Prompt's TechBlog

Yesterday the BBC reported that researchers in Switzerland had developed new screen array technology that could bring 'real' colour to our TVs and monitors for the very first time. The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich has been working on devices known as 'electrically tunable diffraction gratings' which it believes will be able to manipulate light to reproduce the full spectrum of colours on screen, a trick current display technology has failed to master.

It's important to consider how the human eye perceives colour, essentially with three of it's own pixels which detect RGB. Most current CRT, LCD and plasma screens reproduce colours using three lighting elements coloured red, green and blue. The reason TVs can't reproduce some complex colour fields, such as sky, is that the eye can detect blue wavelengths shorter than LCDs or phosphors can produce. Display companies spend a lot of money trying to improve this.

Prompt's very own screen technology guru Max McConnell is simultaneously cautious and excited about the potential of these tiny 'super prisms'. "I'd like to know the 'colour temperature' and spectral flatness of the 'white' LED they use. These would limit the colour reproducibility of this system, because the diffraction grating cannot determine wavelength extremes. Also, the high voltage is certainly a limitation for commercial applications, while pixel size and/or pitch could also prove limiting.

"However, if they really are successfully developing miniature diffraction grating pixels, then I would recommend they make holographic TVs! That would be stunning, but they would need to rotate the grating rather than stretch it..."