Hi everyone! After following a thread which mentioned about the scrolling behaviour on MD equipment, especially Sony portables vs. home decks; it all comes down to what the display technique is used for the application. Portable units and most car units all use a liquid-crystal display because of its low power consumption while the home decks use a fluorescent-tube display because of the fact that they are all connected to mains power at all times and can provide a consistently-bright display. There are three differnt types of display mapping for characters (listed in order of cost-to-apply): 1: A "segment" display which is used on Sharp bookshelf systems and must car units. This type is modelled on the seven-segment display and cannot display lower-case characters and foreign-language characters. The Sharp bookshelf systems then have a limited character repertoire which only covers upper-case letters, some punctuation and numbers; and all the units that use this display resolve lower-case characters as upper-case ones. 2: A "dot-matrix" character display where each character is made up using a 5x7 dot matrix, usually with a bit of gapping between the letters. Its main benefits include the ability to show lower-case characters, punctuation, foreign-language characters and digraphs; but characters which use descenders like "g", "j", "p", "q" and "y" become lifted up and squashed. This is used on most MD home, car and portable units, but gives a very "jumpy" scroll effect. A few units use these displays as level meters or volume markers and these displays become very blocky. 3: A bitmapped display, used on high-end Pioneer car audio; the Sony MDS-W1 dual-MD deck and Nokia mobile phones. With these displays, there is an area of the screen which is "bit-addressed" and the unit's firmware draws graphics on that display area. This allows for "GUI" menus, proper and efficient text display and sophisticated eye-catching user interfaces -- just like a computer. The problem with this display is that it is very costly to implement because of needing a bitmapped area on the display screen; and needing some very sophisticated display firmware. The Sony portables use a similar display but it is limited to a very small area and provides a smooth volume marker; time display and smooth "Times-Square" scrolling of disc and track titles. Most manufacturers use fixed icons for purposes like status indicators; level meters or spectrum analysers and "music calendars". This means that it is cheaper and quicker to make up the symbols and drive them off the firmware than to "raster" them for a bitmapped display. As for making up the actual displays, the liquid-crystal method is considered less costly and power-hungry than the fluorescent-tube display. but the newer "Organic ElectroLuninescent" display used on Pioneer top-end car audio equipment is now placing itself in a niche where a flexible low-power display is needed for mid-range to top-shelf low-voltage applications like car audio and digital photography. This display could drive down the costs of implementing bitmapped liquid-crystal displays in portable and low-end audio applications. With regards, Simon Mackay ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
