Hasta La Gadget!

Ultra HD may be gaining momentum, but we’re still not used to seeing it packaged so neatly for the desktop as in the new ASUS PQ321 display. Offering 3840 x 2160 resolution spread across 31.5-inches, the new “True 4K” Monitor not only delivers four-times the pixels as regular Full HD, but does so using an IGZO panel that promises improved brightness and detail while sipping less power and coming in thinner than any other Ultra HD display.

IGZO panels use Indium Gallium Zinc Oxide, rather than amorphous silicon. Since that supports greater electron mobility – roughly 40x the amount, in fact – the pixels can be smaller than on traditional LCD panels.

ASUS doesn’t detail exactly where it’s getting the IGZO screen from, but the most obvious source is Sharp. The Japanese company announced back in April 2012 that it was entering bulk production of a 32-inch IGZO panel running at the same resolution as ASUS’ PQ321.

We’ve already seen IGZO prove its worth on smaller panels in the wide. A number of smartphones and tablets have been released for the Japanese market using Sharp’s screen technology; we spent some time with the Sharp AQUOS Tab SHT21, for instance, which promises a choice of either matching brightness from rival devices but with roughly double the battery life, or of boosting brightness to levels where the tablet can be easily used outside.

According to ASUS’ specs, the PQ321 delivers 140ppi and 350cd/m2 brightness, with an 8ms gray-to-gray response time. Viewing angles are 176-degrees in both directions, while inputs include DisplayPort, two HDMI, serial, and audio in/out. 2W stereo speakers are also fitted, and there’s picture-in-picture support.

The whole thing is 35mm at its thickest point (the stand adds to that, obviously), though you’ll still need a reasonably sized desk in order to accommodate a 31.5-inch display. A deep wallet is probably required, too; ASUS hasn’t announced pricing for the PQ321, but Sharp’s own 32-inch Ultra HD monitor carried a whopping $5,500 tag when the company announced it back in November.

VIA: FarEastGizmos

ASUS PQ321 Ultra HD 31.5″ display brings IGZO to the desktop is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Google Glass fever and upstart Meta’s rapidly financed US $100,000 Kickstarter campaign indicate #1. impending altered reality market maturity, or #2. everything new remixes the old, but still the geeks sing “Ohhhhh look, shiny!”

Google Glass: Loudest Voice in the Room
In development for several years and announced way back when, Glass finally got to developers and the geek elite about two months ago (for US $1500, plus getting oneself to a mandatory orientation meeting thingy). Glass is a kind of hybrid between a head-mounted display and augmented reality (AR) prosthetic outfitted with the internets. Really, if you’re reading Akihabara News you’re probably already hip, but if not there’s a search engine very ready to help you. Big G overlord Eric Schmidt indicated last month that a consumer-ready Glass product is about a year away. Realistically, at this point it’s unclear whether Glass is expected to be a viable consumer product or more of a proof-of-concept development platform.

Meta: Quickly Kickstarted, High-Profile Team Assembled – Working Man’s AR?
If you saw last year’s sci-fi short film “Sight” or the YouTube sci-fi series “H+,” you’re already hip to what Columbia University’s Meron Gribitz & pals are aiming for with Meta. While Glass is more of a HUD with some AR, Meta is less with the acronyms and more what the name suggests: information about information, i.e., Meta hopes to overlay manipulatable imagery/data on the physical world, augmenting real reality and projecting virtual reality (VR) artifacts that you can fiddle with in real time.

For now, Meta has a slick video, a prototype, a crack team of engineers and advisors including professor Steven Feiner and wearable computing advocate guy, Steve Mann, and financing to get their dev kit into dev’s hands. To its credit, Meta does seem to aim less at generalized gee-whiz gimmickry and heads-up automated narcissism, and more toward the getting actual work done.

Asian Alternatives:
First: POPSCI, very well done. The image on the above left melts one’s technosnarky heart.

In typical form, China has assimilated and excreted: the Baidu Eye is their Glass clone. There’s no indication of plans to bring it to market, so maybe they just wanted to say “Ha, ha, we can, too!” Or maybe they just wanted to do research and ride the Glass hype, which is understandable. But China, dude – might wanna think about doing some original stuff someday soon. That lack of intellectual capital is going to sting when “Designed in California” meets “Made in the U.S.A. With My 3D Printer.”

Over here in Japan we’ve got startup Telepathy One pushing a Glass-looking, but as they openly declare, not Glass-like AR headset (above-right). While technology writers rhetorically speculating as much in a headline makes for good Search Engine Optimization (other adjectives include: disingenuous, blithe, lame), rather than compete with Glass, Telepathy One is focusing on social networking & multimedia – but they too are clearly attempting to catch the contemporary current of AR hype – which is understandable. And hey, even if Telepathy One flashes and disappears, that fact that the phrase “Japanese Startup” can be used without the usual preface of “Why Aren’t There Any…” is a positive thing.

Okay Then, It’s Almost Doable – But Still…
Indeed, the apps, core software, computational capability, and the ubiquitous-enough network connectivity essential for decent AR are quickly ramping up. Along with innovative concepts like the AR/VR mashup Eidos Masks, alternatives to and more advanced versions of the above devices will likely continue to crop up. In fact, the never-even-close-to-being-vaguely-realized promises of VR are also showing signs of decreased morbidity. So…

We Actually Want It vs. They Want Us to Want It
Glass, the engine of the current VR hype machine, is of course conceptually nothing new, but it has the word “Google” in the name, so people are paying attention. Of course even Google gets ahead of itself from time to time (Buzz? Wave?), but lucky for them selling ads pays well, and they’ve got a boatload of cash to pour into whatever sounds cool. Millions have benefited from Google’s side projects and non-traditional ventures (Gmail much?), but the expectations leveled on Glass are… perhaps a bit much. Suffice it to say, Google absolutely nails search and software and web apps, but thus far big-G’s hardware projects have but limped.

But if we’ve got the cash, that probably won’t stop us! The soft tyranny of the tech elite is the ability to ring a shiny bell and then watch the doggies line up to pay. Luckily, actually useless products, products produced with too much hype, products produced with too much variety, products out of touch with the people who ultimately finance their creation – no matter how awesome they seem at first blush – they will fail. Hard. (Note: Sony, if you’re here, please reread the last sentence!).

Until AR & VR technologies can out-convenience a smartphone, shrink into a contact lens, dispense with voice controls and the confusing non-verbal communication of fiddling with a touchscreen on your temple, i.e., until such devices can move beyond relatively impractical novelty, it’s unlikely they’ll amount to much more than narrowly focused research and demonstration platforms.

This is to say, along with inventing Google Glass, the search giant might also want to invent something for us to like, you know, do with it. Or maybe that’s not fair – so to be fair, one can concede that no new technology is perfect at 1.0, and any awesome innovation has to start somewhere…

Maybe it could start in 1995. Ask Nintendo about that.

• • •

Reno J. Tibke is the founder and operator of Anthrobotic.com and a contributor at the non-profit Robohub.org.

Props to io9 and Meta’s Kickstarter and Meta (but come on guys, tame that website – autoplay is really annoying). PopSci article/image; Watch the augmented reality-themed “Sight” and “H+” by clicking on those words.

The biggest news of the day made its way out of Microsoft’s Redmond headquarters a few hours ago, but there’s plenty more to see just 150 miles to the north in Vancouver, British Columbia. SID’s Display Week exhibition kicked off this morning, giving us an opportunity to get hands-on with some pretty nifty prototypes from LG and Samsung, including that first manufacturer’s 5-inch flexible plastic OLED panel and a brilliant 3,200 x 1,800-pixel laptop display from the latter. We’ll be scouring the floor over the days to come, on the hunt for similar innovations, many of which will likely find their way into our smartphones, laptops and living rooms later this year and beyond.

Protip: Use our “SID2013” tag to see this week’s hottest Display Week news!

Filed under: Displays

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Sony has developed an A4 sized equivalent 13.3″ digital paper notepad.

The display is the first in the world to use E Ink Mobius, a new flexible electronic paper display technology developed by E Ink in collaboration with Sony. Technology developed by Sony for forming high precision thin film transistors on plastic instead of glass has been used, making the display flexible and light. It is scheduled for mass production this year.

“We’ve succeeded in mass-producing these large flexible panels, by combining E-Ink’s flexible paper technology and Sony’s mass-production technology.”

“Usually, devices are made by sandwiching TFTs between glass sheets. But these panels use plastic instead of glass, so they’re much lighter. Another feature is that, unlike glass, these panels are very durable.”

This prototype digital notepad weighs 358 g and is 6.8mm thick, with the 1200×1600 pixel display itself weighing around 60g, 50% less than if glass was used. The prototype also features a battery life of approximately three weeks.

“This is a PDF document. You can page through it with your finger. Of course, you can also write comments and draw lines in the PDF document. Also, if you choose the marker, and move your finger over text, you can highlight text like this.”

“This is still at the prototype stage. But we’re designing it to work smoothly. Also, with paper, you can rest your hand on it while you write, but with a tablet, you can’t always do that. This digital paper makes it possible to write while resting your hand on the panel.”

“We’d especially like this to be used in universities. From the second half of this year, we’re planning to do trials with Waseda, Hosei, and Ritsumeikan Universities. We also plan to release a commercial version during this year.”

Event: Educational IT Solutions Expo

This Video is provided by DigInfo.tv, AkihabaraNews Official Partner.

Samsung is readying new, smaller versions of its S-Series Ultra HD TV, with 55- and 65-inch models due to hit Korea in June, while a 13.3-inch ultrabook display with almost as high resolution is also waiting in the wings. Samsung’s two new UHD sets will be the smallest in the range the company offers, after announcing 85- to 110-inch versions back at CES in January.

Unsurprisingly, those first sets have turned out to be very, very expensive. The 85-inch S9 comes in at a whopping $39,999 which, considering there is a serious dearth of native Ultra HD content, demands as big a commitment to the UHD format as it does a big living room.

Although 55- and 65-inch screens still make for big sets overall, the smaller models should make for a slightly more affordable, slightly less intimidating option. Samsung is yet to confirm pricing at this stage, though it says the new versions will support the Evolution Kit system it showed off at CES 2013, allowing for the processing and other specifications to be upgraded later on in the TV’s lifecycle.

Otherwise, there’ll be micro-dimming technology for better brightness, contrast, and detail, and the ability to upscale standard- and high-definition content to better take advantage of the 4x-higher-than-HD resolution.

The new UHD TVs aren’t the only pixel-packing panels Samsung has for us, however. The company is bringing new screens to SID 2013 this month, including a 13.3-inch QHD 3200 x 1800 panel ideal for high-resolution ultrabooks.

3200 x 1800 makes it more pixel-dense than the 2560 x 1600 screen Apple uses in the MacBook Pro 13, and in fact it’s even higher resolution than the 15-inch Retina Pro. It also bests the Google Chromebook Pixel, with its 2560 x 1700 display.

Exactly what Samsung has in mind for it is unclear, though we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the panel show up in a new ultrabook, perhaps at IFA 2013. The company will also show off a new, more power-efficient HD AMOLED technology – promising up to a 25-percent cut in power versus existing versions – along with a low-cost 23-inch touchscreen for up to 10-finger use.

Samsung reveals 55/65″ UHD TVs and 13.3″ Retina-beating Ultrabook display is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.