Display Week 2009: ID Magazine Blog Entries: Day 2

Information Display's "roving reporters" are blogging about what they've discovered at the 47th annual Society for Information Display's Symposium, Seminar & Exhibition. Here are their reports from Day 2:

Flexible Displays
San Antonio, TX; June 2, 2009. While a Monday press release announced the launch of Hewlett Packard's new eSkins display technology, HP is not officially exhibiting at Display Week; the only way to see the first samples is by private appointment. And so, Tuesday afternoon, I strolled a few blocks from the convention center to meet up with Ken Abbott, HP's director of emerging technology at an area hotel. After a brief introduction to the eSkins concept, Abbott revealed a series of prototypes, including both basic black films and an eye-popping trio of cyan, yellow, and magenta displays. The eSkins displays are thin, flexible plastic composites that can switch from highly colored to nearly invisible (HP quotes 50% to 65% transparency) in about half a second. Abbott was tight-lipped about the underlying display technology, calling it "electrokinetic" -- my unconfirmed best guess is that it;s based on collecting or spreading colored fluid droplets, similar to an electrowetting display. Currently, eSkins are single-color, and restricted to relatively coarse pre-defined segments and icons. That said, after reading HP's symposium paper by Tim Koch and co-workers, it seems this might just be a first step in creating a full color reflective display reminiscent of HP's successful line of inkjet printers. --Rob Zehner, E Ink

LCDs
San Antonio, TX; June 2, 2009.Mary Lou Jepsen of PixelQi spoke yesterday at the SID Business Display Conference, at which she showed photos of her company's new LCD panel. Today, in a private suite, I got a firsthand look at this new display. The new transflective design shows grayscale images (black and white) with the backlight turned off and just using ambient light. The display's background is not as white as some e-paper screens, such as on the Kindle, but it's way better than "good enough" to be a practical way to view text, even in direct sunlight. And in dim light, you can turn on the backlight and get a full color display. I saw the new panel with a color gradient test image, and it looked very good. And unlike most bistable e-paper displays, the PixelQi panel can show full color, full motion video.

PixelQi is aiming at the netbook and e-reader markets initially. The company is "fabless," in that it relies on another company to actually manufacture the panels for it. PixelQi designed the panels so that they have the same dimensions, mounting points, and electrical connections as traditional LCD panels already on the market, so that design engineers can make switching to PixelQi panels a run-in change. The excellent image quality even under bright light conditions and the power-saving ability to run without using a backlight when there is sufficient ambient light should make this panel appealing to makers of netbooks and other portable devices. --Alfred Poor, HDTV Almanac

OLEDs
San Antonio, TX; June 2, 2009.Second day of the show, today on the hunt for OLED news. SID did not disappoint.

Magin showed some very cool SXGA microdisplays at its booth; less than 200 mW power to drive a 1280 x 1024 triad pixel array. The colors were vivid; the experience with the headmounted demo unit was great.

Ignis showed 2-in. OLED panels driven, amazingly enough, by amorphous silicon backplanes. Rather than try to invent new physics, this group is using some clever in-pixel circuits and algorithms to compensate for the errors that build up over time. Very nice image using mainstream backplane technology.

Samsung Mobile Display had several OLED offerings, but what caught my eye was a unit demonstrating the use of Pentile technology to increase the effective resolution of the display through subpixel rendering.

In the Symposium, Samsung Mobile Display described the fabrication of a 40-in. high-resolution display, using a novel low-temperature "Super Grain" polysilicon backplane. A collaboration from Universal Display Corporation, LG Display, and L3 Communications reported on a rugged, 4-in. QVGA flexible full-color OLED. Add-Vision described progress on low-cost, screen-printable OLEDs for simple displays, indicators, and possibly lighting.

The amount of diversity and innovation in the OLED area is incredible, and I know there's more to see! --Paul Drzaic, President, Society for Information Display

Projectors
San Antonio, TX; June 2, 2009. Microvision is planning to launch its pico projector SHOWWX later this summer in the United States, and this accessory device looks ready for prime time. However, customers are going to have to make a difficult decision once they make up their minds to get one. The projector will come in three colors: gray, green, and blue. (I'm partial to the blue.) No matter which color you pick, you'll get a projector that is smaller and lighter than most digital cameras. And since it uses laser light, it doesn't have any optics that need to be focused, no matter what size the image is. It is designed to work with a wide range of video sources, and its wide format makes it well suited for showing movies. It's a versatile device that shows that the pico projector market is for real, and we've just begun to find out all the ways that these can be useful.--Alfred Poor, HDTV Almanac