More wide than wide-screen; Philips Cinema 21:9 LCD TV

I am actually laughing writing about this, but its true. And not without a reason anyway. You must be familiar with the fact that one of the reasons wide screen monitors and TVs were introduced had to do with digital entertainment. Movies have all traditionally been filmed in with an aspect ratio varying from about 1.78:1 to a maximum of about 2.66:1 (cinema scope), though most movies nowadays use 2.40:1. However most HD TVs and computer monitors sport a 16:9 (1.78) or 16:10 (1.6) aspect ratio. So it seems they are never wide enough to present a picture without the bars above and below. It seems now Philips has a solution and its the solution that makes me laugh.

This spring Philips plans to introduce the ultra wide screen TV boosting a aspect ratio of 21:9 (2.34:1). In Philips own words expressed on its website

Cinematic Viewing Experience:

We don’t just watch films at the cinema we experience them. The 21:9 aspect ratio of a cinema screen was developed to mimic our own peripheral vision, providing a totally immersive viewing experience.

This immersion is what makes 21:9 cinematic viewing such an all-encompassing experience and why until now it has continued to provide the optimum medium in which to fully enjoy films. Such is its power that we routinely undergo an intensely personal, emotional journey when watching a film in a cinema. It is the experience of ‘losing ourselves’ in a film.

This Cinematic Viewing Experience is extremely difficult to replicate at home. Even the largest conventional TV screen cannot provide the total immersion that we enjoy at a cinema because when it comes to watching a film, the viewing experience isn’t determined by screen size.

Films fill a cinema screen.The images reach right out to the very limits of the screen and of our peripheral vision, enveloping us so completely in the action that we actively ‘feel’ along with the characters in front of us.This cannot be achieved on a conventional 16:9 widescreen TV at home without moving to a ‘letterbox’ view or losing the full scope of the original shot.

Until now. With an aspect ratio of 21:9, the Cinema 21:9 is the world’s first cinema-proportioned LCD TV. In combination with Philips’ Ambilight technology - accurately matching on-screen content to extend the picture beyond the confines of the screen - Cinema 21:9 delivers the most completely immersive home viewing experience possible.

Thus finally you can have an experience as close to cinema as possible. However personally I wish they stop doing this. Displays have been getting wider and wider and there seems to be no end to this trend. The final solution to this problem might lie in the future with some form of projection on glass or mid air displays.

P.S. You can check out the pictures of this TV here, shot on its unveiling at the CES 2009.

The next in display technology: Laser TV

CRT, LCD, Plasma, OLED, SED... the list goes on. It's one of never ending series of developments in display technology that has been going on for decades. Now the latest addition is the Laser TV. It actually surprised me that this product which was more of a promising technology would actually be hitting the shelves so soon. And it has. Welcome to LASER VUE by Mitsubishi Electric. Launched by Mitsubishi Electric at the CES 2008 in Jan and released for the consumer market in Nov 2008, LASER VUE is available in North America for 6,999 $!

Essentially, the Laser TV of which LASER VUE is an example is a DLP Rear Projection TV in which the illumination source, which usually is a high intensity discharge lamp (or HID lamp for short) is replaced by laser diodes (for producing lasers in red, blue and green wavelengths).  The reason for replacing a conventional light source such as HID lamp with a coherent light source such as laser is that this greatly increases the color gamut perceptible to the human eye. Proponents of this technology are confident that a laser TV can reproduce 90% of the color gamut perceptible to the human eye as compared to the usual display technologies such as CRT, LCD, Plasma etc. which only reproduce 40% of the perceivable color gamut. This means more than twice the color gamut available with today's HD sets!

There are interesting facts about the lasers used for illumination as well. Though there are commercially available red laser diodes, there are no commercially available blue and green laser diodes that operate at room temperature with the adequate power and lifetime required for laser TV. Instead the blue and green lasers are obtained with frequency doubling from the laser from a infra red diode by aid of a VECSEL cavity.

Once these three lasers are available, just like a traditional DLP Rear Projection TV set, they are sent to a Digital Micromirror Device, where the DMD reflects the red, blue and green laser to either a lens system or to a dump (usually a heat sink), which is then projected onto a screen. Hence a image is obtained this way.

Inspite of the crisp image obtained with a laser TV, there are still some hurdles that remain in the widespread adoption of this technology. Baring price, one criticism raised is of the impact such a display technology could have on human vision due to the fact that coherent light sources such as laser can cause significant damage to the eye sight. However proponents of this technology point out that this risk can be alleviated with diffusion filters which are already bundled into the commercial product. 

It remains to be seen whether this technology will ever become as popular as its rivals LCD and Plasma which it hopes to compete with.  But with its very high price tag and LCD and Plasma controlling the consumer market and other technologies such as OLED and SED already on the way, not to mention the dismal global economic climate, it remains to be seen whether it will succeed. I for one remain doubtful. 

USB 3.0 over the horizon

It looks like the third implementation of the Universal Serial Bus is just over the horizon and we can expect products based on it later this year or earlier next year. And those products would be amazing in themselves, just because of carrying USB 3.0 connectors alone. Also reffered to as the Super Speed USB, USB 3.0 brings much greater speed than its predecessor USB 2.0.  Whereas USB 2.0 topped at a theoretical data transfer rate of 480 Mbps, USB 3.0 can theoretically touch 5 Gbps! Imagine that.  This way USB 3.0 is about 10 times faster than USB 2.0 and is even faster than other competing standards like e-SATA and firewire.  e-SATA has a max theoretical transfer rate of 3 Gbps and that of firewire 800 Mbps. 

There is another great feature about USB 3.0. Its full duplex, meaning it can upload and download data simultaneously. USB 2.0 is only half duplex. Additionally USB 3.0 can supply power, e-SATA cannot, so its a win-win situation for USB 3.0. Physically USB 3.0 also differs from the USB 2.0 in that it has six wires rather than two, hence USB 3.0 cables are substantially thicker than USB 2.0.

Intel demostrated USB 3.0 at the latest CES 2009 and with Apple ditching firewire in favor of USB, USB 3.0 seems poised to become the standard replacement for both firewire and e-SATA. And why not,  as CNET notes, its superfast and transfers a 25 GB HD movie quickly. How quickly? It takes only 70 seconds!

A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR 2009!

I happen to have forgotten my own blog but nevertheless, I say a HAPPY NEW YEAR, to all who by sheer accident happen to visit it. Why this neglect, well a lot of things, lot of reasons but I make this resolve that in 2009 that I would be paying more attention to it than I gave in 2008. So for my next post stay tuned. I hope I won't forget this blog again. :)
P.S. I also write this, keeping in view and welcoming the International Year of Astronomy 2009!

61st Independence Day Today!

First, A very Happy Independence Day to all Pakistanis!

Today is 14th August, the eve of Pakistan's 61st Independence Day. Finally we Pakistanis have got through another year, somehow. Though it remains to be seen how long can miracles keep this country safe. After all we Pakistanis take a lot for granted, we keep making mistakes, no not the new ones only, we also keep repeating them.

My previous post addressed this, albeit in a musical way. It dealt with our internal inconsistencies, but the problem is unfortunately no longer internal anymore. Now finally when there is trouble brewing on our western border, I really think how we will get through all this this time. Our eastern border has well not really been ever a cozy place anyway, one really thinks how would this country cope with these problems this time when we don't have just a single adversary to deal with any more, not to mention from two sides, geographically?

So is this external threat in part due to our internal instability. Partly I think it is. It is perhaps ones own faults that gives a chance to other countries to pursue their agendas in this country which are not at all in our best interests. It is our own weaknesses that invites others countries to indulge in activities that threaten our existence.

Let's on this great occasion pledge that we as a nation will work hard to rid our country of the evils of corruption, racism, religious intolerance and most particularly terrorism so that the future of our country could be insured. And let us also pray that this country may get the political leadership and stability that we Pakistanis have searched for the last 61 years. Let this country may become what Quaid-i-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan wished to see in his own words as, "One of the greatest nations of the world".