If wearing glasses to watch 3-D is less than enticing, Sharp may have an alternative. The electronics company announced Friday that it has developed a high-quality, no-glasses 3-D touchscreen LCD.
The company said the new screen, currently up to 3.4 inches, is "ideal" for such mobile devices as digital cameras and smartphones. Yoshisuke Hasegawa, Sharp's executive managing officer for LCDs, told news media Friday that "just like black-and-white TVs turned color, all displays will eventually be 3-D." The technology can also be used in large TVs, he said, but at the moment there are no specific plans for this kind of product.
Improvements in Silicon, Parallax
The 3-D screen uses a parallax barrier system, which contains a series of vertical slits to control the light reaching each eye. Since the image is slightly different for each eye, a perception of depth is created.
The company said conventional 3-D no-glasses screens with the parallax system, including ones it has produced, have failed to create high-quality 3-D images, but there have been several improvements in the technology.
One improvement resulted from advances by Sharp in CG-Silicon technology, which creates LCDs using high-performance, crystalline silicon with electron mobility much greater than ordinary silicon. The improved CG-Silicon allows more light to pass through the LCD, thus doubling the brightness.
The parallax design has also been optimized, which increases the efficiency of the light and reduces image-doubling created by the overlapping of left and right images. The newer 3-D LCD has about twice the horizontal and vertical resolution as a conventional 3-D LCD screen, twice the brightness, and a contrast ratio about 10 times greater.
In addition, the conventional 3-D LCD display is only available without touchscreen capability, while the new one can be touchscreen or not.
Challenge of "Limited 'Sweet Spot'"
Sharp said the no-glasses 3-D LCD display is scheduled to begin manufacturing sometime in the first half of its 2010 fiscal year. Hasegawa said the company expects half the displays for its mobile devices will be 3-D-capable within the next fiscal year.
Nintendo recently announced it will launch a version of its portable game player with 3-D within the next year. Sharp has declined to comment on whether its new 3-D screen will be used.
Ross Rubin, director of industry analysis for consumer technology at the NPD Group, said that, while he hasn't personally seen the new Sharp technology, he has seen "auto-stereoscopic" 3-D no-glasses screens from that company and others.
"One of the challenges has been a limited 'sweet spot' for the viewing angle," he noted. Rubin pointed out that this could be a significant issue with large displays like TVs, but less so with mobile devices.
But the payoff from high-quality no-glasses 3-D could be substantial. Rubin said NPD's research indicates that more than half of those surveyed cited glasses as an "inhibitor for adoption" of 3-D products.
"If Sharp does have good quality, glass-less 3D, at a reasonable price," he said, "this could give them a significant advantage."
No comments:
Post a Comment