Moth Eye.. anyone actually seen it or reviewed it?

On the show floor, I didn't see any drawbacks. It looks good. Very good.

Really? On the demo of the Philips set I’ve seen, it reduces reflection intensity about as much as the Sony set next to it, but the reflections are much more distracting due to them being so diffused, taking up a much larger area of the screen. Far better than Samsung or previous generation matte screens though.

I'm telling you what I saw on the show floor... The lighting there is also like 50 feet overhead. I'm not critically reviewing the product, but I'm optimistic it will be a strong positive.

I guess that if there is no reflection it won't look glossy...

I didn't mean that I was questioning you, just that I wondered how the sets you saw looked. (particularly Sharp, as they don't have anything on the market with their version yet)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jANSbe0shMo

Sony is not quite as good as I remembered, but seeing them in-store was under completely different lighting conditions. You can see though that Samsung's finish is like a mirror, and Sony's AR-coated glass is doing a good job of reducing reflection intensity.

I just can't stand matte screen reflections now. I'm too used to AR-coated glass, and find the large are of reflection, and the reduction in contrast, even from a small light, to be distracting.

So I don't think the Moth Eye is "matte" at all. It looks like regular glass that somehow stops reflections. Others may disagree with this assessment, but I found it very neutral.

As for the Samsung plasma, the anti-reflective coating on that looked good, but on the show floor I could not tell you if it was exceptionally better than, say, a Panasonic VT50's.

It's different. The Panasonic and Samsung are very reflective even when rejecting ambient. Moth eye is "reflection dampening" somehow. I have no clue how it works or how it will translate to real lighting conditions, but in concept and demo, it seems like an important breakthrough.

You should see that there's a lot less flare coming from the lights hitting the Sony panel, and what is there, is a lot more subdued. You can also see detail in the bulb being reflected on the Sony panel, which illustrates how the panel is reducing the intensity of the reflections much more. I was actually playing around with a new flashlight recently, and I was very impressed at how good the ambient light rejection is on my HX900. Unless you were hitting the panel within about 10° or so on-axis, there was essentially no reflection on the panel. It was especially strange to be at a distance where the flashlight was casting a large beam, half lighting up a spot on the wall, and yet the other half hitting the panel remained almost black.

Sony uses an optically bonded panel design (which only Panasonic are now introducing on their ZT60 range this year - everyone else has an air gap if they have a glass front) and use an anti-reflective coating on the glass, which most don't seem to bother with either. (or don't do a good job with) They also use Gorilla Glass in the HX920/950 which is a lot thinner than the glass other manufacturers have been using. (thinner is better, optically)
I thought I had asked this, but looking back on my posts, it seems I did not; when you are talking about the Moth Eye coating you saw, was it the Philips or Sharp panel? (or both?)

Philips have been selling their moth-eye panel here for a while now, and it looks matte to me in person. I have not seen Sharp's panels.

Matte 9705 on the left, Moth-Eye 9706 on the right:


Just looks like a matte panel with a significantly improved contrast. The biggest drawback of a matte panel is that the contrast sucks with ambient light, and reflections are diffused across the surface of the panel, taking up a huge area. Reflections on the Philips 9706 are still diffused like a matte panel, but it avoids much of the contrast loss of a typical matte panel, and keeps reflection intensity very low.

" Reflections on the Philips 9706 are still diffused like a matte panel, but it avoids much of the contrast loss of a typical matte panel, and keeps reflection intensity very low."

So it reflects less than a matte panel and it reflects less than a glossy panel -- all of which reflect like crazy, no matter what fanboys claim.

And it has much better contrast than a matte panel.

How is this not a breakthrough?

I though it clearly was.

This was on Sharp TVs, not Philips. I doubt Philips was at CES.

I never said it wasn't. The Philips set underwhelmed when I saw it - it's a leap forward for matte screens, particularly when it comes to contrast, but is still a matte screen which means giant reflections on the screen when there are reflections. (and it does not eliminate reflections, only reduce them)

I haven't seen Sharp's implementation in person, but from your description it is more like a glossy panel with reduced reflections? That's far more interesting. I'm not trying to downplay this, reducing reflections is always exciting.

Came across this, which seems to be a good demo. Glossy on the left, matte on the right, moth eye in the middle.



Looks a lot better than Philips' set. I wonder how it compares to Nippon Electric's "invisible glass".

The whole benefit of Phillips moth-eye technology was not to reduce 'reflections' but to increase contrast ratio and picture clarity. Is it still only in a 46" model that is only available in europe?

That tri-part demo was at CES. It looked just as good in person.

Am I the only one who noticed that the text in the middle appears yellow?

I assume to highlight that this is the one that uses the moth-eye tech.

Some folks believe a lot of idiotic things that aren't true.

The text was obviously yellow to highlight the part of the triptych that was moth eye, but that concept is far too challenging to grasp for the conspiracy theorists. They'd much rather replace Occam's Razor with a Rube Goldbergian explanation.

Ahhaha! Nice one If I'd seen this photo sooner I would have guessed it myself. LCD now looks more promising. Now when will we have a combination of:
- igzo
- moth eye
- quantum dots (triluminos) layer
- arduino backlighting

Somehow I feel we won't. LCD will die out before that happens.
Edited by Elix - 1/18/13 at 10:48am

Well, LCD will be the predominant TV display technology through at least the end of the decade, so I wouldn't worry about it "dying out".

But that said, you have Sharp pursuing IGZO and Moth Eye aggressively.

You have only Sony pursuing Triluminos right now and its panel supplier lagging behind Sharp on IGZO. Sony uses a bonded resin layer to cut reflections and seems unlikely to be excited about Moth Eye.

You have absolutely no one pursuing "Arduino backighting" that I saw at CES, but I could certainly have missed that.

100% of "better" LCDs will use IGZO within 5 years I'd imagine because once the mfg. is switched over from a-Si, it seems pointless to keep both techs running, especially given the claim that IGZO will be cheaper in the long run. (Of course, that's one of many claims that they make without any specific plausible evidence given the whole, "how the hell do you know until you are doing it at scale?" but even if it reaches cost parity, it will likely kill a-Si, since it's better.)

What year will IGZO get to Wal-mart?

Shall we interpret your post as sign of interest towards LCDs?

Art only buys his displays at Walmart. I thought that was obvious.

What effect do mothballs have on moth eyes?

Is it worse than burn-in?

What if someone made 3LCDs with the outer two angled towards the side and both connected to the middle one.

Then LCD wouldn't suck when viewed from the side.

Three people could enjoy it instead of only one!

Some of you out there are so dirty minded!

Thanks for the flood of evening entertainment, Arty. You may be someone's least favorite poster, but you're shaping up to be my favorite.

Let's see. If I wanted to jump in with the black helicopter crowd what would be the material?

• The letters are pee color
• They chose a picture of a yellow object on purpose
• And the blanket it's on looks like it has more yellow in it.

Ah ha! Something to do with Obama no doubt.