Nathan Davis28 September 2006, 1:29 AM
Sharp has announced a monitor that can display three different images, all at once, at three separate angles. This could have its benefits, but we can see it being a tad strange when it comes to the lounge room.
Sharp has announced a peculiar LCD display that can produce a different image when viewed from three angles.
Essentially, this is a three-in-one monitor where the left, front, and right views each produce a separate image to the other two. This allows multiple people to use the one monitor for varying purposes without imposing on another.
Although just a technology demonstration, Sharp believes this has its uses in the real world. In vehicles, for example, the driver can view details on the car's performance, the front passenger can display navigational information and the back seat passengers might view a movie or play a game.
This uses the common parallax technique found in so-called 3D monitors, where a slightly offset 2D image is projected into each eye at the same time, thus producing a 3D perspective. In this case, however, the angles of the projected light are much wider and only one angle is sent to the viewer.
The drawback is that 3D screens lose resolution in order to create this effect. It's much like looking through thick fly-wire, as the parallax barriers are pixel-wide, and this effectively halves the resolution, having to dedicate half the monitor to each eye. This is fairly likely to be the case with this particular display.
Sharp is no stranger to this technology. It has integrated parallax technology into panels for some time both on notebooks and even as separate LCD monitors.
What Sharp has done here is limit the output angles to three. This is a much simpler version to the eight or so dual-angles on 3D displays where the two image angles align at their respective eye and the 3D effect is visible.
This may prove to be beneficial with console gaming. A new world where split-screens are a load of crazy shenanigans.
As a telly, I can see this being quite a hilarious sight. And, I daresay, a tad awkward, with everyone wearing headphones and all.
One person clutches a game controller and curses at the screen, while another breaks out with insane giggles, as a third person sits on the edge of the seat, quite jumpy and horrified at what appears to be Monty Python's Spam skit.
Hilarity ensues.