CES Coverage: NEC Making Some Beautiful Advances in Display Tech

One of the first places we stopped this morning was the NEC product display, mostly because we've been impressed with NEC monitors before. While we certainly weren't disappointed by the monitors, they had a lot more to dazzle our eyes with.



NEC doesn't rely just on sales to consumers, they also make a wide variety of products for corporate use and digital signage (big displays for signs and advertising). It's these new digital signage products that impressed us the most (which is just a little sad because we'd love to see some of this stuff in our home and on our desktop).

First, we saw a huge display made by tiling 4 of NEC's spectacular 46-inch monitors. The best part is that NEC had taken the bezel down to just 2.5 mm, so there was very little room between the screens, making the display much less distracting when looking at the big picture (pun intended).



Next, we were introduced to the most interesting (by far!) new developments at NEC: a 42" curved display. This awesome monitor allows a panoramic view for your programs. We know that you immediately thought of gaming (as we did), but NEC intends the curved display to be used mostly with data intensive applications. But with 2880x900 resolution, we know they had gaming in mind on some level. It ships in April.

The other big development at NEC is the company's decision to pursue E-Ink (you know, that awesome technology behind the Amazon Kindle). Don't get too excited though, NEC isn't planning any consumer applications of E-Ink at the moment; they intend to use it for digital signage. Regardless, we're excited to see the proliferation of E-Ink because it means that there will be more incentive to improve the technology.

Some of the more expected new products include a new high-brightness display. It can display at 1500 candelas, which probably means nothing to you. Let's just say that this display is significantly brighter than any screen you use on a daily basis. This technology will be used in outdoor displays to offer better visibility in sunlight.

And finally, NEC is paying attention to the recent Green trends and will be rolling out a new feature in LCD monitors that allows you to use "Eco Mode" to reduce your power consumption. That in itself isn't remarkable, but the monitors actually have a carbon footprint meter that allows you to track just how much power you're saving and how much of an impact you're having on the environment. We think this is a step in the right direction, because it's one thing to just say you use less power and quite another to actually monitor usage in real time. Hopefully this tech will help bring the Green movement to every household. We're big fans.

For the meantime we're off to take a look at the Creative booth and their newfangled "stemcell computing." I'm not really sure what that is, but we'll be sure to let you know shortly. We have got more fresh news from CES to keep you occupied for now:

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