Last week, Sharp jointly announced their "Dual-View", which displays a different screen image depending on viewing position, and "Veil-View", which allows control of the viewing angle, technologies. Read on for a detailed explanation of how these technologies work and when you can expect to see them hit the shelves.

Sharp and Sharp Laboratories Europe announced their "Dual-View" technology, which displays a different screen image depending on viewing position, and "Veil-View" technology, which allows control of the viewing angle, on 14 July.

"Dual-View" - one LCD, multiple displays



The "Dual-View" LCD technology allows two different pieces of information to be displayed in the left and right viewing directions of the screen. The display changes when the screen is viewed from the left and from the right.

Possible applications include: i) a living room PC display that shows a PC screen from the left and a TV image from the right, ii) a car navigation display that shows a TV image from the passenger seat and a map image from the driver's seat, iii) a display that shows a presentation to customers and internal information to a salesperson, iv) a display that shows different advertisements to passers-by from the left and right, and v) a display that shows upper floor information to those going up an escalator and lower floor information to those going down.

Different information is displayed to the left and right courtesy of a "parallax barrier" mounted in-front of the LCD panel that splits the direction of the backlight illumination on a per-pixel basis. By arranging the "parallax barrier", it is possible to display more than three different images and/or display different images in the vertical (top/bottom) direction.

However, with a "Dual-View" LCD display, the display resolution of the LCD panel is distributed over each image that will be displayed. For example, the display resolution of each image will be 1/2 the total panel resolution when two images are displayed. For this reason, it is necessary to specify a sufficient panel resolution when displaying small text or high-resolution images.

Sharp's 3D LCD display announced in 2002 is an example of an application of their parallax barrier LCD technology. In the 3D LCD display, the barrier displays parallax images to the left and right eyes of the user to create a three-dimensional image. Taking the distance between the eyes as approximately 6 cm and the viewing distance as 30-40 cm, the barrier produces images with a separation of approximately 6 degrees.

On the other hand, a separation angle of over 40 degrees is required for the "Dual-View" LCD display as the distance between the left and right users is approximately 100-200 cm and the viewing distance between 50 and 200 cm. In addition, while similar images are displayed on the left and right for the 3D display, completely different images are displayed in the case of the "Dual-View" display and it is necessary to minimise any light leakage from the opposing screen.

"Veil-View" - viewing angle control

The "Veil-View" LCD display employs technology that allows the viewing angle to be increased and decreased via electronic control.



The technology allows information on a notebook PC or mobile phone to be shown to a number of people at a normal viewing angle or kept private at a narrow viewing angle. Other possible applications include ATMs, where a narrow viewing angle could be used during PIN entry to prevent theft and a wide viewing angle used at other times for the display of advertisements.

The viewing angle of the LCD is changed by altering the illumination direction of the LCD backlight with a "switch LCD". The "switch LCD", which is placed in front of the normal LCD panel, changes the arrangement and alignment of the LCD pixels via voltage control.

The switch panel lowers the screen brightness slightly but it is possible to maintain the original brightness by method such as increasing the backlight intensity.

At the product announcement, Mikio Katayama (Managing Director, Sharp LCD division) said that shipping of both LCD technologies has already begun and products with the new technologies are expected within 7-8 months. The production cost of the new technologies is currently 10-20% higher than normal LCDs and efforts are being made to get the cost increase closer to 10%.

Inspired by:
http://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/2005/0714/sharp.htm

News release (Dual-View):
http://www.sharp.co.jp/corporate/news/050714-b.html

News release (Veil-View):
http://www.sharp.co.jp/corporate/news/050714-a.html