We have plenty of news for you this week. We’ve included the items from last week’s Cinemacon and we are publishing our NAB stories as we go along on the website. We’ll have the full report next week, but it’s clear from the content side that there was some impressive video being shown. Two of the most experienced display watchers that I know were bowled over by what they saw at NAB, which bodes well for the rest of us. Meanwhile, I was in Munich and visited A.V. Top, a video quality firm where I saw some stunningly good test material for checking out HDR systems. I’ll report more on that, later.
I’m almost embarrassed now that at the end of one DisplaySearch conference, a few years ago, I asked “FullHD seems to be basically done now. What are we going to do next?”. Well, so far, we’ve seen UltraHD, high dynamic range, wide colour gamut and we’re going to see more on high frame rates (and curved, but I’m still not convinced on TV). Clearly, there was still a long way to go. I also feel that everything I have seen so far, even in the most exotic demos, is still not like ‘looking out of the window’, although it’s getting closer, so there’s still room for further display quality improvement. However, it is satisfying after my long time in the business to still be impressed with how much better things are getting!
I also noted the Nanosys and QD Vision patent dispute story. I don’t know the background (and I’m not sure that I want to!). It follows on from the Nanosys/Nanoco argument about cadmium and QDs. Now, part of me thinks that the companies are right to defend their IP. On the other hand, I am also reminded of an image I saw years ago and that I reproduce here. It’s an old concept that goes back at least 200 years and is international (I found a range of versions on the net, but this one seemed to be the oldest). Note the fatness of the lawyer and judge and the slimness of the farmers!
18th century cartoon by J Bright – the farmers fight over the cow, while the lawyer milks it!So, apart from believing that the real winners in these disputes are often the lawyers, I also remember a conversation that I had years ago with some FED vendors that were determined to dispute almost everything between themselves. I remember pointing out to them that the real enemy was not each other, but the LCD makers, who seemed to manage to avoid this kind of dispute. When you are fighting to build a new technology concept, it may be better to devote your energies to fighting competing technologies. I won’t need to remind long term readers that the FED display developers sank without trace under the competitive onslaught from the LCD makers.
Bob
