Column Archive

Who Would Have Guessed?… For a moment or two, take yourself back to the early 1970s when we were all looking forward to the next Apollo mission taking men to the moon.  We watched our televisions with great fascination and excitement as those first human beings were walking and then riding around on the Moon’s dusty surface.  Given this great accomplishment would you have guessed that forty years later we would never have been back?  Would you also have guessed that instead of a space station like the one depicted in the movie 2001- A Space Odyssey we would have something that looks like a high-technology junk pile orbiting the earth – a technology contraption soon to be abandoned?  All this came to mind as I was reading the various recent news reports about the end of the NASA Space Shuttle program and now the latest news that the Russians are also no longer interested in shuttling men back and forth to this barely functioning orbiting assemblage.  If you had told your friends and technically savvy colleagues in 1970 that they should enjoy those images of astronauts cavorting on the moon because there will be nothing more like it in their lifetimes, you would have been viewed as either really stupid or maybe even mentally unbalanced.  Yet here we are in 2011 with every indication that we will continue to abandon even what we should think of as the next modest steps.  The latest program that seems to be in trouble is the next generation telescope to follow the Hubble.   The James Webb space telescope appears to be in danger of cancellation.  In the decades following World War II, there was a general excitement and almost unbridled expectation of what technology would soon do for us.  There were predictions that we would in the not too distant future all have our own private helicopters, we would travel in supersonic and hypersonic airplanes, and our houses would be pre-built in factories with new sophisticated materials.    The reality turned out to be quite unlike these predictions.  Helicopters turned out to be too touchy and unsafe even for most commercial applications.  Airplanes fly no faster today than they did at the beginning of commercial jet service.   And our houses are built with “sticks, bricks, and drywall” very much as they were being built in the 1950s.   Perhaps the underlying characteristic in all of these situations is that progress — or the lack of it — was driven or stopped by economics; not what technology could do if cost were no object.  A secondary consideration is perhaps the safety and reliability of any new technology.  Human space exploration has come to an end mostly because we did not find much out there to justify the growing expenditures.  As the initial high-risk approach became replaced by a more prudent and safer one, the costs escalated dramatically and the benefits became ever harder to justify.  The same can also be said for more mundane technologies such as helicopters and supersonic airplanes.  How much would it cost to make a really safe helicopter and if there were lots of them flying about how would we manage the traffic jams and the noise pollution in the sky?     Closer to home – in our own area of display technology – can we also see some unexpected outcomes?  I would suggest that the transition from CRTs to flat panels occurred faster than we expected.  The success of LC technology for all display sizes was also a major surprise.  But looking back now, we can see that the cost of LC Displays decreased faster than most of us anticipated and that allowed the transition to take place at a faster pace.  We technologists also underestimated the appeal of the flat-panel’s slimmer shape and lighter weight.       In the category of what did not happen as expected, one example would be the lack of success for any of the field-emission technologies that were being developed to compete with LCDs.  Field emission based displays were predicted to surpass LCDs and Plasma Displays in image quality and energy efficiency.  The engineers, scientists, investors, and companies who dedicated many years of effort and major resources to develop these technologies certainly did not expect that they would experience such complete failure. Can we learn anything from this history of unexpected outcomes?  Were these outcomes only unexpected because we were using the wrong frame-of-reference?  I see possibly two conclusions.  The first is that technology outcomes are not very predictable.  We need to work on many approaches and see which one turns out the best.  That is perhaps not a very helpful insight but is probably the best conclusion we can make.  The second observation is we must always pay attention to the economics of a new technology.  If it’s not affordable or not the lowest cost solution, it will not succeed in the marketplace.  (If the moon were made of something more precious than dirt, perhaps we would by now have a mining colony there.) Given these examples, I’ll leave you with one question to ponder.  How much of a differential are you willing to pay to have 3D capability on your next TV — just in case you ever decide to use this capability?  Should you wish to respond to this question or to discuss any other topics of interest, you may reach me directly from this site, by e-mail at silzars@attglobal.net, or by telephone at 425-898-9117.

Push Marketing… A few day ago, I read an article by a well-known display industry analyst who concluded that if anyone is still doubting the future success of 3D technology then they haven’t been paying attention because “that train has already left the station”.  Well, I may be one of those who didn’t get to the station on time because I continue to be a skeptic.  Maybe I’ll have to catch the next one, but will it be another train in 3D?  As I was perusing the various advertisements in this Sunday’s paper, I came across an ad for a 50” 3D Plasma HDTV with free 3D glasses included.  The advertised price for this large-screen TV was $569.  Wow!  At that price how can I not buy it?  That is an incredible bargain whether it can do 3D or not. Another well-known consumer electronics retailer was offering a major brand of LCD flat-panel televisions in a range of sizes with “3D in full 1080p HD”.  The prices were not nearly as attractive as for the 50” plasma television.  However, the most interesting feature of this ad was that there was absolutely no mention that active-shutter glasses would need to be purchased to view these images that represent “the ultimate 3D experience”.  Given these two examples of the latest sales efforts, have we accomplished anything if we end up giving away this added capability just to say that 3D TV is a success in penetrating the consumer market – or if we have to pretend that we have a product that is more convenient to use than it really is?  I suppose there would be some benefit if this approach drives additional sales of flat-panel televisions but if stereoscopic 3D is simply an added feature that consumers will hardly ever use, and that has virtually no effect on buying decisions, then I would consider the push marketing of television products with 3D capability a dubious accomplishment. I’ve also read statements by various 3D TV manufacturers that the sellers are simply not doing enough to promote this great new technology.  But ultimately what more can they do than give it away?  Some years ago, Microsoft made a major push to introduce the concept of the tablet computer.  But in spite of their best efforts most consumers looked and walked away.  Then along came Apple with a different approach and within a few weeks the iPad was so popular that manufacturing lines could not keep up with the demand.  Push marketing can only do so much.  In my opinion, current 3D technology is more like the Microsoft version of the tablet computer than the Apple iPad.  All known approaches to stereoscopic 3D create images that will always look disturbingly “unreal”.  Then there is the additional limitation of viewer discomfort and/or eye fatigue when using either passive or active glasses.  Nintendo introduced a game console with a 3D display that does not need glasses but at the expense of limited viewing positions.  The slow sales of this product have been a major disappointment to Nintendo..  We also continue to see the comparison being made between the growth of 3D technology and how HDTV replaced analog television.  However, the fundamental forces that drove that technology change-over are entirely different than the ones that may or may not influence the adoption of 3D TV.  The adoption of HDTV was driven by a government mandate to free up valuable spectrum space, by the simultaneous spectacular growth of large-screen flat-panel display technologies, by the dramatic price declines in those products, and by HDTV images that could seamlessly be intermixed with lower resolution formats. The convergence of all these positive influences made it a clear benefit with no downside for the consumer.   Even today, many newscasts mix various resolution images when showing news events.  Some of these images are of low resolution and taken with cell phone or security cameras.  But as seen by television viewers, the transition from lower resolution or analog NTSC television to HDTV was a seamless experience.  The images simply got crisper and the bigger screens looked much better than before.              The acceptance of 3D technology is not going to be at all like that.  The creation of acceptable quality 3D will require special camera techniques and the viewing experience will not be as benign as HDTV.  These limitations are not trivial and the extent to which consumers will be willing to accept them is not easy to predict.  Perhaps what will happen is that in order to try to push this technology onto the consumer, the manufacturers will simply end up giving it away.  We can expect that over the next few years there will be so little price difference between a television that has 3D capability and one that does not that we will simply buy the 3D version “just in case” we ever decide to watch a program or a sporting event in 3D.  I could see a limited use of such a capability even for my own viewing.  Maybe a golf tournament will look more interesting in 3D.  But does this mean that the 3D train has “already left the station”?  Maybe we have to ask, which train?  If it is the train to more experimentation and further testing of the marketplace with lots of marketing “pushes” to try to get people to buy the technology, then that train has perhaps departed.  However, if it’s the train with lots of consumers on board on their way to buy new 3D TVs at premium prices — ones that will be used for most of their television viewing, then I think that the departure schedule for that train has not even been posted.  In fact, if you ask the station manager, he may not be able to tell you if such a train is real or just a wishful self-serving fantasy of certain display industry participants.  Are you already on board that 3D train that has left the station?  Or are you going

Business Cards… In my desk, I keep a box with business cards that I have accumulated from various encounters over the years.  As new ones have been added to the front of the stack a chronological order has evolved.  A few days ago, I had occasion to add a few newly acquired cards to my collection.  Since the box was getting quite full, I decided to look back at some of the older ones to see what memories they might hold.  To my surprise, this casual exercise turned out to be more interesting than I expected.  Oh my, how the display world has changed over the last few decades!  Display technologies have come and gone.  So have companies.  Near the bottom of the stack there were cards that represented fond and not-so-ancient memories of the era of CRT dominance.  There were cards that tracked the transition of the display business from the US, to Japan, to Korea, to Taiwan, and to mainland China.   There were cards from companies that at one time offered great promise of new display technologies that are now no more.  Each business card of course also had a personal story to tell.  What happened to the bright engineers that chose the technologies that did not succeed?   Some moved on to other interesting opportunities.  Others are no longer to be found in my card file – or in the display community. Looking through this nostalgia-filled collection, I could begin to trace a historical perspective of how we transitioned from the dominant CRT displays to LC displays in all styles and sizes.  It was interesting to see how many different technology approaches were tried because of the conviction that LC displays would never be good enough or cheap enough for large screen television — or even for displaying video images in any size.  Various innovations were even tried to improve the existing CRTs.  It was also expected that television products based on rear projection and front projection technologies would have a significant share of the consumer market.  Yet another major new technology thrust was Field Emission.   This technology was supposed to produce superior images at full video rates that would always be better than those from LCDs.  Plasma technology was also evolving and in fact was expected to be the dominant technology for television products with screens larger than 40 inches.  But as time moves on in my chronological card file, I see more and more LC successes and other display technologies begin to drop away.  A major effort to establish a new display technology based on field emission was made by a company called Candescent.  The closing of its doors resulted in my attendance at the auction of their equipment.   Another company in Austin Texas met a similar fate as is reflected in the business cards of the engineers that were there but no longer are.  As a result, I was once again able to acquire more laboratory equipment at bargain prices.   As time passed, LC technology got better and better.  Virtually all the problems that were supposed to be limitations were gradually solved.  Speed of response, contrast, viewing angle, color gamut all became good enough for television.  Screen sizes grew and prices dropped faster than anyone anticipated.  My business card collection reflects all of these changes with fewer and fewer alternate technologies being represented.  The cards from US companies now mostly represent those who are incorporating displays into their products. There are only a few from recent US-based start-ups intending to introduce products based on new innovative display technologies.  The successful evolution and dominance of LC displays is a rare and rather amazing event in the history of display technology development.  A technology that started with so many fundamental flaws and performance obstacles, so many challenges to low-cost manufacturing and the scale-up to larger sizes, overcame them all and in effect left all other technologies in the dust. Will we see another such dominant display technology as LCDs in the next few decades?  Some believe that OLED technology has that potential because it does not need a backlight.  However, just as we could not foresee the amazing success of LCDs so it is likewise not yet possible to predict what may come along to displace LCDs.  It took over forty years for LC technology to achieve success.  A major driving force was the limitation that CRTs had for bulk and weight for the larger display sizes.  Is there a similar limitation with LCDs that OLED technology would solve?  Right now I can’t imagine what that would be.  Given that the development time from early materials research to product dominance is at least several decades, there is nothing that I can see at this time that might lead to another major market place revolution like the one we have recently witnessed with the transition of CRTs to LCDs.  What does your collection of business cards tell you?  If you have some thoughts on what new technology may come along and what critical display performance problem it will solve, I would very much enjoy hearing about it.  You may contact me directly from this site, by e-mail at silzars@attglobal.net or by telephone at 425-898-9117.

Not a Creature Was Stirring… Soon it will indeed be the ”Night before Christmas” and for all of us there will be a short and well deserved lull from the frenzied activities that took place to prepare for another Christmas morning.   What will Santa bring you and your family this year?  How many minutes will it take to open all the presents that have been so carefully prepared?   Will everyone enjoy the moment or will they quickly rush to their iPhones and spend the rest of the morning texting their friends?   And how about you?   What will be the most important activity of your Christmas morning? This past year has been especially interesting with the rapid rise of the iPad and the expanded capabilities of various eReaders.  The iPhone has also become more capable as an information retrieval device and is now leading the transition into voice communications with our gadgets that are becoming increasingly more intelligent and interactive.  This electronic evolution is also impacting the auto industry with more and more information capability being added to our vehicles.   Is all this good?As with any technology transition there are benefits but there are also challenges that come with added capabilities.  As more features get added there has to be a way to make all these added capabilities easy for the user to access and apply.  But, it seems to me that the growth of feature-sets has unfortunately exceeded our understanding and/or ability of how to make them respond effortlessly.         Consider digital cameras as an example.  I now own five of them.  I use several in my laboratory for recoding images from optical microscopes and a SEM.  The others are used for general photography.  In the “good old days” of film cameras there were only three things that a photographer had to remember – set the aperture, the exposure time, and the focus.  With the aid of an analog meter or a simple light bar the correct exposure was easy to set and any adjustments could be made with a few intuitively obvious observations of what was important in the scene.  The new digital cameras have presumably automated all this by letting you make “simple” choices.  However, when there are more than a dozen of these simple choices that have to be scanned from a menu and then further adjustments have to be made to compensate for variants that could not have been anticipated by these pre-selected choices — such as focusing on the most important elements in the scene — the automated process becomes far more of a burden than the simple three steps that were so common and so easy to learn with film cameras.  To add to the users frustrations, every camera model is different in its operation — even when made by the same manufacturer.   I have found it necessary to always carry the hundred-plus page manuals with me to reference when I want to make a non-standard change.  As another example of “feature frustration”, I recently had an opportunity to use a new remote TV control that is incorporated into an iPad.  There are many option choices presented on the iPad screen and some favorite TV channels can be pre-set.  So far, so good!  However, the simple task of muting the sound during an obnoxious commercial — that with a conventional remote requires the simple push of a button — now becomes a frustrating multi-step task.  How could that be?  Well, the problem is that to preserve battery power, the iPad goes into a sleep mode after a few minutes of idle time.  Which means that when a commercial comes on, the iPad must first be turned back on, then the menu must be accessed, and finally the muting pad can be pushed.  So an activity that with a conventional remote was a mindless and instant push of a button now is a multi-step process that takes at least ten seconds to accomplish.  In the meantime, the commercial is blaring away with its irritating and mind numbing message.  And given that most TV programs now have at least five or six commercials in sequence at each commercial break, the iPad has once again gone into its sleep mode and the whole three-step reactivation process must be repeated to return to the program. Recently, cars have become similarly difficult to use.  Normal control functions such as climate control settings, audio selections, and navigation functions are all being integrated and must be operated from a touch screen.  This can again require a multi-step process of activating the desired function and then having to make several other choices before accomplishing what used to be the simple rotation of a knob or the push of a button.  On a recent trip, I picked up a rental car late one evening.  The emergency flashers had been turned on by the helpful staff.  I am a frequent renter and quickly adapt to a new vehicle, but with this new model in the dark parking lot, it took me many minutes to find the location of the button to turn them off.  The many added features had required the emergency flasher button to be relocated to a place that was clearly not obvious – at least not to me.    Are we becoming a culture of touch-screen pushers and menu searchers without understanding the basic principles behind what we are trying to accomplish?  What happens then if our “magic boxes” quit working — or worse yet — begin to give the wrong answers?  If the GPS quits working, what is one to do without the basic skills of knowing how to read a map? Is it perhaps time to take stock and make sure that we don’t lose our ability to function without all of these technology aids?  Do we, as consumers, need to push back against the proliferation of features that end up making our world less convenient rather than the other way around? I recently read about an upscale private school in

Unexpected Changes… As one can readily see by observing the many failures of those who try,  predicting how technology will change our lives in the years to come is a devilishly difficult task.  One must not only be able to assess which technologies will be successful, but must also be able to unravel the even more challenging puzzle of how people will accept and decide to use the new capabilities that technology can offer.  Before it happened, how many of us in the display community would have predicted that LC displays would overcome all of their inherent limitations and become the overwhelmingly dominant technology for televisions of all sizes?  Given our current knowledge, what are you willing to predict about the eventual success of OLEDs?  And what would you predict about the future for 3D technology? How good were we at predicting that cell phones and other portable touch-controlled devices would become so prevalent – before this happened?  Did many of us foresee the rapid acceptance of social networks and the addictive behavior of having to stay “connected” for all our waking hours – no matter what else we should be doing?  I still use an old-fashioned “cell phone” as my primary means of communication while traveling.  It’s actually only a few years old but already embarrassingly obsolete.  However, I feel no great need to have it in my hand ready to turn it on the second the airplane wheels touch a runway upon landing.  Perhaps I too am becoming old fashioned and obsolete? In November of 2000, I wrote a column prognosticating whether there would soon be a convergence of television, computers, and the Internet.  That column was stimulated by a news program interviewing Bill Gates asking him to offer his predictions of how personal computer technology would impact our lives in the future.  In that interview he boldly predicted that there would be a convergence of computers and television.  He demonstrated this by sitting next to a television set and pointing to interesting ways that we would do computer tasks while displaying them on a conventional television screen.  In my November 2000 column, I analyzed this prediction and expressed strong skepticism that this would happen anytime soon.  I just couldn’t see how we would use low-resolution NTSC television images to do tasks such as word processing, e-mail reading, and searching the Internet.  I had the further reservation that combining work-related tasks with entertainment would not be of interest to most people.  Furthermore, computer activities tend to be single user while television viewing is typically a multi-viewer or family activity.  At least for these reasons, Mr. Gates prediction of how Microsoft would soon enhance the television viewing experience just did not seem to be realistic – at least not from the typical user’s viewpoint.  As we now enter the year 2012, perhaps we can conclude that Bill Gates and I were both partly right and partly wrong in our predictions and analysis.  Neither of us anticipated the exact path that technology would take to prove us right – and also wrong.  If we look at the last eleven years, it would be reasonable to conclude that I was right and Bill Gates was wrong since computers, television, and the Internet did not converge in any meaningful way.  However, if we look at what is going on right now, then perhaps we can conclude that we are now finally beginning to see the convergence that Bill gates was predicting – but for reasons very different than he envisioned eleven years ago. As we can see from our current 2012 insight – but could not envision a decade ago – a number of developments have occurred that have led to making this convergence more to our liking.  What is really interesting is that the changes that have taken place over the last decade are not so much ones of technology but of new behaviors that have come about because of the introduction of cell phones with cameras, then smart phones with data transmission capability, and now portable devices such as tablet computers.  These devices have transformed us from a society that communicated electronically only by voice to a society that now communicates by voice, pictures, video streams, and data.  And that now makes the convergence with television a logical and natural consequence.  Once we have taken the step of embracing visual components such as pictures and video streams as an integral part of our communication process, television becomes a natural extension of that process.  We all become producers of television mini-programs.  Sending these images and having our friends see what we have created on large flat-screen TVs is now something that we can perhaps embrace and add to our behavior set. Thus, in the coming year we may begin to see more of us putting up images on our television screens that we or our friends have captured on smart phone cameras or other portable devices.  The direct access of those data streams on our television displays will then become just as routine as watching a conventional program on a cable channel. In the year 2000, did anyone predict this evolution of image capture capability and how it would integrate with our cell phone usage?  I am not aware of anyone having had such an insight.  It was a step-by-step evolution that led us to where we are today.  When we first added rudimentary cameras to cell phones, it was not at all clear where this path would take us.  Smart phones with touch capability also did not have a clear path until “aps” gained popularity.  I also don’t remember anyone predicting this whole phenomenon of a million “aps” before it happened.  And so in spite of our limited insight into where the future would take us, we have arrived at yet another interesting milepost on our technology journey.  As we can see from the events of the past decade, it’s a journey where the direction is determined by both technology and

Teetering on the Edge… How far can you lean over the edge of a cliff before you lose your balance and fall off?  If you’re a foolish show-off, you might overdo your bravado and take a fatal tumble.  If you’re not quite so foolish but want to see what’s below, you might approach with more caution.  In that case you would likely not have a problem unless an unforeseen event occurs such as a rock that is not as solid as you thought and gives way under your feet.  Or maybe you just have a momentary dizzy spell, or a gust of wind suddenly comes up.  Since the consequences of an error in this situation are so serious, a prudent approach would be to have some back-up plan should any of these even remote situations materialize.  Perhaps a safety harness would be appropriate if one really wants to see what’s at the bottom of that canyon.  Or maybe we decide that seeing what’s at the bottom is really not all that important to us.  Have you noticed that we are all experiencing more and more of this “edge teetering” approach in many of our every day life events?  It’s not that we have suddenly become stupidly foolish; these scary risks are being imposed on us by others.  Consider the following three examples. I spend a considerable amount of my time traveling by air.  In order to make a reasonable profit the airlines have decided to book each flight to full capacity.  And often the flights are overbooked.  That is all well and good as long as there are no “unexpected” events such as weather or a mechanical problem.  But are these “unexpected” events really unexpected?   Well, no.  They are simply not precisely predicable.  So what happens when such an event does take place – as happened to me on two legs of my recent four-segment trip.  Basically, what should have been a routine situation turned into total chaos.  Because all flights are booked to capacity where do you suddenly put 200 people that now have no airplane to use?   Even as a premium customer my chances of getting to my destination later that day or even on the same day are not always good.  The stress created by this level of uncertainty is not quite like falling off a cliff but it’s still not the healthiest way to spend a good part of a day.  The quest for profit maximization by the airline industry has put customers in a high-risk situation from which it is difficult to recover.  Every time we travel we are “teetering on the edge”.    Consider another common everyday situation – your credit cards and any on-line financial transaction that you may make.  The banks and businesses are pushing us to do almost everything electronically “on-line”.  Pay our bills, get our bank statements, make our purchases, and provide all of our confidential information.  Yet this entire system assumes that nothing can go wrong.  But it does — and with great regularity.  Not only are our personal computers vulnerable, there seems to be no limit to where hackers can infiltrate and steal our most important personal information – the very information on which this electronic transaction system relies.  In order to maximize our use of electronic transactions the financial institutions are willing to step ever closer to the edge of the cliff so as to milk every last dollar in profits.  Some have already experienced a serious fall off the edge and it will not take much of a push to cause a disastrous fall for a few more.  The drive for convenience and profit maximization is overcoming more measured and prudent approaches that would allow for more of a safety margin.  As a final example, consider our own field of electronic devices.  All those wonderful gadgets we are now so in love with are currently being manufactured in factories that are pushing workers to the very limits of human endurance – and beyond.  They are being required to work twelve-hour days and to live in company provided dormitories.  They basically have no other life.  And that is not sustainable.  We have already seen threats of mass suicides if conditions are not improved.  Again, in the desire to maximize profits and to outdo the competition all thoughts of prudence and safety have been abandoned for short term financial gain.  The interesting question is what will happen as we continue this behavior?  What will be the consequences when one or more of these situations goes beyond the teetering point?  Perhaps the world economy is now so interconnected that we are reaching the saturation point and we won’t see a major crises – or maybe we will.  The search for ever-cheaper manufacturing facilities has reached its limits.  There are no new places left to discover.  Nevertheless, in the next few years we can expect to see at least a few spectacular tumbles off a cliff or two.  The banking and housing crises that we witnessed a few years ago were most likely just a sampling of what else we might encounter if we ignore the dangers of “teetering on the edge”.  We in the display community are not immune to these events.  These system-wide instabilities can impact us as well.  We may not be able to fix the rest of the world, but we should try to be as prudent as we know how in both our business and personal lives.  But no matter what we do, we can expect the next decade to be an interesting and colorful one.     Should you have some thoughts about how you are managing your “life on the edge” you may reach me directly from this site, by e-mail at silzars@attglobal.net, or by telephone at 425-898-9117.

The Newspaper Wars… Not so many years ago, Seattle was a city with two major newspapers.  The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (the Seattle PI) were both vibrant and appreciated by a wide readership in this greater Puget Sound region.  But as has happened elsewhere, subtle changes began to gradually intrude on this happy state of affairs.  One significant change was the dramatic drop in classified advertising revenue as people discovered the new and much broader marketplace known as Ebay.  Another major impact was the drop in employment ads.  This lost revenue had the most immediate effect on the slightly weaker of the two newspapers.  That was the Seattle PI.  They tried various approaches to stay viable.  They contracted their printing and delivery to the Seattle Times.  Then they merged their Sunday edition with the Times so that there would only be one package of advertising inserts.  But all these efforts were to no avail.  A survival decision had to be made.  And the decision that the Seattle PI made was to become an on-line only newspaper that would be supported entirely by advertising revenue. Today that “newspaper” – in name only since there is obviously no real paper involved – is still known as the Seattle PI and can be accessed by anyone who wishes to do so by going to “seattlepi.com”.  The Seattle Times has continued to survive as the traditional print paper delivered each morning to my doorstep for my reading enjoyment.  Will this remaining “real” newspaper survive for years to come or will it also succumb to the competition from electronic media?   With each passing month it seems the daily issues get thinner and thinner.  There are fewer pages and there are ever fewer investigative and editorial features.  The news articles look more and more like the ones that appear on-line at various sites.   Extrapolating this rate of losing pages – kind of like losing hair – I would estimate that there is less than a decade left before the Seattle Times will have to follow the Seattle PI into print oblivion.  I find this rather depressing.  Given this state of affairs, I have been doing an experiment for the last few months comparing my reading enjoyment of the printed Seattle Times with the on-line Seattle PI.  And so far I can see only one advantage to an on-line “newspaper”; quick response and immediate posting of news stories.  In other ways, I am finding the old-fashioned print-on-paper version more efficient, more effortless, and considerably more enjoyable to read.  But isn’t that so 20th century, you may ask?  I suppose it is, but here are my observations.  The large pages of a printed paper allow me to quickly scan many items and I can focus on the ones of most interest to me.  By comparison, this process is considerably clumsier on a computer screen – even a relatively large one.  Looking at the on-line “newspaper’s” home page, I see plenty of headlines and lots of tool bars to click on but nothing else.  If a headline seems interesting, I then need to click on it to access the article.   Now comes the really bad part.  Not only do I have to wait for the article to come up but I am confronted with an advertising message.  Oh sure, it says that I can click on a box to bypass it, but that process has a purposely built in delay of at least 5 to10 seconds.  Then when I do get to the article, I may find that it’s not at all what I had in mind.  Now I have to go back to the home page and start this process all over again.  The Seattle Times has a page and a half of comic strips.  I find that often those contain interesting life’s lessons – sometimes more than the news articles or the editorial pages.  I can scan through all of them in a few minutes and focus on the ones that, on that day, seem the most insightful.  The on-line Seattle PI has a roughly equal number of comic strips available.  But to actually get to see the strips I have to select them one-by-one from a list, click on the selected strip, and again wait for the page to open.  In the meantime, I may or may not be presented with another advertising “interlude”.  It would take me at least a half-hour to do on-line what I can do in less than ten minutes of looking at the print version.  Not only that, I can be reading the printed paper while having my breakfast cereal with no worries about spilling milk or coffee on the keyboard or having to continually interrupt my eating to use the mouse to access the next page or the next article.  The Seattle PI seems to be having good success in selling on-line advertising.  This is a good and bad result.  The good is that they seem to be surviving.  The bad is that the ads are getting ever more pushy.  The latest approach is to stick an ad right into the middle of the screen when I access an article that I would like to read.  Truly an “in your face” approach.  Do they really expect to create a positive response with such methods?          The conclusion from my experiment is that I still prefer the printed daily newspaper for most of my reading.  I may look at the on-line version once or twice during the day if I’m curious about a particular news event.   Print is good.   On-line is also good but in a more limited way.   Can both survive?  I have my doubts – especially when I see the slow but steady shrinkage of what is showing up on my doorstep each morning.  That’s unfortunate, but may be the reality that cannot be recaptured in the 21st century. Are you still holding on to printed media, or have you made the transition?  I would be interested

Better than 3D?… The push to get consumers to accept 3D television continues. Market surveys tout the increasing sales and market penetration of TVs with 3D capability. But are consumers really on the cusp of universal acceptance — or are we just kidding ourselves? When 3D is included as a feature at essentially no extra cost is that a meaningful measure of consumer acceptance and usage? Does the market data mean that the interest is really there or are we pushing something that has only marginal value at best? Perhaps it is time to admit that the need for polarizing glasses (active or passive) along with the greater than 2X reduction in image brightness, and the not-quite-right appearance of the images is something that consumers are not clamoring to have. One suggested solution has been to use some form of glassless technology but that too has major limitations. And no matter how well done, 3D images will still look strangely artificial. I recently paid a visit to our local Best Buy store to check out the latest in 3D displays and how they were being promoted. The one aisle with 3D demonstration displays had pairs of glasses mounted on stands in front of each display. One could look through these glasses to see the 3D images. In the brightly lit store, the images looked dull and the 3D effect added little to the viewing experience — somewhat like looking through dark glasses and a window frame into an artificial world. It was hard to imagine that having to view these dim images through glasses mounted on posts would cause buyers to enthusiastically embrace these products. Perhaps there is something better that the display industry can offer as an alternative for the next “must-have” products. Given that consumers have shown strong interest in really large displays, how can we make those images even more spectacular? I recently took a good look at the 80+ inch displays that are becoming more common. For the first time, I could see that HD resolution was no longer as good as we can typically appreciate. At viewing distances that one may encounter in a home environment, the pixel structure was becoming noticeable. Still almost good enough – but no longer excellent. Well, I think we may have an answer. Recently there has been more interest and early product demonstrations of displays with four times HDTV resolution. Some are calling them 4K displays, others are calling them Ultra-High Definition or UHDTV displays. This higher resolution produces spectacular results at the larger screen sizes. And for consumers there is no downside. No glasses are needed, the images retain their brightness, and there is no special requirement for program material. Whether the program material is provided in the UHD format, or any lesser format, it is still viewable. And as was done earlier with NTSC images, the current HD formats can be up-converted to UHD using line-doubling and interpolation technology to achieve an effect nearly as good. Perhaps the display industry can learn from the digital camera industry. The “horsepower” race for ever higher pixel count imagers in digital cameras has continued for many years and still has not fully run its course. For typical family and travel photos an imager with 2 Megapixel resolution would, in fact, be entirely satisfactory. But the digital camera manufacturers have learned that higher pixel counts give their products a perceived competitive edge. So the race has continued and now high-end cameras have imagers approaching and even exceeding 20 Megapixels. Even though these very large pixel-count images create storage challenges and lenses are not always good enough to match this resolution capability such considerations are not perceived as counterbalancing the imager pixel capability in selling these cameras. And perhaps that is as it should be. The higher resolution imagers do not introduce any new problems – other than perhaps a higher price. As we have also recently experienced, Apple has been able to create major product demand with high-resolution displays for its phones and tablets. Would 3D displays have done the same? In my opinion no – given the technology approaches currently known to us. Personally, I have high enthusiasm and a desire to acquire a large-screen UHD display as soon as they become available at prices that are not too exorbitant. That’s a display that I will be able to appreciate and on which I will enjoy all my viewing experiences. Would you make the same choice or would you prefer a 3D display? I would be interested to hear your opinions. You may contact me directly from this site, by telephone at 425-898-9117, or by email at silzars@attglobal.net.

Where is the Bottom?… “Ladies and Gentlemen, step right up!  Have I got a deal for you today!  Are you in the market for a new computer monitor?  Of course you are.  Well, I have an offer for you that you simply won’t be able to pass up.   Would you believe that I can sell you this beauty of a 20” full-color high-resolution computer monitor for just 79 dollars?  You heard me right – only 79 dollars!  I know this sounds too good to be true, but here they are.  Get yours while they last.” Sounds pretty incredible, doesn’t it?  But it doesn’t take a high-pressure shady promoter to find this kind of a deal.  This was the advertised price in last Sunday’s paper for a 20” computer monitor from a well-known manufacturer being sold by a big-box store – no strings attached and no limits on availability. It made me wonder.  Isn’t this getting a bit too cheap?  Where is the bottom?  It’s only been a few years since we in the display industry were debating if 20 inches would be the largest size LCD that we would ever be able to make given the complexity of the TFT process.  Then we debated whether the cost of making such a display could ever compete with a CRT because of the much greater cost of building a clean room and the need for sophisticated semi-conductor production equipment.  How could LCDs ever compete with CRT technology if the manufacturing plant’s projected cost was going to be ten times higher?   And here we are.  Just a few years later and a 20” LCD monitor with excellent performance can be bought for less than a low-resolution monochrome CRT monitor of a few years ago.  That is an accomplishment that all of us in the display industry can be proud to have participated in. On the other hand, is there a downside?   Are we pushing prices down to the point where the products loose their perceived value?  Will a further lowering of prices create a bigger market or are we simply going to sell more displays but generate less revenue?   We may not be able to get to a definitive answer but perhaps we can gain some insight by making a few comparisons. For example, Microsoft has done quite well with its Windows operating system even though it seems the market should have saturated years ago.  Not so long ago, it was quite a special occasion when a family purchased their first personal computer.  Businesses were also just beginning to install computers but only for their most important managers and employees.  Today a typical family is likely to have at least one computer per each family member and in cases like my own there are at least ten computers in the house and lab serving various applications.  It is of course typical that each one of these installations has a Windows operating system.  And in business environments it would take some serious searching to find an office cubicle that does not have at least one computer.  So even though the earlier market analyses would have predicted that a saturation would occur, new uses and decreasing prices of the hardware allowed for a continuing proliferation of products.  Thus, Microsoft has been able to sustain a steady increase in revenue.  Will we see the same with displays?   For computer monitors the answer is a clear yes because each computer typically has a display associated with it.  And more recently, consumers are adding multiple displays to each of their computers.  Can we go beyond that?  I think the answer here is also a yes.   Many homes now have flat-panel televisions in more than one room of the house.   I just returned from a business trip and the hotel where I spent a few nights had a second LCD built into the bathroom mirror.  Therefore, it’s reasonable to expect that the demand for displays can and will continue to increase until … until we have several in each room of every home and business?   Sounds interesting doesn’t it?  So we have come full circle to the question I started with.  Are the prices for displays getting too cheap?  I really don’t think we will need to practically give them away like ballpoint pens.   It seems to me that the demand is out there and that in today’s world consumers don’t hesitate all that much when making buying decisions in the one-hundred dollar range.  Perhaps, we may have already reached the point where further price reductions will simply result in less overall revenue even as sales volumes continue to increase.  Personally, I’m very happy to be able to buy a nice 20” monitor for roughly $125 – $150.  Much lower than that and I begin to worry about what corners have been cut in design or manufacturing to get to the cheaper selling price.  That can actually lead to a negative buying decision — passing up the offered bargain.   I expect that soon we will reach a balance point.  We may already be there or at least close to it.  The next year or two should tell us for sure.  Where is your price point?  I would enjoy hearing your thoughts on this topic and also how you expect to see new displays implemented in your future.  You may contact me directly from this site, by e-mail at silzars@attglobal.net, or by telephone at 425-898-9117.

The New Photography… A few days ago, I was looking through a large cabinet in my lab where I keep all my optical equipment.  Several shelves are full of 35-mm and 120-film format cameras.  They are all in near perfect condition and there are lenses of all focal lengths to go with them.  How sad to see all this meticulously constructed and carefully maintained precision equipment simply taking up space.  I think that one of these days I may return to taking photographs using film as the capture medium.  But am I being realistic or is this just wishful thinking?  I also have a complete darkroom with a wet-sink and all the chemicals for enlarging and printing photographs at least as large as 20 x 24 inches.  Is it likely that I will get back to doing darkroom work?  I look around wistfully at this ready-to-use facility and wonder if it isn’t time to just let it all go.  How sad it would be to take it all to the dump. The conversion from film photography to digital is now nearly complete.   I do hope, however, that there will still be enough remaining interest in film photography that one or a few specialty manufacturers will be able to sustain at least some minimal production facilities.  However, there seems to be more to this conversion from film to digital than just what we see in the cameras themselves.  For well over a hundred years, we took photographs, had the films developed, and had pictures printed for viewing and careful placement in albums as memories of our earlier lives.  Not only were the photographs put away for future viewing but the film was also retained and could be used later for creating additional photographs.  I still have black and white negatives, and the photographs that go with them, that were taken of my parents when they were children over one hundred years ago.  They are in the same excellent condition as the day they were made.  They are precious memories that I can review whenever I wish to do so.  Will the same be true for digital photographs?  Are we even thinking about such possibilities?  Not only are we living in a world where storage media are changing every few years, but we have added a new societal behavior that did not exist with film photography; namely the ability to transmit these digital images instantly to anyone anywhere in the world.  Thus, photography is no longer just the act of capturing images.  It now includes electronically communicating those images to our friends, family, or colleagues.  We no longer just take photographs to have a visual record of our more interesting activities.  We now take photographs so that we can instantly communicate about our activities to others.  Storage and retention of these memories becomes a secondary consideration – or maybe no consideration at all.  How will we look back at our past activities in future years?  Will we remember to update our digital records as each generation of storage media reaches obsolescence?  Or will we simply loose the records of our earlier activities?  And if we are so caught up in the moment of capturing and communicating our activities to our friends and family members, will we remember to store these images for future enjoyment?  In today’s world of social media, there seems to be little – if any – attention being paid to long-term or archival storage.  The push is for us to put all of our information on “the cloud”.  But what happens if the company managing such a “cloud” goes out of business or simply chooses to no longer offer the service?  It would indeed be sad to have a world where the record of past events is lost and perhaps only exists in the memories of the older generation.  Does this sound like I am being a bit extreme?  I hope so.  On the other hand, I don’t see or read much about what we should do to keep digital records that don’t depend on the latest generation of computers and the storage devices that are built into those computers.  Do any of you still have a computer that can read a 6-inch floppy disk?  The best I’ve been able to do is to retain a couple of PCs that can read 3 ½ inch floppies.  Even the term “floppy” now sounds obsolete.  Of course in our day-to-day lives we don’t think so much about what may happen in twenty, thirty, or fifty years.  But that future will be upon us sooner than perhaps we may wish.  And it would be very sad to live in that future without the ability to refresh our memories with images from our past.  I would be interested to hear how, and if, you are managing the storage of your digital photographic memories.  You can reach me directly from this site, by e-mail at silzars@attglobal.net, or by telephone at 425-898-9117.