The Microsoft Holodeck

Microsoft has filed a patent on an immersive display system that projects images on the walls around you in addition to the main image on the screen. Though the intent of the technology seems to be for gaming, if it is successful, it could find more general entertainment uses. The concept has some history, both successful and not. Before there was unlimited computing power, flight simulators used to monitor the direction of gaze of the pilot and generate high resolution imagery in front of him and much lower resolution in his or her periphery. The pilots could never tell that everything was not in high resolution. For the purposes of Microsoft's gaming technology, it would not be possible to shift the high resolution image to the wall beside you but it could very well give much more of the feel of being in the place rather than watching it on a screen.

Philips had previously launched a much less ambitious version of this called Ambilight where the the TV merely projected colors from the image to the wall around it. It did not have much impact on the market. I believe that it was not substantial enough. However, coupled with beam-steered speakers, the Microsoft innovation could offer a compelling experience. The technology needs a dark room with acceptable geometry and acceptable colors, however it is somewhat like 3D in that it may take some creative art in using it effectively. I would imagine that effects that start away from the main screen and draw your eye forward would be more effective than effects that would actually cause you to turn your head. I also imagine focusing the effects on the ceiling (always there, usually white)would be more effective that counting on bare walls around the set.

Black and White E-readers are Here to Stay

Like Rock and Roll, Black and White is here to stay, at least according to the recent NY Times article. The article was paraphrasing Jeff Bezos. However in an interview after the event at which the NY Times was reporting, Mr. Bezos seemed to say a more reasonable, “black and white displays will be around for a while to come”.

To be sure, a lot of trade-offs must be made in going to a color display. They are necessarily more complex, but more importantly for mobile devices, they consume multiples more power and the current generation of LCDs has no sunlight viewability capability at all. The first portable computers were monochrome. The Data General One (lunchbox configuration) had a monochrome LCD that was barely visible at all. The loss of brightness to do color made color out of the question then. The first notebook configuration PC, the Grid, had a red on black plasma screen. Plasma had no color capability then and the power consumption of that display made the Grid much more of a transportable than a mobile device. The original Compaq transportable had a monochrome CRT (green on white). Color CRTs were available and the power consumption did not matter as it was a plug-in device, but there was no color content in the PC world. This also meant that most monitors where monochrome as well being either green on black or amber on black.

The selection of a colored font (green or amber) rather than white on black was made for human factors reasons. Black on White, the paper paradigm, was also not used. In the eye, the cones (the color receptors) are in the center of the eye while the rods (the black and white receptors) are concentrated in the periphery of the eye. This arrangement is for very good primal reasons; in the dark you still want to have good peripheral vision to spot any sort of threat. In brighter environments you rely on your color vision. In an office environment using colored font is easier on the eyes. Color also provides chromatic contrast in addition to the brightness contrast of a white on black font. Pen on paper was inherently monochrome as adding color added significantly to the complexity and hence expense of reproducing handwritten documents. When the printing press was invented, the use of color blossomed but monochrome still tended to rule for cost constrained documents such as newspapers and paperback books. The image above is from a Gutenberg Bible.

Similar to the invention of the printing press, electronic word processing pioneered development of color. Information such as emphasis and misspellings were highlighted with color. This initial development of color content did away with monochrome computer monitors and subsequently with monochrome notebooks. In the early development of LCDs, yields on LCD arrays were low and yields on LCD color filters were even lower. A combination of increased yields and lower raw materials costs lead to color and monochrome LCDs equilibrating in price in the early 1990’s. Monochrome still had a substantial power consumption advantage. The color filter in an LCD disposes of about 2/3rds of the light coming from an LCD and powering the display is generally about half of the power consumption of a mobile device. So going to a color display meant about a 1/3rd reduction in batter life. However, once color was cost competitive with monochrome, color notebooks went from being about 20% of the market to about 95% of the market in about 9 months. The consumer was clearly stating their preferences.

Notably, Apple was the last to get rid of its monochrome notebook line. Steve Jobs had been an investor in a start-up that was developing a new kind of display technology. A friend of mine that saw an example said that it was monochrome and actually quite advanced for its time. However, perhaps it did not have a path to do color. Early on, some were writing Plasma off until it developed a means to do color. In any case, perhaps Mr. Jobs involvement with developing a monochrome display lead to the company holding on for monochrome for too long. When there was wide availability of color based software, color content, the transition to color in mobile computing was swift and absolute.

As noted above, color LCDs still have their issues with non-existent sunlight viewability and high power consumption as compared with digital paper such as the E-Ink displays in some Kindles. Although, I’m sure the E-Ink folk are gratified by the NY Times headline, I’m just as sure they are not going to stop working on color. However, Mr. Bezos may be right in that it might be a while. When the transition of notebooks from monochrome to color happened, color ranges were limited and color resolution was only 8 bits (that is 8 bits spread between red green and blue, not 8 bits per color)…. And, there was no need to do video refresh rates. Today, consumers have gotten used to color fidelity that is as good as their eyes can discern. A technology that only generates pastels might not be worth the power hit. Beyond that, there is the challenge of doing video refresh rates in a bi-stable display.

Conclusion
The statement that “Black and White is here to Stay” may be a bit overblown. Consumer’s preference for color is natural and overwhelming. They were unanimously willing to give up 30% of battery life to get color in notebooks. Perhaps they were willing to give even more. However, the power advantage of the paper-white display is much more than that.

Rugged Displays

Introduction
There are about 3 dozen parameters by which you can measure a display. Occasionally there is either a technical breakthrough or someone opts to up the performance on one of these significantly beyond the norm and then promote that feature heavily. Other device makers then follow suit to capitalize on the promotional spending the first mover is making with their own performance improvements and promotional spending. Soon performance and the claims of performance move beyond what the average person can actually experience, beyond what anyone can see, and sometimes beyond what can even be measured on conventional equipment.

Lately these have tended to focus on electronic improvements due to the funding sources for R&D in the industry. A prominent computing company frequently they surveys users of computing devices and regularly finds that ruggedness was always in the top three of areas where consumers desire improved performance. However increased ruggedness involves making trade-offs from areas the company was pushing, specifically thinness. So this is not an area that gets much attention from the company or its competitors even though it has very high consumer utility. In the notebook area, I am only aware of Panasonic with their Toughbook brand, actively promoting ruggedness. In the cell phone are, in-spite of designers desire to make cell phones increasingly thin, we find out from of the out-fall of the Apple v. Samsung case that the vast majority of cell phone user encase their phones, sometimes doubling or tripling the thickness in order to increase the ruggedness.

Of course, there are also companies that specifically make devices for children that necessarily design to more stringent specs; but toughness has not widely caught on within the industry… with a few exceptions that are mostly prescriptive. The ThinkPad has a special rubberized paint that gives it better impact performance. The iPhone has the Gorilla Glass cover instead of a plastic one to give it better resistance against surface scratches (keys) in your pocket. Sony also has offered a TV set with a Gorilla Glass cover to prevent screen damage in case the kids get too involved in their video games. However, there are other challenges besides impact and surface scratches.

Moisture
Early smart phones were very susceptible to moisture. Rather than fix the problem, the first reaction was to mark them with a dye that changed color when it got wet. This relieved the maker from having to pay for replacement of wet phones but did not solve the consumer’s problem. Lately, cell phone case makers have been offering water resistant models and some cell phone makers have introduced product that can actually be submerged without damage. In larger LCDs, digital signage and outdoor LCD TV sets have developed encasements that allow these devices to operate in the rain.

Sun
The sun can impact performance of a cell phone or mobile device in two ways. First, trying to use your mobile device outdoors is frequently problematic as the sun washes out the screen. Although this is not specifically ruggedness in that it is not a permanent failure of the device, it does render the device useless. The wash out can be so thorough, that it is sometimes not apparent that the screen is on. Pixel Qi makes a screen that is viewable in direct sunlight; I had expected that type of screen to star appearing on mobile devices before now. There is also a rumor that one of the next Kindles will have both an LCD and an e-paper display.

A second impact of the sun is radiant heating. The unsourced diagram shows the heating of the dashboard of a BMW on a 100 degree July day. The upper (green line) shows the dashboard reaches 185 degrees while the ambient (lower blue line) gradually climbs to 100. Please note that although the ambient air in the interior of the car may reach 145 degrees, the dashboard temperature is more a direct result of the amount of solar radiation it is receiving and the temperature curve reflects the rapid increase in radiation rather than the gradual increase in ambient temperature either inside or outside of the car. Further the dashboard is protected from some of the solar radiation by the glass in the car. An object in direct sun, say left on a picnic table near the summer solstice can reach 210 degrees or more and that equilibration with the current level of solar radiaon can happen in only about 10 minutes. Other than Apple’s preference for white encasements, little has been done to isolate mobile LCDs from possible impairment by the sun.

This may change. Although optical isolation is not a focus issue with mobile devices, it is a recognized problem with digital signage where both ambient light wash out and solar thermal clearing are substantial problems. Currently, the digital signage world basically lives with image wash out and uses active air cooling to combat the thermal issue. One LCD maker also seems to have a product that is significantly more temperature resistant to thermal clearing; however, I do not see them promoting this. More sophisticated approaches are available and the signage industry is actively investigating these. As they are applied to digital signage, they might also find their way into mobile devices as well.

Trinitron, Retina, & What do you call an Apple TV Set?

Trinitron
A Trinitron® TV is distinguished from the outside by the cylindrical shape of the front of the tube. This cylindrical shape reflects some important internal differences from traditional CRTs that have a roughly spherical shape. When the Trinitron was first introduced, it was a great step forward in color CRT image quality. However, it was followed shortly on by the Zenith innovation of Black Matrix which leveled the playing field. Actually, Black Matrix may have been an enabler for Sony and Trinitron as well as the first Trinitron sets could not show black and white content very well. This was a big draw back in the 1960’s as most of the available content was still Black and White. Applying Black Matrix to Trinitron tubes vastly improved their black and white image quality. As the technology developed the original “aperture grill” inside a Trinitron grew to be more like the “shadow mask” in a conventional CRT. Further detracting from the uniqueness of the Trinitron, Mitsubishi offered a Diamondtron ® set with identical technology.

The Trinitron TV set was first before Black Matrix and before competing Trinitron-like sets. It distinguished Sony in the minds of consumers as providing the best image quality even when their competitors made up the difference. It was neither unique nor all Sony’s technology. Sony also grew its brand image with platform innovations such as the Walkman® and Watchman®. However, when the main stream of television switched from CRTs to flat panels, the Trinitron mark went by the wayside as it seemed to be viewed by the company as a technology rather than an important part of the Sony brand.

Apple

The effective loss of the Trinitron brand coincides with the decline of Sony as the top consumer electronics brand. It also coincides with the emergence of Apple as a mainstream CE brand rather than a computer company. Indeed, Apple’s recent history shares much in common with Sony‘s past glory. Apple introduced the Retina display to the mobile phone market, in-part contributing to a remake of the platform by a significant increase in image quality. Similar to Trinitron, the core of this new brand depends in major part on technological contributions of would-be competitors; Apple does not make LCDs, Samsung does. Apple introduced new platforms, notably the iPod® and iPad®. The iPod directly displaced the Walkman. More importantly, the i-blank meme replaced the blank-man meme in mobile electronics. Where blank-man implied a supreme level of compactness, i-blank implies a supremely developed human interface. As much as the actual technology, what was at stake in the recent patent dispute with Samsung was the i-franchise. Though much of the subsequent commentary centers on a loss of consumer choice and potentially higher prices, the innovations that Apple created and the subsequent brand image where really what was at stake.

Amdahl
Some time ago, I attended a lecture by Gene Amdahl, founder of Amdahl computer. During the lecture, Mr. Amdahl described why he left IBM in order to build supercomputers at his own company. It was not his entrepreneurial spirit but his desired to build really high powered computers, a desire that he could not pursue at IBM at that time. He described a meeting that he had with the pricing manager for IBM mainframes. The pricing manager told how the price structure that IBM had in place for its mainframe product would be destroyed by providing too much computer in one package.

Apple may have a similar issue with the speculated Apple TV Set. While price management was the supercomputer issue at IBM (preventing them from developing an obvious product extension), I believe Apple has a brand management issue with a TV set. Although the Apple name carries considerable panache, as Sony still does, much of the value of the company is in the sub-brands as much of Sony’s value was in Trinitron…. What do you call and Apple branded TV set? Though the delay in launching such a set may be due to inaccurate rumors, technical issues, or the desire to ensure an absolutely distinctive product on first launch, there is some logic that says it is a marketing issue not a technical problem.

iTV already exists in the form of a TV news network. They use the little “i” in their logo as well. The image at the top of this article is the iTV logo from their web page; it demonstrates how an Apple product of the same name could cause confusion as to what the subject is. Retina is also in use of a sort. In the 1983 movie, “Videodrome,” the TV screen is several times referred to as the “Retina of the mind’s eye.” Apple TV is already taken as well, by another Apple product. Apple is free to transfer the brand name from one product to another, as Microsoft recently did with their Surface® brand; however, it seems to be the Apple sub-brands that have the consumers’ attention. Creation of a new brand, either for the TV itself or the TV screen is possible, but brand creation takes money and time. Further, having too many brands or overlapping brands can be damaging to the existing brand structure. Again, what do you call an Apple TV set? For a company that is its branding, this is not a trivial issue. An Apple product without the i-**** or retina co-brand is like a Sony product not labeled Trinitron or ****-man.

WTBS
When I was a student, the school radio station at MIT was WTBS, the “Technology Broadcast Station”. At that time, the FCC mandated an upgrade to low power radio stations and there was no money to upgrade WTBS. The school had obtained an unsolicited offer for its call letters from the New York Times; potentially launching the “Times Broadcast Station”; however the Times offered no money for the deal. Ted Turner offered a much better deal, paying for the school radio station upgrades with some money left over. Hence we now have the WTBS that everyone is familiar with. At MIT, WTBS was not a business, not a profit center. The objectives of those involved with the station were just to keep it on the air. The iTV network is an ongoing business that has been building their brand since the 1950’s…. Wonder what their stock sells for these days?