A Flat World

Around the time of the New Millennium, the microwave mapping of the universe was begun and it was almost immediately determined that the universe is flat. Amazingly, it was once thought that the earth was flat and the sky was round, sitting like an inverted bowl over the earth. Now the earth is round and the sky is flat. We live in a flat universe. I recently published a blog article about a flat panel camera. Shortly thereafter Technology Review published an article on the same subject. Now Apple has patented a flat panel fingerprint sensor. As I noted before, as each component reaches its norm areal and performance limit, man components such as cameras, speakers, and now biometrics will be improved by making larger but flat versions. When the screen becomes flexible, these components will need to be flexible as well.

Barry Blundell's "Glasses-free 3D cinema 70 years ago"

This 60+ page White Paper is an abridged extract from the second volume of “3D Displays and Spatial Interaction” which I’m in the process of writing. The document reviews early efforts (prior to 1950) to implement glasses-free 3D cinema. It focuses on work undertaken in Russia (S P Ivanov), Belgium (E Noaillon), France (F Savoye), and the UK (Dennis Gabor). Other pioneering work will be included elsewhere in the book. The subject is fascinating and I hope that you will find the material of interest. Your feedback would be much appreciated.

The White Paper may be downloaded from www.barrygblundell.com

Parting Ways

From the point where HDTV was ready to implement until it actually was implemented, a full decade past. The time was both a concession to the practical issues involved in updating US TV stations and a bribe to those same stations to make the investment by granting them additional spectrum. Standard Definition color TV (NTSC) lasted for 40 years. Less than a decade into HDTV the consumer electronics industry wants to move from HDTV to 4K. For a variety of reasons, there is no chance that the broadcasters will go along. As with the transition to HDTV, they must make a substantial infrastructure investment with no pathway for earning additional returns. Given the ever increasing value of the radio spectrum, there is no chance that congress will once again bribe them with free spectrum in order to make the transition. The idea of promoting 4K is an acknowledgement of the diminishing relevance of broadcast TV. Given this state; given that the broadcasters no longer have the final word on TV formats, why stop at 4K. 4K is a great boon to the digital signage industry but ordinary consumers might be better served by other format changes such as a wider aspect ratio. Digital signage might also benefit from increased aspect ratios as well. On both TV and other platforms, display technology has been pushed to the point where some specs exceed what the human eye can comprehend while other factors languish with obvious needs for improvement. If the broadcasters are no longer the controlling factor for TV formats, then "let 1,000 flowers bloom."