Some of the technicalities of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co’s Flat Vision TV screen (CI No 2,223) have trickled out, and it is clear that the company has managed to do away with both the conventional guns and the magnetic coils that make current tubes so deep. Instead a large, flat anode plate sits at the very back of the display, blasting electrons from the 44 cathode filaments strung just in front of it. This spray of electrons then passes through a series of four grids before hitting the phosphors at the front of the screen. First is the control electrode, a tough plate perforated with holes, which turns the electron spray into 10,000 parallel beams. These beams then pass through two more grids – the control electrode, which modulates them with the picture information, and a focusing electrode. Finally a horizontal deflection and a vertical deflection electrode are responsible for scanning the beams across the 4.6mm by 1.23mm patch that each has to cover. The advantages? It is thin – the screen is a fraction less than 4 thick, regardless of how big the viewing area grows, and it is perfectly flat. The company says that it will consequently be pin-sharp all the way to the edges – a particular boon to the computer industry, when the screens find their way into this sector, and the company explicitly mentions CAD/CAM as a future market. The technology may potentially re-introduce the cathode ray tube into the portable computer market where, until now, it has been ostracised both because of thickness and power consumption. The use of electrostatics may alleviate the latter problem, unfortunately the whole Matsushita headquarters television division is on holiday for another week, so it is difficult to tell, but the current version needs 85 Watts, and some say the need to energise the phosphors sufficiently that they glow mean it may not be possible to reduce this much. However the first 14 colour TV to be produced with the new technology does not bode well for any immediate power savings. No one from the company could comment on whether the technology would be licensed to other personal computer manufacturers, however a spokesman said to expect it to turn up as a small office display by the second half of next year, through Matsushita’s Panasonic arm. The other big unknown is just how difficult these things are to manufacture and how easily scalable they will be – the original flat screen technology was introduced in 1985 at the Tsukuba Science Expo, since when everything has been very quiet. Even now the company is only planning to build 1,000 14 TV sets a month, at $2,700 a piece, and while it promises that large wall-hanging ones will appear, it has no immediate plans for anything over 21.
