Tokyo, December 15, 2003 - Toshiba Corporation today announced a new technology that alters the viewing angle of liquid crystal displays. This has been developed to enhance personal privacy when using equipment such as laptops or cashpoints in public places. The technology also allows users of personal devices such as mobile phones to set the angle of view so that it can be widened to accommodate more people or narrowed to exclude people.
In an age where touch-screen displays are increasingly used to provide information and services, and where mobile phones, PDAs and portable PCs are routinely used to transmit and share images and text, people spend more and more time looking at LCDs, often in public. Long established concerns about the security of entering PIN numbers in ATMs are now being reinforced by the need to assure personal privacy, whether entering personal data on a touch-screen, reading documents on a PC, or looking at digital images or video-mail on a mobile phone.
Attempts to assure user privacy, usually in the form of a screen filter to darken the screen when looked at from the side, have so far met little real success, as they also darken the screen for the user.
Depending on the arrangement of their pixels, LCDs are either darker or brighter when viewed from an angle. Toshiba’s new technology makes use of this characteristic and orders the pixels in different directions, using a small circuit built into the display controller that aligns the pixels in the LCD. When this is activated, anyone viewing a display from the side sees a different pattern, not the bright, clear image enjoyed by the user. The company can also develop filters that display different patterns with different pixel alignments.
The pattern itself can be programmed to display images, such as logos or characters, so integrated into an ATM, for example, the technology could be used to show an ad when the ATM is not in use.
Toshiba Electronic Engineering Corporation, a Toshiba subsidiary whose activities include development and design of new electron devices, will commercialise the new technology on a global basis, and expects to start marketing in the latter half of fiscal year 2004.
Over Toshiba
Toshiba Information Systems Benelux is een dochteronderneming van de Computer Systems Division van Toshiba Europe GmbH, een leverancier van portable computers. Naast notebooks levert de organisatie mobiele en draadloze Pocket PC’s, accessoires en mobiele server oplossingen voor de zakelijke en consumentenmarkt. Voor meer informatie zie www.computers.toshiba.nl
De Computer Systems Division van Toshiba streeft bij de ontwikkeling van haar geavanceerde notebooks, PDA’s en servers naar de ultieme vrijheid van werken. Toshiba is toonaangevend fabrikant van mobiele producten uitgerust met WiFi- en Bluetooth-connectiviteit; dé wereldstandaarden voor draadloze systemen op kantoor, thuis en onderweg.
Het moederbedrijf, Toshiba Corporation ontwikkelt informatie- en communicatiesystemen, elektronische componenten en consumentenelektronica voor uiteenlopende markten. Het bedrijf heeft een positie verworven als innovator op het gebied van geavanceerde componenten, producten en systemen. Toshiba heeft wereldwijd 166.000 medewerkers en de jaaromzet bedraagt ruim 47 miljard US$ (2003).