November 15, 2005

Two Pictures, One Screen

Ever since my visit to Sharp Corporation in Osaka some years ago, they’ve sent me their internal employee publication. Mostly it covers plant openings and promotions around the world, along with encouraging words from various Sharp executives, but occasionally a fascinating little technical nugget will appear.

In the September/October 2005 issue Sharp talks about a new kind of LCD display that can display two fullscreen pictures at once: one visible if you look at it off-axis from the right, the other from the left. Whether or not this will become a trend isn’t yet clear, but the prospect of two people being able to sit side by side in the living room and simultaneously watch different programs on the same set has a lot of appeal. (Headphones would be necessary, of course.) Sharp cites another use: "when applied to a car navigation system, the driver can watch the screen for road guidance, while the passenger enjoys a movie."

In addition to this Two-Way Viewing-Angle LCD, Sharp has developed the Switchable Viewing-Angle LCD, which allows the user to restrict what can be seen from the left or right, preventing neighbors on an air flight or in an Internet cafe from peeking at your private onscreen information.

Sharp says it began mass production of these products in July 2005, and that there’s nothing like them in the world of plasma displays. Not yet, anyway.

This photograph, originally published in Sharp Corporation’s employee magazine, shows the company’s remarkable Two-Way Viewing-Angle LCD display. The image on the right is what you’d see sitting off-angle to the right of the set. The mirror held by the model shows what you’d see looking at the display from the left.

...Ian G. Masters
igmasters@soundstageav.com

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