This TV signal format, useful only to transparant LCD/OLED TVs will allow a pixel to be transparant.
It would look cool, if in news channels, only person is visible on TV and it's remaining pixels are transparant, thus replaced by background in the viewer's room.-- VJW, Feb 15 2011 Nice idea - it would only really be useful for certain types of programme, such as news - well, when I say 'useful', it wouldn't actually add anything to the news-viewing experience but for about the first 5 minutes you'd think "Hmm, that's pretty neat". However just because this idea is technically hard, expensive and pointless that's no reason for me not to give it a [+].-- hippo, Feb 15 2011 I disagree that it's technically hard or expensive. There's a transparent channel on conventional PC graphics hardware and a TFT without a back to it would surely be transparent, wouldn't it?-- nineteenthly, Feb 15 2011 It would be cheaper, but less fun, to have a rear-mounted camera on the TV, which would image the wallpaper behind it and use this to fill in 'transparent' areas in the TV picture.-- hippo, Feb 15 2011 The camera method would also look a bit different - if the TV screen was truly transparent, you'd see different bits of wallpaper depending on the angle you were looking at the screen from.
Anyway, this idea would be particularly cool if you could incorporate it into a sheet of glass, and mount it in a window or an office partition. [+]-- Wrongfellow, Feb 15 2011 This is a really cool idea.-- doctorremulac3, Feb 15 2011 I used to have a transparent LCD alarm clock, so the choices were transparent and black. It clearly can be done.-- nineteenthly, Feb 15 2011 Of course LCDs work by blocking or allowing the transmission of light, so to display a colour image, they need white light shining onto them from behind.
OLEDs emit their own light, so perhaps each pixel should consist of an LCD segment for the alpha channel, to either block or allow the light from behind, combined with red, green and blue OLED elements to reproduce the colour channels.-- Wrongfellow, Feb 15 2011 What [doctorremulac3] said.-- MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 15 2011 <points at whiteboard>
"Today, you will write an essay on the difference between transmissive, emissive, reflective and absorbtive display mechanisms. Write on both sides of the paper, unless the paper is transparent, in which case you may elect to employ either reflective, absorbtive or transmissive modes of display. Any smartass clever enough to write in an emissive mode will receive six strokes of the cane and the Nobel Prize for Physics ...."-- 8th of 7, Feb 15 2011 Pretty sure visible light fluorescent ink meets the requirement for emissive writing, at least it's not any of the others.-- MechE, Feb 15 2011 Fluorescent isn't the same as glow in the dark (although that would qualify as well). You still have to shine a source on it, but that can be UV, well outside the visible range. The visible response is emmissive.-- MechE, Feb 15 2011 Anyone want to go for passive-aggressive display ?-- 8th of 7, Feb 15 2011 BTW, transparant LCD and OLED TVs already do exist. I think there is no TV signal format at present to take advantage of that.-- VJW, Feb 17 2011 What [MaxwellBuchanan] said.-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 17 2011 random, halfbakery