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Lightpack – Ambient backlight for your displays

lightpack.tv

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Re: Lightpack – Ambient backlight for your displays

#41

Post by gky2 »

nbush wrote: post #16

Microsoft Research took the ambient background idea a little further with some cool IllumiRoom demos. [0] [0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2w-XqW7bF4

Oh man that looks amazing... It'd be something interesting to follow and see how it goes. Even just watching the video got me excited and curious to see how it all works!

Thanks for sharing.

Re: Lightpack – Ambient backlight for your displays

#42

Post by snogglethorpe »

mortenjorck wrote: post #20

It's great to see the Philips Ambilight concept democratized (I hope Philips doesn't have any applicable patents here), but the fact that this requires the video source to be a Mac / Windows / Linux PC is going to cut the potential audience way, way down.

Reading the site FAQ (http://lightpack.tv/faq), it sounds like the problem with making a "just read the video stream" implementation is the complexity and (surprise, surprise!) prohibitive cost of licenses required to support HDMI...

Re: Lightpack – Ambient backlight for your displays

#43

Post by dylan604 »

This might be good for a computer screen running full screen images or even HD video running full frame 1.78 content, but what about movies that are at a wider aspect ratio like the common 2.35 that must appear letterboxed? Add this to the fact that an HDMI license seems unreasonable, this doesn't look this will be very viable for non-computer monitor situations.

Re: Lightpack – Ambient backlight for your displays

#44

Post by lcrs »

chrisfarms wrote: post #5

Some Sony TV's have this ... I like the effect during films, but I don't know why I like it... intuitively it feel like it should reduce the apparent contrast of the picture, but it instead feels like I'm watching a larger screen or that there's more going on in my environment. I'm going to hypothesise something to do with how brains process our peripheral vision. Anyway, not sure how much fun it would be to to run i…

These actually increase the apparent contrast you see on the screen. They're especially helpful for LCD panels which have washed-out and uneven black which is very noticeable in a dark room. Having the colours match the picture seems largely a gimmick to me, but having a light surround makes the screen appear "darker". The exact effect it has is hard to measure, and attempts have been ongoing since the 50s. Here's a recent paper: http://www.scopecalc.com/image-contrast-and-surround-illumin...

There are SMPTE specs for exactly how much of what colour light should be used, and we follow them at work, but at home a string of LED fairy lights behind the screen helps a lot ;)

Re: Lightpack – Ambient backlight for your displays

#45

Post by antiterra »

mortenjorck wrote: post #20

It's great to see the Philips Ambilight concept democratized (I hope Philips doesn't have any applicable patents here), but the fact that this requires the video source to be a Mac / Windows / Linux PC is going to cut the potential audience way, way down.

> (I hope Philips doesn't have any applicable patents here)

I hope the same, but this looks extremely similar to what Philips did with amBX for PCs.

I also know that Philips was headhunting earlier this year for an in-house counsel position centered around pursuing licensing opportunities with companies who might be infringing on their lighting IP.

This one looks similiar:

"Analyze competitors products through reverse engineering efforts to investigate instances of possible third party patent infringement." - http://www.glassdoor.com/job-listing/job.htm?jl=869372458&pa...

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