Samsung Transparent LCD now in mass production

This is interesting:
Samsung Electronics Becomes the World?s First in Mass Production of Transparent LCD Panel | Business Wire

What do you think - could these be used in notebook computers? All comments are welcome.

 

Anyone have any idea what it looks like, both the display and the monitor itself?

 

I won't buy it. Definitely.

I have been a computer user for several years and I have never needed to see the other side of the LCD.


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It's about friggin' time! I've been waiting for this, even if it's just for the cool factor or a change of pace. I personally think it's neat, but only time will tell how useful/productive it really is.

 

I could see them used in notebooks, but largely for the power savings.

 

I had a pocket tv over 15 years ago , it had a transparant lcd display and you viewed the image in a mirrow , you could also buy a clip on backlight for use at night.

 

Didnt read it yet, but I assume this is the OLED tech that we have seen around for a long long time but just not really mass produced or used in larger screens often.

Its best for portable devices I think since its so durable and low power consumption but I guess there should be some sort of niche market for it on notebooks, probably more practicle on netbooks since people are not really looking for highly color accurate screens and battery life is one of the max factors of netbooks (not to mention also size/weight)

OLED can be paper thin and even flexible...

Yeah if you take apart a LCD the screen part is already transparent and thin, its the backlight that is the larger part. OLED though is self lighting so that means you only need that paper thin part and nothing else to have a screen.

A few DIY projector projects I was looking at back in the day used the LCD panel and then a migshift lens & lighting system to transform a lcd monitor into a lcd projector.

 

I find this to be extremely amazing!

Im thinking of such thin and light panels for notebooks, and that is a resolution that I would buy for any notebook up to 15''. Although Im already thinking that we would have a high tendency of cracked displays

 

i wonder how it could be used in notebooks... but its pretty cool .. Certainly will get it in my next notebook

 

There's a lot of marketing going on here, and we should note a few things:

-This is a transparent LCD. That's it. That means it's the color part of a typical panel without the backlight, and they happened to make it transparent.

-This has no backlight. You need ambient light to do anything with it, so if you use it in a typical notebook, you'll still need a light source (read: you're not actually saving 90% of the power).

-Currently the notebook demos that have had this (a year or two back) were see through, ie: instead of a plastic bezel it was glass on either side. It had very little backlight, if any. This type of panel would be best used for graphical overlays of some sort.

-This is different from OLED and RGBLED, but somewhat more similar to TFT and IPS displays.

 

This sound bad. Like glossy screen bad. Like privacy bad.

Bad.

 

Well, depends on implementation. I was thinking of using it in a fashion where just the backlight is missing, so it would be something like this (bad ASCII art to follow).

<PRE>
Mirror/Prism assembly
|
V

| / |
| / |
Screen | / | Back of Lid
| / |
</PRE>

Thus instead of a backlight, you'd have some sort of mirror/prism assembly to "catch" ambient light and function as the "effective" backlight. And you'd still have a "regular" back of the lid for privacy functions. Issues with this would obviously be that you couldn't use it in the dark (unless you had a backup "backlight" still installed).

This has the interesting "feature" of possibly being more readable in bright light as opposed to dim light (unlike current screens).

 

Yeah, I was thinking too that this would be great for reading outdoors. It would be great for laptops too, at least make use of ambient light when available.

 

It'll be really cool I think for anything that involves a graphical overlay. Can you imagine something like this with stereoscopic cameras on the back of a device? You could have something like the 3DS's augmented reality but you could look through the screen. Also, for public displays that do not require text, you could essentially have a screen in the middle of a room for everyone to see and see through.

 

Literally putting the windows in Windows.

 

Haha technically, putting Windows in windows

 

To everyone who says this is bad...

Its obviously just a new thing. No one has any idea what to do with it yet.
Imagine when the first LCD came out, people were probably like, portable computing? How are we possibly going to make a machine with a thin lid made of glass on hinges and keep any structural integrity?

OK, maybe not. But heres another analogy, say we come up with more precise ways to sense movement and hand shapes. No one would care, maybe the deaf, but if someone was able to implement it into a better universal system for controlling the cursor, that could really change things.

What computing needs is change, not adaptation to specific ergonomics which basically make people more comfortable.
We haven't changed the keyboard, mouse, and 2d window system in decades. Isn't it about time we at least take a look over that learning curve to see everything could be much much easier?

Lets give the industry and engineers a chance to mess around a little bit.

If nothing else, I was thinking we could have tablet PCs that don't open. Instead the screen will raise up above the keyboard to make room for typing.

Keep in mind these aren't just transparent, they are flexible too. Am I right?

 

Looks good to.

 

No previews yet?

 

There is a demo of something similar from last year, and it appears I was mistaken above, this is actually an OLED (light emitting) screen.

Samsung Transparent OLED Display Notebook | Geeky Gadgets