Crystal Technology and 3D TV

deprecated writes "the journal of the american chemical society is running a story on a new crystal technology that could enable 3D-projection television and bring optical computing to consumers sooner. apparently the crystals are able to behave as both a solid and a liquid. neat."

The long path to my living room

[KFury]

I'd be interested in seeing if this goes anyhwere. The article is pretty light on tech and detail, and smacks of those 'terabyte in a sugarcube' articles. It doesn't really give detail on how 'shaping light' can be used for a 3-D TV, or what any of the constraining statistics actually are.

I'd love to see this kind of thing be a reality, but this reads like a small-scale experiment that a reporter caught wind of and extrapolated into a world-changing invention...

immersive 3D TV, and...

[ralian]

guess what, immersive 3D ads.

Much more than just TV

[Bowfinger]

From the article:

In addition to the possibility of 3-D TV, the solid-crystal molecules could act as ultrafast switches in optical computers. Stacked in a cube several inches high, they could provide unprecedented storage potential, perhaps many billion times that of current devices. Speed of access would prove dramatically faster than is possible with current computer designs.

Seems like this is a much more significant application than fancier television. We can't even get any momentum behind HDTV, and that technology has been available for years. What are the odds of getting any real progress on 3D-TV in the next 20 years? (Unless this stuff can make hands-on porn - then look for it in Best Buy by Christmas.)

On the other hand, optical switching and high-capacity storage could deliver practical benefits much more quickly. If this is more than another April-fools claim, I would look for the first developments there.

Re:passes the porn test...

[Dynedain]

HDTV on the other hand (for instance) is much less useful, as most porn-watchers are too (ahem) busy to notice the higher resolution

Or maybee its because HDTV reveals all the blemishes, and the garish amounts of makeup used to cover it up to a level of detail that the human eye normally wouldn't pick up. While Cindy Crawford's mole is considered a "beauty mark", I'm sure many porn stars have less than flattering blemishes.

Idea doesn't make much sense...

[pseudofrog]

Aside from being a neat novelty, is there any practical value to this concept? With the TV being in 3d, I don't think the brain would correctly put into perspective how large the filmed area is unless it happened to be the size of your TV. I seriously doubt this will even match your current TV experience. And with the lack of shows or movies that use 3d glasses, maybe people just don't care about watching shows in 3d. Aw well...I could be wrong... Matt

Holographic printer

[Chayce]

If these crystals do what they claim, although a holographic monitor may be a few years off, a printer that prints 3D images onto holograhic paper may be in stores quickly, all you need is to be able to give every square millimeter, the light it recieves from the virtual object and apply a reference beam thats out of phase. Then we can have holographic pictures taken by a digital cameras using sterioscopic setup, put through a simple 3D extrapolation program. Oh well my spelling sucks, but you get the point.

--I like replies much more than I like Karma

How is the video to be displayed generated though?

[Fuzion]

This technology is pretty impressive, and if it does enable 3D television, then I'm just wondering how exactly we'd record video to be displayed using this technology. I know it'll probably work for 3D computer generated videos because you can just send it the raw data, but how exactly do you film something in real life so that viewer can walk around the object and see it from a different angle? Or am I not understanding this correctly?

Popular Mechanics 1958?

[Baldrson]

new crystal technology that could enable 3D-projection television and bring optical computing to consumers sooner. apparently the crystals are able to behave as both a solid and a liquid. neat."

Waking up bleary from Saturday night and stumbling to my computer before the first cup of coffee had taken hold, I pulled up Slashdot.

"No," I said, "they wouldn't actually publish an article mentioning 'crystals' that 'behave as both a solid and a liquid' without mentioning 'liquid crystals' and the distinction between the two. I must have slipped a day -- it must be April 1 and they've taken advantage of my debilitated state to pull an April Fools joke. I mean -- this sounds just like something out of a 1958 Popular Mechanics article on the future in light of the revolutionary new material known as liquid crystals . That's it... the scumbags at the American Chemical Society News Service went and pulled an ancient issue of some popular rag from the archives of a venerable University, typed it in and presented it as a current article just to show how little things have actually changed in display technology over that time."

But, no -- it is March 31 after all, Miguel A. Garcia-Garibay, who is not Glenn Brown [kent.edu], was born in 1960 and mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.