Photonics Spectra: By applying voltage to liquid crystals, eyeglass lens focusing power can be changed, having the potential to replace bifocals, trifocals, multifocals and other applications that require multiple levels of focusing power.
One of the difficulties in using bifocals is that the wearer must look up and down through the lenses depending on the desired focusing power. Progressive lenses that have focusing power that progressively becomes stronger as you look toward the bottom part of the lenses have eased the difficulty but the main problem remains: the wearer must look up and down.
Guoqiang Li, an assistant research professor of optical sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson along with Nasser Peyghambarian and a team from Arizona and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta have demonstrated a liquid crystal-based lens with the capability of quickly switching focusing power by applying an electric signal.
A 5 micron-thick layer of E7 liquid crystal is used between two flat pieces of glass. The liquid crystals are controlled by applying 2 volts or less that changes the effective reflective index resulting in the change of focusing power.
First of all, this sounds like a technological advancement, which it is, but when applied to wearers of multifocal lenses, the applications might be quite limited. The cost of such a devices would be too expensive for most. Second, most wearers of glasses prefer something light, but this device would be quite heavy. Third, for those that require quick switching of near vision to far vision and back, the use of a switch to turn the device on or off makes it impractical.
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Twice: The 56″ DLP unit uses LEDs as a light source rather than a conventional UHP lamp. Conventional UHP lamps burn out in 4-5 years whereas Samsung is stating that its LEDs will last a conservative 20,000 hours; most LEDs are rated much longer at around 50,000 hours. There will be 18 LED ships with six reds, six blues and six greens. With the LEDs, the company is stating that the color gamut is improved and the color wheel has been eliminated removing a condition called “the rainbow effect” that has irritated some users. The MSRP of Samsung’s HL-S5679W is about $4000 and has a Full HD (1080p) resolution making it rather future-proof. The 16:9 aspect ratio 56″ DLP unit with HDMI input with an unidirectional CableCard slot and an ATSC tuner is slated to ship around September.
1080p with LED is really the future of TV technology and would be my choice of TV, though the $4000 price is a bit high.
Update 2006.07.31: The LED technology used in its 56″ DLP is provided by Luminus Devices, a three-year old startup based in Woburn, Mass. Luminus wants to replace all the lamps powering rear-projection TVs (RPTVs) with LEDs in 2008. Luminus’ PhlatLight technology provides better brightness than other competitors such as Cree, OSRAM, and Philips Lumileds.
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Samsung 940BW
Size: 19″
Aspect Ratio: 16:10
Pixel Format: 1440 x 900
Brightness: 300 cd/m2
Contrast Ratio: 500:1
Response Time: 4ms
Viewing Angle: 160/160
Input: VGA, DVI-D
Availability: June 28, 2007 in India
ChannelTimes.com: Samsung introduced its 940 BW 19″ wide LCD monitor in India on June 28. The monitor has a 1440×900 resolution and has a 16:10 aspect ratio. Although ChannelTimes is indicating that two whole A4 size pages can be viewed side by side, that is not true. A4 size pages are even longer than letter sizes and not even 1680×1050 resolutions can handle two letter sized pages at 100% in Microsoft Word. You need at least a 1920×1200 resolution display to do that, barely.
Samsung is also planning to introduce other wide format LCD monitors with 20″ and 21″ in the third quarter of 2006. The funny thing about Samsung is that it does not know which size to choose since the company has 19″, 20″, and 21″ sizes all in wide. I would not be surprised to see 22″ soon. The 940 BW has high-bandwidth digital content protection (HDCP) probably working in conjunction with a DVI connection. The unit sports a 4ms response time.
Update 2008.04.16: The 940BW is hard to come by these days. I did a quick check on PriceGrabber and there are only two results: one is open-box and the other is refurbished. How times fly. But the prices are great. You can get the open-box version for just $159 (plus tax and shipping). Also, what I didn’t mention before is that most 19″ wide LCD panels are of the TN+Film variety, which have fairly fast response times (great for gaming) but is not as good at viewing angles compared to larger (and more expensive) PVA or IPS based units. Of course, at just $159, you shouldn’t expect too much.
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The Taiwan Economic News, MyEGov: Quanta Computer, an integrator in Taiwan, will be building LCD TVs for Toshiba. LCD TV panels will be sourced from AUO and CMO, who work with Quanta closely. Quanta will be building 32″, 37″, and 42″ LCD TVs for the Japanese brand and is targeting to ship 500,000 LCD TVs by the end of 2006.
Image: Quanta Computer R&D center in Taoyuan
Toshiba has captured about 10% of the LCD TV market in Taiwan with aggressive prices: $1200 for its 32″ LCD TV and $1800 for its 37″ LCD TV–prices that are competitive with the local first tier Taiwanese brands.
It has always been the case, but just because it has a Japanese brand does not mean it was made in Japan or has components that are Japanese. Toshiba is a case in point: Toshiba’s TV boxes will be put together by a Taiwanese company (Quanta), be sourced with LCD TV panels from Taiwanese companies (AUO, CMO) and will probably be packaged and shipped by Taiwanese and/or Chinese companies. So why do we even bother continuing to buy a Japanese brand when nothing is Japanese except for the name?
I would be on the lookout for a Quanta-branded TV. Quanta took a step in that direction when it announced that it will be setting up a joint venture with Sanyo Electric to develop, manufacture and sell LCD TVs under the Sanyo brand.
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c|net UK: Cybershot is the brand that Sony uses for digital cameras in some markets such as the US. It’s K800i is a mobile phone and is the first to have the brand Cybershot on it. The K800i has a fairly high-resolution 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera with a Xenon-based flash and lens cover. It lets you have conversations via video, has a FM radio and MP3 player and simple PIM functions (calendar, notes, task list, world time, etc.) and is a 3G phone. A four-point joystick is used for navigation and controling music playback.
The main screen is 2.1″ in size and has a resolution of 240 x 320 pixels, or QVGA. The LCD displays 262,144 colors. With side buttons, the K800i can be used like a regular digital camera, on its side. Instead of using a Memory Stick Pro Duo, Sony Ericsson decided on the smaller format Memory Stick Micro, which is only 15 x 12.5 x 1.2mm — very small.
The phone works on GSM 900, 1800, 1900 and UMTS networks with talk times of up to 7 hours on GSM networks and 2 1/2 hours on UMTS. Standby times are up to 350 hours for GSM and UMTS. For data connectivity, it is GPRS (2.5G) capable and connects to WCDMA (3G) networks. It has a built-in memory of 64MB, but will not be enough to store video captures of up to 176 x 144 or QCIF resolutions.
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