I first had this idea in the early days of colour laptops. The computer press was saying that the reason the 800x600 displays were ten times the price of the 640x480 ones was the high failure rate in production resulting in a single figure percentage of displays making it all the way through the quality checks.

So I thought, "Why not make 640x480 displays that have all their connectors on the back rather than the side and get their strength from internal bracing rather than being clamped at the edge." You now end up with low resolution but chunky LCD displays which you can splice together in the manner of a video wall producing and almost seamless large display.

This is no longer a technology applicable to laptops but would be very nice for large LCD monitors, wall-mounted displays and (with a little touch-screen technology added) an interactive desktop [as per hippo's annotation].
-- st3f, Sep 25 2001

LCD Desk http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/LCD_20Desk
Not entirely unbaked [hippo, Sep 25 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]

LCD room lighting http://www.halfbake...D_20room_20lighting
Wall of LCD... [hippo, Sep 25 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]

A previous (faked) attempt http://groups.googl...1@potsie.std.com%3E
.. as ridiculed by Kibo. [lobster, Sep 25 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]

Stanford Intelligent Room http://graphics.sta...edu/projects/iwork/
I have seen a presentation on this space but not the room itself. Uses very large "mural" walls with multiple, overlapping projectors, multiple cpus, and multiple display engines to yield one very high resolution display. The content on this link is woefully outdated but has a photo of the room and the displays. [bristolz, Dec 03 2001, last modified Oct 05 2004]

You'd end up with a grid of non-displaying seams. Not very nice if you're using it as a computer monitor, but probably not a problem for a video wall or virtual window...
-- wiml, Sep 25 2001


wiml, hippo: I guess the 'idea' here is to add internal bracing and move all wiring to the back of the device so that the //non-displaying seams// are as small as possible.

I geuss the aim (and the engineering challenge) is to reduce the size of these joins so that they are about as visible as the wire lines on a trinitron monitor.
-- st3f, Sep 25 2001


So... let's dodge those edgy graphics! Or is that: edge around those graphical dodges?
-- jetckalz, Sep 25 2001


It would work for advertising displays, but printed LCD technology is still going to win out.
-- Bonarein, Sep 25 2001


Windows 2000 and Windows XP both natively support 10 monitors.
-- phoenix, Dec 03 2001


I have seen what the power broker/traders are doing, they are laying up 6 18" LCDs in a frame 2 high by 3 wide (18mm bezel borders [samsung]) and running them as one large display.
-- bristolz, Dec 03 2001


How are you going to wire connections to each of the pixels? By wiring on the side you just need 640 + 480 connections. Wiring each pixel ndividually would need 640 x 480 connectors.
-- DZ, Dec 03 2001


DZ: you're still wiring to the sides, you're just bending the edge connectors back so the non-displaying region at the sides is as small as possible. (If you wired each pixel individually you wouldn't have any significant seams, just lots of wires.)
-- pottedstu, Dec 03 2001


[DZ]: You could use far less connections than that by multiplexing.
-- angel, Dec 04 2001


How about making modules of standard dimensions that more or less provide the cross connections on all sides? You would then plug in a module and increase or decrease the overall matrix of modules, but would still feed the signals only through the outter perimeter. The back side of the modules would only have to support it, not feed power and signal. You would also be able to greatly reduce the pixel loss between modules without having to run wires out.

If there is any VC out there...I know how we can do this.
-- gsgriffin, Nov 21 2002


Wow, does anyone use 640x480 anymore? (blows off dust)
-- RayfordSteele, Jan 07 2011



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