The cathode ray tube will be with us for a while longer – Samsung have developed a new display that’s less than half the thickness of a traditional CRT, and is as thin as some LCD panels on the market.
The 81cm Vixlim is only 35cm thick, and Samsung claim it has a far higher picture quality than a comparable LCD. A standard 81cm CRT-based display is generally about 50 to 60cm deep, often more.
The company are promoting their technology for use in digital televisions, stating that their new tube could reduce the price of a digital television by about a third. They will begin mass production early next year, with a view to replacing all of their large CRT products with this tube by the end of 2005.
The Vixlim may not be as light as a TFT display, but it is considerably cheaper – and may well prolong the use of cathode ray tubes as a display technology for some time.
Samsung
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Fraser Lovatt
Fraser Lovatt has spent the last fifteen years working in publishing, TV and the Internet in various capacities, and believes that they will be seperate platforms for at least a while yet. His main interests at the moment are exploring where Linux is taking home entertainment and how technology is conferring technical skills on more and more people.
Fraser Lovatt was born in the same year that 2001: A Space Odyssey was delighting and confusing people in the cinemas, and developed a lifelong love of technology as soon as he realised that things could be taken apart, sometimes put back together again, but mostly left in bits or made into something the original designer hadn't quite planned upon.
At school he was definitely in the ZX Spectrum/Magpie/BMX camp, rather than the BBC Micro/Blue Peter/well-behaved group. This is all deeply ironic as he later went on to spend nine years working at the BBC.
After a few years of working as a bookseller in Scotland, ("Back when it was actually a skilled profession" he'll tell anyone still listening), he moved to England for reasons he can't quite explain adequately to himself. After a couple of publishing jobs punctuated by sporadic bursts of travelling and photography came the aforementioned nine years at the BBC where he specialised in internet technologies and video.
These days his primary interests are Java, Linux, videogames and pies - and if they're not candidates for convergence, then what is?
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