CES 2006: Motherboards, Memory, Cooling, and a Few Surprises

Brightside

Those of you looking for a truly high-end HDTV may get your wish in the near future. A company called Brightside located in Vancouver , B.C., was demonstrating their LED-based LCD at an OCZ party. Taking a picture in a dark room of a bright display is an iffy proposition already, but the important distinction between a standard LCD and the Brightside model is still apparent. The bloom effect is caused by the camera, and your eyes will experience something similar with highly contrasting brightness levels - imagine looking into a street lamp at night, for example. The following image shows the same LCD panel used in displays with and without the Brightside technology.

Images simply cannot convey what the display looks like in person, but the idea is rather innovative. Instead of standard backlights, Brightside uses an array of "around 1400" LEDs in a hex grid that are modulated in intensity based on what is being shown. This allows them to actually get true black as well as bright whites, and the result is extremely impressive. In the above image, the left screen should have a black background with the "Brightside" text in white; backlight leakage leads to the bluish result instead, and you can see that the right display actually has a true black.

The display is being marketed as a "High Dynamic Range Display", and while HDR is currently something of a marketing buzzword, even skeptics will notice a clear difference in quality. Unfortunately, the effect was marred by the fact that the Brightside display had been damaged in transit to the show: the bottom of the LCD panel had been shattered and there were vertical streaks as well.

There are a few drawbacks with the technology, but Brightside and their partners are working to overcome them. One is the power draw that the LED array requires, and the current model is clamped down at a maximum draw of 12 Amps. 1400 LEDs all at maximum intensity levels could use even more power, but few home power circuits could support it. The LED array also outputs quite a bit of heat, which is currently being addressed using liquid cooling on the rear of the unit. Not surprisingly, heat means noise as well, with the maximum noise level listed as 50 dB at 1 meter. Note that the current maximum brightness is around 3000 nits, which is almost painfully bright. Reducing the maximum brightness to more moderate levels results in a display that has a true 0 nit black level with a meaningless "infinity" contrast ratio. With more reasonable brightness levels, power and heat also drop to more typical levels.

The prototype designs are extremely expensive right now, costing close to $50,000; however, economies of scale come into play when mass production begins, and Brightside hopes to have retail product available within the next year at under $10,000. That's a lot of money, but true high-end home theater enthusiasts will definitely be amazed by the result. We likely won't see this technology on the desktop any time soon due to size issues, but the design scales quite well from the 37" display pictured above up to 65" models.

Long-term, the goal is to reduce the power requirements and size, thereby reducing price. Brightside is certainly one of the more promising prospects for improving display quality in the near future. The idea of zoned lighting to get LCD black levels corrected makes sense, but it also requires a lot of extra components and circuitry. The development of a crystal matrix that can block 100% the backlight is something of a Holy Grail for LCD panel manufacturers, so unless they can figure that out, the industry will be looking for alternatives such as those that Brightside is working on.

DualCor

With Intel launching dual core "Core Duo" mobile chips, we were more than a little intrigued by a company operating under the trademarked name of DualCor.

The company is now shipping a tiny computer that is more dual-board than dual core, since it marries a VIA C7-M 1.5GHz running Windows XP Tablet and an Intel PXA263 400MHz running Windows Mobile 5. The dual computer shares a full GB of DDR2 memory, 1GB Flash memory, and a 40GB hard drive between the two OS. The rear of the unit is currently something of a large heatsink, complete with metal fins. Under full load, the unit can get up to a warm 40+ C, but it wasn't too hot to handle.

The 3.3" by 6.5" dual PC is only a little over an inch thick, but still features an 800x480 262k color touch screen display, 300 hours of standby power, and 3 to 8 hours of continuous use computing with the 3.6AH lithium-ion battery. Ports include 3 USB 2.0 and a mini VGA output. There are controls for the speaker, microphone, and mouse. Communications are 802.11, Bluetooth, and the unit is 3G enabled.

A phone module is "under development" and will be available when the updated DualCor ships in March, adding cell-phone capabilities to the powerful little computer. Current pricing is about $1500, but this tiny computer has to be one of the most flexible "working" PCs that we've ever seen.


Closing Thoughts

If six articles from CES seems like a lot, we still didn't scratch the surface of everything that was shown. The Las Vegas strip seems like a relatively compact place when viewed on a map, but trying to get from one appointment to another while battling for right-of-way with 150,000 other invaders is anything but easy. The Las Vegas Convention Center alone provides over 3.2 million square feet of convention space, and between that and the numerous hotel suites and other locations, it would take a moderately sized task force to provide coverage of its entirety. However, there are many companies present that really don't have anything noteworthy, so while we didn't get pictures of everything at the show, we did our best to capture the highlights. Hopefully, many of these products will make it into the retail market in the next year, as opposed to showing up again as "new" ideas at CES 2007.