New Vizio Patent Would Reduce Eyestrain From Watching TV in Dark Rooms

Vizio landed a patent Tuesday for transparent TV backlights fashioned from “field-induced polymer electro-luminescent” (FIPEL) panels that display colored light from a front surface to a light modulator and a white light from a back surface. Inventor Matthew McRae, Vizio chief technology officer, “recognized that display devices generally do not have lighting intended to reduce the contrast between the display screen and the environment behind the display screen,” says the patent (9,407,856), which was based on a May 2013 application. In home-viewing environments, “the contrast between the front of the display and the area behind the display is generally very high,” it says. “This can make viewing content tiring because the viewer's eyes cannot easily manage the brightness of the viewed content and the darkness of the environment behind the device.” Some TVs will have a built-in light source behind the display screen to remedy the problem, “but this requires additional circuitry,” it says. TV makers have shipped product with LEDs that emit light from the back surface of the set, it says: “Some of these televisions also vary the intensity of the light and the color of the light based on the content being displayed on the screen. Customer feedback in the media would suggest that a variable light source providing back filled light is annoying at best.” What’s needed is a display device “where the backlight for the light modulator, generally a LCD panel, provides light for both the light modulator and the area behind the display device,” it says. McRae’s invention uses a FIPEL backlight “to provide light from the front surface through a color filter to a light modulator such as a LCD panel and a white light from the back surface,” it says. That white light “may be diffused” through a component that’s bonded to the back surface of the FIPEL panel, it says. That diffusor “may be a frosted sheet more commonly found in front of typical LED backlight assemblies or it may consist of microstructures designed to steer or defuse light,” it says. Vizio representatives didn’t comment on plans to commercialize the new patent.