a traveling show going ...Read more
- Digital Cinema Market Innovating to Stay RelevantThe cinema has represented the highest quality movie experience for a long time, but can it maintain this dominance going forward? Large flat panel TV and home theater projectors offer stunning images and sound quality, so how can the theater differentiate the experience enough to entice consumers to leave the conform of their home? One big card to play is the engagement window, meaning movies debit in the theater and you have to wait to see them at home. This wall is starting to crack however, as the windows tighten and experiments are underway to do simultaneous day and date releases ...Read more
- Corning’s New Iris Glass to Enable Thinner TVsIn the flurry of news from CES, we did not get a chance to delve deeply into an announcement of a new glass called Iris that was revealed by Corning (Corning Stays Ahead in Display Glass). In a conversation with John Bayne, general manager and vice president, Corning High Performance Displays and Advanced Glass Innovations, we had a chance to learn more. The new glass is intended to enable LCD TVs that can be routinely less than 10 mm thick with some as thin as several mm. That’s thinner than most smartphones, so very thin indeed. At CES 2015, Bayne said ...Read more
- The End of PrivacyI read an article or saw a news report on this topic the other day and it just sort of hung around in my brain, fermenting to generate an editorial elixir. That probably sounds more intoxicating than what you will read below. The premise is that our expectation of privacy is becoming not only antiquated but increasing difficult to expect. The devices we own invite sharing at an unprecedented scale while criminals are intent on taking this information and using in ways we don’t want. The problem is that all of the conveniences we say we want invite the loss of ...Read more
- A Look at the FX (Visual Effects) Industry
While not a display-centric industry, visual or special effects are in all kinds of media we consume today, so I recently took the opportunity to take the pulse of this industry in a conversation with FuseFX CEO, David Altenau. First of all, I thought the terms special effects and visual effects were synonymous, but according to Wikipedia, “visual effects refers to digital post-production and special effects refers to on-set mechanical effects and in-camera optical effects”. FuseFX is a visual effects house that works on movies, TV, commercials and games. To better understand how visual effects are used on these platforms, you have ...Read more - Changes in the Digital Signage World
Digital Signage is an important part of the display industry with many installations around the world. One of the first things that comes to mind when thinking about digital signage is large screens. Actually the bigger the better. And yes, these displays still exist and boast not only high brightness but also longer run times for 24/7 operation in high demanding applications. There are some displays with super high brightness for outdoor installations and some with touch input for interactive applications. From the display industry perspective this market segment was a small but profitable one that had only to fear competition from better and ...Read more - Chaos and Opportunity in the Entertainment IndustryThe term “Evolve or Die” may have even more meaning today than when uttered to the broadcast industry some years ago by the FCC Chairman. Things are so ripe for rapid change now that we are likely to look back on this period someday and gasp at the changes set in place that reshaped the way content is created, distributed and consumed. That may sound like hyperbole, but let’s consider the trends and see if you agree. At a recent SMPTE industry luncheon, Sinclair Broadcast Group VP of Advanced Technology Mark Aitken tried to ring a cautionary bell. In his speech, titled ...Read more
- Touch Gesture Motion Advancements
The Touch Gesture Motion Conference held October 28-30, 2014 in Austin, Texas, exemplified how far human computer interaction has come and revealed new prospects for the future of user interfaces. The conference organizers stated that the 2014 Touch Gesture Motion (TGM) event was the tenth similar event covering these topics. The initial and subsequent TGM events came on the heels of the June 2007 launch of the Apple iPhone that popularized multi-touch user interface technology. The iPhone was not the first handset to incorporate a capacitive touch display – that would be the LG Prada mobile phone first announced in December ...Read more - Rooting for the Roots – Taking the Right Route
Many among us consider today’s rapid changes and significant number of high end innovations in entertainment and entertainment technology, among other businesses and industries, to be in a state of upheaval and disruption. That is not necessarily a bad thing. In particular, we are seeing growth in the ways that content is produced and distributed, and how, where and when it is viewed across many platforms. Such technologies as over the top (OTT), virtual reality, display devices, broadband connectivity and all manner of cloud computing and storage systems, mobile data, mobile payments, the commoditization of voice calls, wearables and many more are ...Read more - A Shift is Upon UsWhile the world of content creation and distribution is going through a major upheaval, it is the way we interact with it that will signify the most profound change in the coming years. If the proposed Comcast – Time Warner Cable or the AT&T – DirecTV deals are approved or if what may occur between Sprint and T-Mobile moves forward, it will affect the way we access and store content in the cloud. Voice and gesture technologies are going to continue to grow in their ease of use and reliability as the world moves closer and closer to a ubiquitous internet of ...Read more
- Augmented Reality is Eying Vertical MarketsWhen we take the term ‘Augmented Reality’ at face value it describes a device or service that ‘enhances reality by adding something to it’. In our CE-driven world of mobile addiction, most associate the term augmented reality with a method of providing additional visual information to the user by means of a head mounted display, typically embedded in some version of eyewear. Of course the broader definition would also include head-up displays as they are used in airplanes and automobiles today. As a matter of fact it would also include all those audio devices that are used in museum and ...Read more
- Is Home Theater Coming Back?The traditional home theater market served by the custom install community has not been a very happy place for a long time as the great recession really was not good for business. But new signs of life are now emerging to suggest a turnaround may indeed be underway or possible in the near term. One of the key indicators is the involvement of new and major players: For the first time, Christie Digital has launched a new Home Entertainment Division with a range of 1-chip and 3-chip DLP projectors plus new flat panels, audio and control solutions. Barco has re-entered the cinema space ...Read more
- Mobile Displays and their Effect on the IndustryMobile devices have, to a large degree, been carrying the positive development of the CE industry in recent years. The high consumer demand for mobile devices offset the lackluster needs for PCs and TVs. From a display perspective that meant that large size displays where replaced with many more smaller displays. Unfortunately one 40″ display panel yields roughly one hundred 4″ displays. In 2012 and 2013 the TV unit sales dropped by roughly 15 million units. This equates to roughly 1.5 billion 4″ displays or 300 million 9″ displays. While the sum of tablets and smartphones may have grown significantly in ...Read more
- The End of ITO Dominance is in SightIndium Tin Oxide, or ITO, is a key material for making displays. It is a transparent conductive material that applies voltage to the clear aperture in the LCD and provides the transparent electrodes for touch screens as well. Alternative solutions by a number of companies are in development, and these are now seeing success in the market. In fact, their success is already starting to impact the cost and adoption of ITO in a range of applications beyond just displays. According to a new report from Nanomarkets (Transparent Conductor Markets: 2014-2021), revenue from ITO sales will increase for a few more years ...Read more
- Neuroscience Altering the Way Moving Images are Produced
One of the human factors that has always been extremely relevant to display technology is the way that images are perceived in the brain. In addition to the art and technology of producing static and moving pictures, the neuroscience of perception has slowly caught up in film and video production. Recent studies, however, may accelerate our understanding of how the brain processes images. Filmmakers and scientists gathered together this summer to explore the science of how movies are perceived in the brain, with an examination of how modern film making affects the mental and physical responses of the audience. Held in ...Read more