Prototype display adjusts pixels for your viewing (angle) pleasure

We've certainly seen displays that look right back at you for interactive purposes, but a new system developed by Wayne Cheng and Chih-Nan Wu at the Photonics and Display Institute, National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan could enable the LCD to alter itself based on your viewing location. The researchers have devised a solution in which a camera tracks the eyes of the onlooker and subsequently uses software to adjust the "orientation of liquid crystals in the display and the power fed to light-emitting diodes behind each." The result is an image that remains clear and sharp regardless of how you're looking at the screen, and while the developers admit that it can only respond to one set of eyes at a time, they're hoping that "doctors and surgeons who use LCDs to view scans or X-rays" would be among the first to benefit.

[AlexP @ Aug 6th 2007 8:57PM]

*sigh*

Can't we just all move to OLED already?

[hemmy @ Aug 6th 2007 9:16PM]

OLEDs seconded. This is really a waste of time and research. People 99% of the time will view their LCDs from an optimum position anyway.

Research should be put into bringing OLEDs into the mass market. OLEDs don't have the viewing angle problems, have contrasts and color ranges comparable to CRTs, and consume much less power and LCDs. Bring it on!

[oGMo @ Aug 6th 2007 9:22PM]

OLED also dies really quickly. Who wants to play $1000 for a display that's going to be half as bright in a year or two, and the only way to fix it is replacement? They need to remedy that before the mass market.

This is also valid, valuable research. One single application, perhaps easily-implemented in this case, was user-view tracking. Don't be so closed-minded: we're talking an LCD that can adjust the orientation of its pixels. Perhaps at a pixel level. Might have interesting implications for 3D displays, or something new we have yet to think of.

[hemmy @ Aug 6th 2007 10:05PM]

Yes, I know that the OLED half life isn't great, that's why I prefer more research be done. As of january the half life of an OLED display was around 10,000 hours. But that was a vast improvement over 5,000 hours not even a year before.

Red and green OLED component cells now exceed 60,000 hour lifespans. It was the blue organic cells that manufacturers have had major problems with. I think OLED has made great strides in a short time.

And no, I'm not being closed minded, my opinion was in terms of mass market viability, home & theater/computer & entertainment. This research clearly has value, but for far more specialized uses, like in the medical industry, where for example, a surgeon doesnt have to waste time adjusting a display. I still think it's a bit of a waste, where efforts on improving viewing angles might be more beneficial across the board. At least OLED doesn't have viewing angle issues.

[Icheb @ Aug 7th 2007 7:15AM]

I sure hope you mean MTBF and NOT half life, which is used in context with radioactive material.

[hemmy @ Aug 7th 2007 5:55PM]

By the term "halflife" I am of course speaking figuratively. I am implying the time it takes for the OLED display to degrade to half it's original display brightness.

[Joey Geraci @ Aug 6th 2007 10:04PM]

Wouldn't it be the LCD's firmware that was controlling the liquid crystal's orientation, not software, technically?

[MikeG @ Aug 7th 2007 11:22AM]

You don't know the difference between hardware and software do you.
Firmware = Software
Stuff you can poke = Hardware

[Joey Geraci @ Aug 7th 2007 11:05PM]

Sure I know the difference. But you don't. Firmware certainly doesn't equal software. Firmware is a usually simple program or set of programs that are embedded on or near hardware components. Firmware would be required to modify the orientation of liquid crystals in real-time not software.

[Triangle Man @ Aug 6th 2007 10:27PM]

More people stealing my ideas D:

[Shannin @ Aug 6th 2007 10:33PM]

wouldnt it be easier to slap an rfid tag on your forhead then have a reader track the location of the tag the rotate the actual screen to the peosition that the person is standing at?

[Solomon @ Aug 6th 2007 11:09PM]

In Soviet Russia, the tv focuses on you!

[spam_from_engadget @ Aug 7th 2007 12:55PM]

This would be great for rotating portrait/landscape displays. Currently these have very odd viewing angle characteristics when in portrait orientation. And it's easy to do, because you only need a tilt switch not an eye tracker to work what angle to use.