Report: Google Lab Working On New Display Tech
October 3, 2014 by Dave Haynes
A pile of tech blogs are quoting and drafting off a Wall Street Journal piece that suggests its R&D lab is developing seamless modular display blocks that – in the absence of real details – sound most like those already in the market from Christie, Prysm and Eyevis.
The Journal story – behind a pay wall – suggests “Google’s secretive advanced-projects lab is developing a display composed of smaller screens that plug together like Legos to create a seamless image, according to three people familiar with the project.”
The story says the Google X project is being led by someone with a background in display tech start-ups, and that the connectable display blocks could fill up a living room wall.
If true, it would seem on the surface an odd thing to get into – given that the existing display tiles out there are mostly finding their way into one-off jobs and not rollouts, and margins on display tech tend to be anything but lip-smacking.
But … there’s not a lot of Dumb and Dumber types walking the hallways at Google HQ.
Hat tip to @RiseVision for flagging this story.
Google said to be making giant displays that work like Legos http://t.co/5xfjm6A6dl via @engadget
— Rise Vision (@RiseVision) October 3, 2014
The person who seems to be heading up this project, Mary Lou Jepson, is a talented person. She would be knowledgeable about low power displays from her PixelQi background and (I think) her earlier work at Philips. Her background at One Laptop Per Child means she knows a lot about driving down cost.
I’m a believer in tiled displays. If their goal is much lower cost point, much lower power, and if they’re careful about image quality and ease of use, this could be a major step forward for tiled displays of any shape and any size.