Co-Pilot by Portal Media

[salvi]

Why not go with a Transflective screen? The glare from non-transflective screens almost make the useless.

[Alok]

Originally Posted by salvi

Why not go with a Transflective screen? The glare from non-transflective screens almost make the useless.

There is a lot of reasons why and why not to go with Transreflective screens. Yes transreflective screens do an excellent job when it comes to making an LCD sunlight readable however there are many other flims and techniques that can be used to reduce glare as well as reflection. An excellent source for information on this topic is the Optics 101 videos available on the 3M Vikuiti site (3M Vikuiti? - Manufacturers - LCD Optics 101 (US)). Two of the main reasons why we are not using a transreflective screen are: 1) Size/Availability - Transreflective screens are only available in a few select sizes (rarely 7.0" 16:9 aspect ratio). NEC showed us a really nice screen but when it came to sizes they didn't have anything that was near 7.0" in size unless we paid to manufacture our own design, which brings me to issue number 2) Money - Transreflective technology is new and thus expensive, as you may already know a decent transreflective screen can cost anywhere from $400 and up, also the cost to design our own screen is in the 100K range with minimum order requirements in the thousands. We are hoping to find a good medium in between the low-cost generic LCD and the high-cost transreflective screens. We are not saying that transreflective is not good its just very hard to justify an additional $400 (almost a 30% increase in product price) for just a LCD that is only a little easier to read, however spending some additional money for some high-end anti-glare and anti-reflective films/coatings is more cost effective and should help improve the optics of the LCD, which is exactly what we are trying to persue. If you have some links or suggestions for LCD's that you would like to see in Car-PC's forward them to me so that I can have my research and development team take a look at them.

[Alok]

Hello Everyone,

We are working on designing the Co-Pilot Bezel and are looking for some community feedback. This post: Co-Pilot Development - Bezel Design - Forums - Portal Media - Your Gateway to Mobile Information and Media has a poll as well as some animations of the current concepts, please feel free to comment and offer suggestions.

[fridgemagnet]

Mmm, don't see why I should have to sign up just to view an attachment. But that's just me.

[Alok]

Originally Posted by fridgemagnet

Mmm, don't see why I should have to sign up just to view an attachment. But that's just me.

I think thats a limitation of VBulletin, not sure though because we just signed up with them. There are so many forum options that it can make you dizzy. Anyways I will post them here to so you can see them...They are mpgs so I have to zip them up...

[osvikvi]

I would say the second option looks slicker, but why not using a slot-in drive?
as for the screen specs. I feel I must also say I was verry happy after i applied the 3M-Viktui foil, the result was amazing. Visibility has gone up with 50%. Untill two weeks later when I got myself a new pair of perscription sunglasses, which have polarising lenses. This is great while driving, no more reflections in the window no more blinded from reflections on the road. And only 10% visibility is left on the screen. due to both products using the same technique they interfear with eachother. that's just my experience...

[assault]

Originally Posted by osvikvi

as for the screen specs. I feel I must also say I was verry happy after i applied the 3M-Viktui foil, the result was amazing. Visibility has gone up with 50%.

what Vikuiti product did you use?

[salvi]

I say slot load drive as well.

Would it be easy to upgrade the touchscreen to a tranflective one?

[Alok]

Originally Posted by salvi

I say slot load drive as well.

It will be slot load, my designer was unaware of that so he placed a tray just for conceptualization. As I had mentioned please don't pay attention to details rather try to focus on the concept (the LCD will open upwards, and the cd/dvd drive will be located towards the bottom of the chassis). He will finish the conceptualization portion of the design tommorrow and hopefully I will have some more animations/pics to post. I have one of the piston mechanisim but I think it is too large to post (3.75 Mb).

Originally Posted by salvi

Would it be easy to upgrade the touchscreen to a tranflective one?

Which one are are you looking to upgrade too? (provide a link to the datasheet if possible) It is very hard to say with the range of screen sizes (2" and up), backlight types (LED, CCFL, etc.), and display technologies(LVDS, CMOS, etc.) available. If you give me a specific model that you have found forward it to me and I will let you know if it fits, if our Lab likes it we may even offer it as an option once the Co-Pilot is available for sale. If you are thinking external then there is a back panel VGA connector to connect to a secondary screen (or possibly an external transreflective LCD).

Also as a side note I have mentioned on our forums we are looking into a slot load Blu-ray as a possiblity. Also the cost of SSD devices has dropped considerably in the recent months and will most likely continue to drop (flash memory is much cheaper to manufacture from a materials standpoint). This recent trend will allow us to offer SSD options starting from 32 GB and up at a very affordable cost, and I am sure all of you know the benifits of using SSD especially in a CarPC enviornment.

[salvi]

The Lilliput 629 transflective screen.