"Take a typical family where the mother likes to watch dramas and the father likes to watch baseball or soccer. Now they can watch them together on the same screen," Mikio Katayama, head of Osaka-based Sharp's LCD business, told a news conference yesterday announcing a new liquid-crystal display that shows totally different images to people viewing the screen from the left and the right. "Dual-view displays will change the lifestyle," he said.
Mass production of the LCD will begin right away at Sharp and will cost roughly twice as much as a standard display. Sharp will also make the display available to other manufacturers for a number of products that could include:
-“LCD multimedia monitor” - Display a TV broadcast on the right screen, while displaying an Internet browser screen on the left screen
- “In-vehicle display” - Driver’s side shows a map display, while the passenger side shows a movie on DVD.
- “Professional monitor” - Display sales offer information to clients on one side while revealing internal data to sales personnel on the other.
- “Advertisement monitor” - A passerby who comes from right direction can see one advertisement, and a passerby who comes from left direction can see another.
The display has the same switching LCD used in its 3D LCD displays, which functions as a parallax barrier that separates the direction of light from each pixel of the LCD panel into two directions.
Downside issues include the possibility of overlapping images from the dead-center viewing angle, the cacophony of competing audio, and the possibility of 100% increase in bad show viewership.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
If it's twice the price of a regular TV, why not just buy two TVs? That way both people can ... oh I don't know ... have sound?
2 - Eric Olsen
1) the LCD is twice as expensive, not the TV
2) and this breeds togetherness and eternal harmony, or at least togetherness
3 - Tan The Man
Ah yes... sound.
4 - Eric Berlin
This must be the work of demons.
I'm convinced.
5 - Eric Olsen
it would also be fun for one person to sort of swerve back and forth and watch two shows more or less simultaneously
6 - Eric Berlin
That sounds like something a demon would do...
7 - Tan The Man
The would be fun. I think I read a few years ago that they invented this thing that could direct sound waves to specific parts of a room and only to that part. So theoretically that could be applied to this tv with the sound directed to only one side of the room and vice versa.
8 - Matt Paprocki
Audio would likely be wireless headphones, or something along those lines.
9 - Eric Olsen
I remember that too, Tan, that would go well with this!