IP: Japan Electronics Show

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

From: Tom McMahon <tlm () microsoft com>
To: "Opendtv (E-mail)" <opendtv () pcube com>,
        "ITS (E-mail)"
        <itsmail () itsnet org>
Cc: Tom McMahon <tlm () microsoft com>


The Japan Electronics Show was interesting, especially the flat panels.  42
inch units were everywhere.  I can count 8 manufacturers on my fingers (the
actual list is in my checked luggage, there are probably a few more).  There
were several 50 inch units.
 
Most units were 480P native, with 86x pixels in the horizontal direction. 
Most of them looked very very good.  Brightness is up, contrast is up, and
many of the early temporal and chromatic aliasing problems on moving footage
are greatly reduced, if not gone altogether.
 
There were a few units that ran 1024 by 1024 resolution, mapped onto a 16:9
screen.  The "pixels" were made up of RGB phosphor triplets, with R, G, then
B in the horizontal direction. There were 1024 triplets in the horizontal
direction.   Each color subcomponent of a pixel was non-square (squished in
the horizontal direction, taller than wide).  In the vertical direction you
had columns of R, G, B respectively.  This approach seemed to reduce the
dirty-window-screen phenomenon that John Sprung has noted in prior Email.
 
A few of the units had 768 rows of pixels in the display with either 1280 or
13xx columns in the horizontal direction.  All of these that I saw looked
REALLY good.  I think that as John Watkinson would tell you, these
oversampled displays are just the ticket for showing 480P-transmitted
content in all its glory.
 
A couple more of the units had 1920 pixels in the horizontal direction and
960 rows down the screen.  These needed some more work.  None were showing
moving footage, only sequences of static slides.  The imagery was streaky
and noisy.   Brightness and contrast were OK but not great.  I predict that
these will take a few years to perfect.  Given the 480p volume sweet spot
they will remain always more expensive than the mass market flat panels.
 
Not one flat panel that I saw conformed to any of the formats listed in
Table 3.  
 
Most of the flat panels had real time scaling engines built in.  They could
accept 4:3 footage, 16:9 footage, or 2.4:1/1.85:1 footage from, say, a DVD. 
They would then map this stuff onto the 16:9 screen in any one of a number
of ways (letterbox, sidebar, crop, squish).  Choose how you want to hurt
yourself the worst!  While this works OK most of the time on most footage,
the scalers can only be improved.  Also, as we all now know, scaling
interlaced footage for progressive display is a thankless task so there are
many possible dimensions to the improvements that can be had as time goes
on.
 
The term "progressive" was frequently used in the Japanese marketing signage
and in the verbal product descriptions.  I couldn't understand a lot of what
was being said but "progressive" and "480P" were easy to pick out of the 130
db audio flux.
 
Sharp was showing a rear screen 60 inch projection unit that stole the show,
even though it was not a flat panel.  It uses some sort of new amorphous
silicon LCD modulator technology.  Brightness, contrast, colorimetry etc
were excellent.  But what made it especially bizarre was the screen
technology.  This did not look like a rear screen projection.  It looked
like a front projection.  It looked like the imagery was texture mapped onto
the front surface of the screen.  There were no beads or lenticular
effects.  The individual pixels from the modulator were very difficult to
discern, even 12-24 inches away.  It was very very strange looking at it. 
It did not look real.  It looked like you were watching a moving 60 inch
contact print of a 35mm slide.  Wow.
 
Home networking was happening, along with DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, USB, and so
forth.  Home A/V servers networked with 1394  too.  Panasonic had some
really neat stuff in this area.
 
There were many vendors who were demonstrating various implementations of
line doubling technology in their direct-view CRT receivers.  These ranged
from Sony's DRC to Panasonic's "Cinema" look.  All of them made interlaced
footage look a whole lot better.  All of them displayed the results on a
progressive screen.  While I think this is a big step forward (and I might
actually buy one of these at some point), you have to ask yourself if you
had it all to do over again why you'd ever transmit interlaced footage to
begin with.  Sigh.
 
A few vendors were showing new silicon solar cell technology.  One had a
really cool flexible film sheet.  Somewhat more flexible than a credit card
but less flexible than, say, the cover of TV Technology.  Another one was
stiff but absorbed light from both sides.  The theory is that in most
environments there is always residual ambient light bouncing from all
around.  Even if one side is perpendicular to the sun you'll get the light
that bounces in from the back side and also the light the flies right the
silicon, bounces off the background and then comes back to the solar cell
again.  A noticeable efficiency improvement.  Neat.