New Samsung Patent Acknowledges Curved Screens Can Be Prone to ‘Distortion’

Now that 4K screens are getting bigger and wider, there can be a problem with picture “distortion” on curved screens, acknowledged Samsung in a newly published patent application. The problem arises when conventional 16:9 program material is scaled up for display on a 21:9 or 16:10 or 2.35:1 aspect-ratio screen that's curved, said the application (US 2017/0013728) published Jan. 12 at the Patent and Trademark Office. The distortion is particularly noticeable at the screen edges, said the application from a team of six Korean inventors, first filed by Samsung in Seoul in July 2015. The document runs to nearly 50 pages of opto-mechanical detail but boils down to the basic idea of making the screen’s radius of curve vary across its width, with the curvature of the side areas greater than the curvature at the central area of the screen. The easiest way to understand this concept, suggests the application, is to think of “higher curvature” or “greater curvature” as “bent more” or “bent a lot.” Between three and 24 different curvature zones must be merged smoothly across the screen width, it said. The zones of different curvature may vary in width across the screen. In practice, the panel is bent in a controlled manner by cutting notch lines of varying depth down the screen height, it said. Making a curved screen in this complex manner with multiple curvatures will “reduce edge distortion of scaled content (and) improve an immersive (and) improve side viewing angle,” it said.