One of the sadder things about the current state of gadgetry is the absolutely uninspired
informational displays we’re stuck with now.
Full-color LCD panels are so dang cheap that ya might as well just put a crappy little
UI together and call it a day.
But not long ago, your favorite whatsits and doodads would have their own little custom
displays of various technologies.
Which technologies?
Why… (whimsical music plays)
There’s the wonderful Nixie tube, though that’s not really custom.
It’s just numbers, really.
You’ve got your classic pea-soup LCD panels like you’ll find on the original Game Boy.
Then there’s the grey and black LCD, offering a less nauseating experience.
Simple LEDs can and do work to make seven-segment displays, and sometimes you’ll see that
tech get expanded out into more complicated symbolical imagery like this oven display.
But perhaps my favorite piece of display tech is the vacuum fluorescent display.
Yes, these VFDs, while not the obsession of a certain Lemony Snicket,
are still very interesting indeed.
Their bright, self-illuminating elements, high contrast (with the aid of color filters)
and nearly limitless design potential made these things a staple of a/v equipment,
delightfully eighties car dashboards,
appliances, and of course,
vending machines.
Who could forget vending machines?
They work surprisingly like the vacuum tubes of days gone by, with a series of heated cathode
wires at the front of the display emitting some anxious electrons, arbitrarily shaped
anode targets coated with the phosphors hanging out at the back of the display, and a control
grid that sits between the two to control things.
If you want to light up a segment, you simply make sure that the control grid is positively
charged to let some of those electrons through, and then you also positively charge the target
so the electrons will go careening towards it, hit it passionately, and with the help
of our friends the fantastic fluorescent phosphors, those electrons become photons and the anode
plate will glow.
How neat!
Adding the control grid allows the display to be multiplexed.
If you’ve got 64 things you need to light up, you might think you’d need 65 wires
to control it all, one for each element and one for the common cathode.
But, stick some control grids in between, and you can wire a bunch of the elements together,
and allow only one at a time to be lit by cycling through the control grids and selectively
blocking the elements from being lit.
If you use 8 control grids each in charge of 8 elements, you can use only 17 wires,
some rapid switching circuitry, and our dumb brains to make it appear as though the whole
display is being lit at once when in fact it’s being lit in segments very rapidly.
See our brains are dumb and we can’t see really fast things,
engineers have exploited that a lot.
Anyway, vacuum fluorescent displays have largely fallen out of favor since they require custom
tooling to make custom displays, and they’re fragile glass things which need to be pulled
into a vacuum and kinda it’s just an ordeal.
Plus they only really make sense for certain applications.
Now that we are willingly buying microwave ovens that connect to the internet for some reason,
having a fixed display can become a real limitation,
so VFDs are becoming an increasingly rare sight.
Now of course, VFD dot matrix displays are a thing so it’s not like you couldn’t
just update one of those, and those do have some relevant applications, but we’re gonna
ignore them for right now.
Wanna see a great VFD?
Take a look at this thing that’s been sitting on the table this whole video!
It’s a stereo amplifier from the 1980’s.
Right?
Well, I think so.
And look at that beautiful amber and red VFD, such a nice…
Wait a minute!
This ain’t what it seems.
Oh, JVC, pulling tricks on us again!
This display is in fact a backlit LCD panel, made in the style of a VFD!
Huh.
That’s kinda peculiar, isn’t it?
I mean, it’s clearly trying to mimic a VFD, lots of real vacuum fluorescent displays use
this exact color scheme, like this Pioneer Laserdisc player.
But, if you take a closer look at this display, you’ll realize it doesn’t have the characteristic
grid pattern of a VFD, and it has some weird viewing angle distortions.
Head-on, this looks rather convincing.
But, move your head around a little and you’ll start to see the inactive elements become
more visible in that weird LCD way.
Truthfully it took me a while to realize this thing was playing tricks on my like some sort
of trick player, but once I did I exclaimed to the heavens, “I’ve been tricked!”
And it was very unpleasant.
Of course I’m kidding, it’s pretty cool!
You can see the big ‘ol LEDs providing the backlighting, both amber and red.
*buzzer sound*
Never come to conclusions until you’ve taken the thing apart.
Those LEDs?
Are really just incandescent bulbs!
Yeah.
Which makes the next line particularly silly.
And I think this is why it looks so convincing, as the two distinct wavelengths of light would
produce an effect quite similar to that of real phosphors in a real vacuum fluorescent display.
(HA)
And of course, since the display operates inversely from most LCDs which have a bright
background and darken the active segments, the illusion is pretty good.
But here’s an interesting question.
Why?
This is a pretty large display, so perhaps it would have been prohibitively expensive
to make a VFD of such proportions.
But then again, this LCD seems like a pretty novel thing.
Maybe it isn’t, but I’ve not seen this sort of technique used before so I can only
assume that it’s kinda rare.
*buzzer sound*
No, you have seen this sort of thing before.
On your own microwave.
You silly person.
OK, OK yes I have seen this sort of thing before, but it was never in a color scheme
that so closely matched the delicate glow of my beloved VFDs!
It’s always been a sickly green, or a sickly orange, or a stupid piercing blue, or some
other usually unappealing color.
And also making LCDs like this is a way more recent trend, isn’t it?
Am I off my rocker?
Well as it turns out my rocker is in the corner so I am indeed off of it but that’s just
a silly joke, the fact of the matter is this thing is neat.
And I think it’s sorta unique.
Not absolutely.
But probably a little.
Oh man I should google this, shouldn’t I?
Let’s see…
JVC RX-222…
some pictures.
OK, yeah, yeah that’s it.
Oh, it’s from 1989 it looks like that’s good we were right about that, barely.
Oh, and look at that, there’s some other models over there
that look to have very similar displays…
well then it looks like JVC was all-in on this little quirky display thing,
at least for a while in the late ‘80s.
But was anybody else?
Truthfully, I have no idea because if this is a special kind of backlit LCD,
I don't know what it’s called.
And without knowing if it’s got a special name, perhaps LiquiTron Luma+, it’s difficult
to search for.
If any of you people out there know if this has a specific name, or if it’s just an
underutilized style of backlit LCD, do let us know because I couldn’t be bothered to
check that very thoroughly.
Well.
That’s all I had for this video.
Yeah.
Umm, but, hey!
Let’s just play this random CD I found.
I’m sure there will be some appropriate music on it.
[ mechanical noises ]
♫ recklessly smooth jazz ♫
Just because the video is super short and off the cuff doesn’t mean I ain’t got
any bloopers!
Wait.
This isn’t a blooper, I planned this.
But it is during the credits…
Hey credits, is this a blooper?
Ah farts.
...that of real phosphors inside a real phosphor fuh fuh fah!
I’m not enunciating very well at all.
This video is what, seven minutes long?
Why is it taking me so long to do this?
[straining noises]
...and our dumb brains to make it appear as though the whole euh the ble bleugh
[angry snarl]
One for each of the an…
ah! ba bu buh.
By selectively selecting the control grids, or selectively controlling the control grids.
Hmm.
Me again.
The spirit of the endscreen!
Do you know what a pirate's favorite aisle of the craft store is?
Why, it be the Isle of Yaaarghn.
Shut up you loved it.