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Poll: Favorite Display Technology

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Nusa:
Mechanical. Like airport display boards used to be decades ago.

Nixie. Actually not quite dead, but expensive compared to alternatives.

Neon. Think Famous Vegas animated signs from the past, a few of which survive.

Skywriting. No refresh, slow erase, very expensive.

Alex Eisenhut:
I like the funky easy and cheap "annunciators" on the Tektronix 1S2 plugin.

https://w140.com/tekwiki/images/thumb/f/f1/Tek_1s2_e_2.jpg/800px-Tek_1s2_e_2.jpg

daqq:
Definitely the Eidophor:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eidophor

IDEngineer:
My analysis is based on the primary role of a "display": To convey information. All other considerations are secondary, though they might matter based on environment.

Overall winner: LCD. Can be made visible in any amount of light from absolute darkness to intense sunlight. Ultra-low power and "normal" voltages. Reasonably rugged. Near-infinite design options from seven-segment to dot matrix to full-on custom graphics. Monochrome or color. Reasonably fast refresh rates (but can suffer in cold temps). Straightforward control algorithms (can be real-time from MCU/CPU in many cases).

LED's win for longevity and ruggedness but suffer in bright ambient light.

I have an emotional fondness for a traditional CRT but let's be honest, it's inferior to at least one other modern display technology in every parameter. Hard to manufacture, fragile, require (usually) otherwise unnecessary high voltages, awkward form factor, bulky, burn-in, requires post-manufacture alignment, sensitive to external fields, the list is endless. They're basically a crutch until technology made better options possible. In some ways it's amazing that they could be manufactured in any volume for the prices that were ultimately achieved; those electron gun assemblies were simultaneously the most precision and the least appreciated devices most people would encounter in their lives.

By extension, any display technology relying on a vacuum is near the bottom of the list for many of the same reasons: Fragility, usually voltage, volume consumed, usually susceptible to some form of aging, etc.

ePaper is very clever for the niches it can serve. So too are the various other mechanical indicators like those used in very large outdoor signs, but again limited to specific applications.

Overally it's hard to beat LCD's for the wide range of use cases they satisfy while consuming almost no power doing it. You might need a backlight in near darkness, but otherwise they actually get more visible with increasing illumination... and after all, the job of a display is to be visible.

Alex Eisenhut:

--- Quote from: IDEngineer on February 20, 2021, 05:20:34 pm --- those electron gun assemblies were simultaneously the most precision and the least appreciated devices most people would encounter in their lives.

--- End quote ---

I'd go for VCR head drum for that title, with hard disk and floppy disk heads as runners up, and honorable mentions to reel to reel heads.

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