cathode-ray light bulb

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Jason38
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cathode-ray light bulb

Post by Jason38 » 10 Jul 2019, 11:07

https://phys.org/news/2019-06-low-power-technology.html

Check this out! You can't tell me that this isn't cool technology, imagine a light bulb powered by the old tech that used to power your CRT TV's.

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Re: cathode-ray light bulb

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 10 Jul 2019, 12:58

Neat application of these tubes.

CRT Bulbs Used In Old Sony Jumbotrons
These were once common in colored CRT bulbs for Sony Jumbotrons -- they essentially used up to hundreds of thousands of colored cathode-ray lightbulbs (much bulkier and less efficient than this).

Image

The first Sony Jumbotron, shown at Expo 1985 in Tokyo, used these colored CRT bulbs as pixels. For many years, they became the gold standard, being vastly superior to incandescent-lightbulb-driven video displays of the 1970s-1980s -- poor gamut and lots of motion blur because of the slow-fade of incandescent.

For the first time in 1985, with a Sony Jumbotron, you could produce CRT quality colors with ginormous sized screens.

Image

There were tens or hundreds of thousands of CRT-bulb pixels in these old Sony Jumbotrons -- sometimes they were huge bulbs (much bigger than this) and sometimes they were tiny bulbs (like this) depending on whether the display was wall-sized or building-sized.

They faded in the late 90s/early 2000s once the LED-powered jumbotrons hit the market (especially Daiktronics) after the invention of the blue LED finally made RGB possible with LED.

It's neat to see that high-temperature CRT illumination (in white) is now efficient and compact enough to be put into a screw-lightbulb format for special applications! Whether for oven bulbs or dentist bulbs, etc.
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Jason38
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Re: cathode-ray light bulb

Post by Jason38 » 10 Jul 2019, 16:48

Chief Blur Buster wrote:Neat application of these tubes.

CRT Bulbs Used In Old Sony Jumbotrons
These were once common in colored CRT bulbs for Sony Jumbotrons -- they essentially used up to hundreds of thousands of colored cathode-ray lightbulbs (much bulkier and less efficient than this).

Image

The first Sony Jumbotron, shown at Expo 1985 in Tokyo, used these colored CRT bulbs as pixels. For many years, they became the gold standard, being vastly superior to incandescent-lightbulb-driven video displays of the 1970s-1980s -- poor gamut and lots of motion blur because of the slow-fade of incandescent.

For the first time in 1985, with a Sony Jumbotron, you could produce CRT quality colors with ginormous sized screens.

Image

There were tens or hundreds of thousands of CRT-bulb pixels in these old Sony Jumbotrons -- sometimes they were huge bulbs (much bigger than this) and sometimes they were tiny bulbs (like this) depending on whether the display was wall-sized or building-sized.

They faded in the late 90s/early 2000s once the LED-powered jumbotrons hit the market (especially Daiktronics) after the invention of the blue LED finally made RGB possible with LED.

It's neat to see that high-temperature CRT illumination (in white) is now efficient and compact enough to be put into a screw-lightbulb format for special applications! Whether for oven bulbs or dentist bulbs, etc.

It's so cool that you know this piece of history in regards to this technology. I bet the spectrum on this light bulb if it ever came available would be incredible compared to LED. We all know that it will never become too big as we have way too many LED factories setup already.

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Re: cathode-ray light bulb

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 12 Jul 2019, 07:59

Jason38 wrote:It's so cool that you know this piece of history in regards to this technology. I bet the spectrum on this light bulb if it ever came available would be incredible compared to LED. We all know that it will never become too big as we have way too many LED factories setup already.
Fortunately, LED is now capable of incredibly great spectrum, far superior to anything CRT can dish to you. The problem is today's monitors are often using lower end LED in their edgelights to save money, and are exacerbated by the LCD limitations and not doing local dimming to compensate, etc.

For example, if you visit Nanotech booth or some other booth at a convention (CES, DisplayWeek), you witness LED-technology displays with much better color gamuts than you've ever seen in your lifetime, with some LCD displays that look identical to an OLED.

Such displays is what I'm seeing nowadays in 2018 and 2019 conventions at the "flagship LCD display" levels, and I strongly believe the LCD horse has many decades left in it (for many technological reasons), even as OLED will become the other simultaneously popular technology.

____

A word about LED quality in the light bulb industry, since this topic is "light bulb"....

Now, elsewhere -- in the lighting industry sphere -- if you skip those cheaply-made LEDs, there are now violet-chip white LEDs with a CRI of 97, accomplished using a violet chip instead of a blue chip, and phosphor for all colors.

Image

I have seen some great LED bulbs that I thought were true halogen or other technology. Those speciality bulbs are expensive but are often found illuminating some high-end clothing stores, prestigious museums, and other stuff like that that pay the extra dime -- in some cases these are still $10-$50 light bulbs in today's era of sub-$10 6-pack LED bulbs at Home Depot that are mere CRI 80 mortals. Most of those ultra-high-end luxury LED bulbs are not sold in stores at all.

On the other side of the LED quality spectrum, my big problem is the scourge of cheap 50-cent and 1-dollar unfiltered PWM-flickery LED light bulbs that flicker -- the omission of sufficient capacitors in some really cheap LED light bulbs. Combined with a color-temperature-selection mistake or noticeable color-spectrum inconsistency, making some of them look worse than a CFL.

Even IKEA has upgraded their LED bulbs to at least CRI 90+ (among the cheapest PWM-free CRI 90+ that I know of) for decent prices not much more than the bargain-bin stuff. Over 10x more comfortable to my eyes than a common randomly selected LED bulb at Walmart. Yet still inexpensive. Even though they're still blue-chip based, why settle for measly CFL-like CRI 80 with LED light bulbs?

LED has been rightfully maligned, but it has incredible potential including much more sunlike-spectrum abilities that can be unlocked with the right engineering and wallet size.
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Re: cathode-ray light bulb

Post by RealNC » 13 Jul 2019, 00:43

LCD needs to go away. Local dimming is just a short-term patch, since per-pixel local dimming is not possible. And the viewing angle shenanigans of LCDs are horrible. It's 2019 now, and we still have the usual "all panels suck in their own way" blurb. TN sucks at this, IPS sucks at that, VA sucks at these. OK, where's the LCD panel that doesn't suck? There isn't one.

I never had the pleasure to experience something like an 28HD96 professional workstation monitor (one of those was famously used by John Carmack when he was developing the Quake engine.) A 28" (26" visible) 1920x1080 widescreen CRT. But it wipes the floor with any LCD when it comes to motion clarity, and most LCDs when it comes to color quality and black levels. And that's a 1995 monitor, in later years, professional workstation CRT monitors became even better (110dpi+ 1400p CRTs for example, incredible dot pitch.) One would think that 24 years later, this kind of experience would be the norm for home users. Nope. The reverse happened and image quality went down instead. Even on my non-professional 17" CRT from 1994 I could use 1200p@85Hz or 768p@140Hz (it could do up to 156Hz IIRC.) In 1994! I only was able to do that again when I got my 1440p high Hz display in 2017 and even then, it cost me an arm and a leg.

Great job, display industry! Great job!
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Jason38
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Joined: 24 May 2019, 10:23

Re: cathode-ray light bulb

Post by Jason38 » 13 Jul 2019, 13:16

RealNC wrote:LCD needs to go away. Local dimming is just a short-term patch, since per-pixel local dimming is not possible. And the viewing angle shenanigans of LCDs are horrible. It's 2019 now, and we still have the usual "all panels suck in their own way" blurb. TN sucks at this, IPS sucks at that, VA sucks at these. OK, where's the LCD panel that doesn't suck? There isn't one.

I never had the pleasure to experience something like an 28HD96 professional workstation monitor (one of those was famously used by John Carmack when he was developing the Quake engine.) A 28" (26" visible) 1920x1080 widescreen CRT. But it wipes the floor with any LCD when it comes to motion clarity, and most LCDs when it comes to color quality and black levels. And that's a 1995 monitor, in later years, professional workstation CRT monitors became even better (110dpi+ 1400p CRTs for example, incredible dot pitch.) One would think that 24 years later, this kind of experience would be the norm for home users. Nope. The reverse happened and image quality went down instead. Even on my non-professional 17" CRT from 1994 I could use 1200p@85Hz or 768p@140Hz (it could do up to 156Hz IIRC.) In 1994! I only was able to do that again when I got my 1440p high Hz display in 2017 and even then, it cost me an arm and a leg.

Great job, display industry! Great job!

Do you think If OLED can get it's refresh rate into 240 - 480 HZ we can finally surpass CRT? The OLED would probably have to be one of those printed ones that JOLED is making for next year as well because that is supposed to be true RGB I think. I have to admit I am pretty happy with the quality of my 10 dollar Sony Wega CRT from 2002 I use it to play my N64:)It's actually kind of funny because it's sitting on the computer desk right beside my monitor that I'm typing this on.

Jason38
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Joined: 24 May 2019, 10:23

Re: cathode-ray light bulb

Post by Jason38 » 13 Jul 2019, 13:27

Chief Blur Buster wrote:
Jason38 wrote:It's so cool that you know this piece of history in regards to this technology. I bet the spectrum on this light bulb if it ever came available would be incredible compared to LED. We all know that it will never become too big as we have way too many LED factories setup already.
Fortunately, LED is now capable of incredibly great spectrum, far superior to anything CRT can dish to you. The problem is today's monitors are often using lower end LED in their edgelights to save money, and are exacerbated by the LCD limitations and not doing local dimming to compensate, etc.

For example, if you visit Nanotech booth or some other booth at a convention (CES, DisplayWeek), you witness LED-technology displays with much better color gamuts than you've ever seen in your lifetime, with some LCD displays that look identical to an OLED.

Such displays is what I'm seeing nowadays in 2018 and 2019 conventions at the "flagship LCD display" levels, and I strongly believe the LCD horse has many decades left in it (for many technological reasons), even as OLED will become the other simultaneously popular technology.

____

A word about LED quality in the light bulb industry, since this topic is "light bulb"....

Now, elsewhere -- in the lighting industry sphere -- if you skip those cheaply-made LEDs, there are now violet-chip white LEDs with a CRI of 97, accomplished using a violet chip instead of a blue chip, and phosphor for all colors.

Image

I have seen some great LED bulbs that I thought were true halogen or other technology. Those speciality bulbs are expensive but are often found illuminating some high-end clothing stores, prestigious museums, and other stuff like that that pay the extra dime -- in some cases these are still $10-$50 light bulbs in today's era of sub-$10 6-pack LED bulbs at Home Depot that are mere CRI 80 mortals. Most of those ultra-high-end luxury LED bulbs are not sold in stores at all.

On the other side of the LED quality spectrum, my big problem is the scourge of cheap 50-cent and 1-dollar unfiltered PWM-flickery LED light bulbs that flicker -- the omission of sufficient capacitors in some really cheap LED light bulbs. Combined with a color-temperature-selection mistake or noticeable color-spectrum inconsistency, making some of them look worse than a CFL.

Even IKEA has upgraded their LED bulbs to at least CRI 90+ (among the cheapest PWM-free CRI 90+ that I know of) for decent prices not much more than the bargain-bin stuff. Over 10x more comfortable to my eyes than a common randomly selected LED bulb at Walmart. Yet still inexpensive. Even though they're still blue-chip based, why settle for measly CFL-like CRI 80 with LED light bulbs?

LED has been rightfully maligned, but it has incredible potential including much more sunlike-spectrum abilities that can be unlocked with the right engineering and wallet size.
Being a person that suffers from LED flicker and blue light even I have to agree that we have finally hit a turning point. Especially OLED screens.
https://www.whathifi.com/news/its-offic ... -your-eyes

Even Dell has a new line of eye safe monitors coming out with an altered spectrum guaranteed all other monitor makers will have similar things happening in the next 6 - 12 months.
https://eyesafe.com/dell/

Even the quality of quantum dot and Nano IPS is really good.
https://www.tftcentral.co.uk/blog/3-dis ... -and-fald/

I'm finally at a point where I have been testing LED's in my game room. I have one over head right now a dimmable Phillips 90 CRI 2700K. I tried two differnt 80 CRI dimmable 2200K and 2150K(strange kelvin but whatever) They are OK but something is just not right about it for me. They make me a little dazed. I wish that monitor makers and light manufacturers would be a little more honest with their products. It's pretty much all we have now is LED's so you don't have anything left to hide we know the CRI isn't as good as Halogen/Incandescent.

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Re: cathode-ray light bulb

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 15 Jul 2019, 11:39

RealNC wrote:LCD needs to go away. Local dimming is just a short-term patch, since per-pixel local dimming is not possible.
The display industry has certainly regressed, but, I see both LCD and OLED being simultaneous horses for decades.

You can essentially do that with a dual-stack LCD. A monochrome LCD behind the color LCD, to provide you with the per-pixel local dimming. I've seen these at DisplayWeek and they are a pretty neat solution.

I've finally seen many OLED-quality LCDs (and many better than OLED) as long as you view them directly. I've even seen better color gamut on an LCD now with some of what Nanosys is doing and other vendors with good quantum-dot technology + massive-point local dimming. The ability to get 10K-nits HDR capability is something unmatched by OLED, if you saw Sony's prototype display. There are many that I could not see blooming in -- some 2018 and 2019 conventions showed OLED blacks with no blooming showing demo reels of black backgrounds showing bright stuff -- in the last 12 months there are now situations where I thought an LCD was an OLED! The stuff that's over 100x+ better than a desktop monitor.

Now, that said, motion clarity is definitely bad -- they haven't figured out (yet) to combine low-persistence and that OLED-quality or better-than-OLED-quality HDR -- so more time will need to pass before that happens. Priority lately in the TV industry has been dynamic range and spatial resolution rather than temporal resolution, so that will eventually have to change.

Edgelit mortals can't hold a candle to some of what I've seen, but unfortunately you have to pay two arms and three legs for some of these displays.
Jason38 wrote:Do you think If OLED can get it's refresh rate into 240 - 480 HZ we can finally surpass CRT? The OLED would probably have to be one of those printed ones that JOLED is making for next year as well because that is supposed to be true RGB I think.
I think both LCD and OLED will co-exist for several decades. There are some fundamental limitations of both technologies that are hard to overcome. A properly engineered MicroLED can potentially combine the best of LCD with the best of OLED, while also providing a route to retina refresh rates. But there are also quality-control risks of microLED (even LED jumbotrons can burn-in, or get bad segments) which must be overcome to be be a flagship living room display or desktop monitor at reasonable prices.

I am sure there will definitely be a full centurylong progress in display innovation as we work hard to try to solve regressions in all these various technologies. We lost a lot of temporal resolution & contrast ratio range -- in the transition from CRT to digital panels (LCD) -- even if we gained massively in spatial clarity (sharpness), geometry accuracy, and other metrics. Even when we milk-out resolution and dynamic range, it will take lots of time to milk out all the other limitations like temporal resolution.

For temporal resolution to surpass CRT by producing flickerless zero blur, will require retina refresh rates (true 1000fps at 1000Hz+) to avoid the need for impulse-driving (flicker) as a low-persistence technique. Long-time readers of Blur Busters know we are a major advocate of the refresh rate race to retina refresh rates as a universal solve-all for temporal resolution problems. Keep doubling refresh rate to halve motion blur, until all the motion blur is gone.
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