Huge LED
billboards may be the most visible part of the emerging digital signage market,
but they are just the tip of an iceberg, one part of a multi-faceted market. Traditional
thick-film electroluminescent (EL) technology, for example, is enjoying a comeback
in signage, both for backlighting in dim environments and for what Osram Opto Semiconductors
calls the "luminous lettering and logo" niche. Some OLED manufacturers are positioning
themselves for backlighting applications, some of which are signage related. And
reflective displays are gaining new ground in signage-an arena where they have established
small niches in the past.
Recently, I read an article about an exploratory effort
by NHK in Japan to develop a new higher-resolution television system. The NHK Super
Hi-Vision system is designed to deliver images with 8K x 4K resolution with a 16:9
aspect ratio. As explained in the article, the objective is to be able to have
a 100-in. display and not have the individual pixels be visible from a distance
of 1 m. Wow!
By Steve Marsland, Steve Jurichich and Carl Cobb
McLaughlin Consulting Group
There is no question that 20 years from now, with continued improvements in light-emitting-diode (LED) price and performance, and existing limits to further improvement in cold-cathode-fluorescent lighting (CCFL) technology, all liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) will be illuminated using LEDs. In the long term, LEDs will beat CCFLs in every dimension-cost, power consumption, color gamut, environmental safety, switching speed, and higher dynamic range.
The first all-digital watch made its debut in 1972, using an LED display. The next year, Seiko unveiled the world's first LCD digital watch, and over the course of the next 35 years, the term "digital watch" became synonymous with LCDs.
Some 35 years later, Art Technology Ltd. hopes it has the product that will supplant the LCD as the dominant display for digital watches with the launch on Wednesday of its new line of Phosphor ™ brand watches, the first mass-produced watches to utilize an electronic-paper display.
