So… how an LCD works is quite interesting. They do not produce light, but rather, they block it. On televisions and monitors, they are put in front of colored filters that, themselves, are in front of a white (give-or-take) light source. When they are fully open, you see the subpixel's value of red, green, or blue. When they are fully closed, you see as black as the panel is capable of producing.
This brings us to Project Snowblind, which iBuypower demoed at Computex 2016. Again, we didn't have a physical presence there (Ryan was about 500 miles away in Macau at the time) but other sites did, so we're embedding PCGamer's video below. Basically, they put an LCD panel — just the shutter part — on the case's side window. This allows them to output a mask over the view into your components, even with animation. They apparently even successfully made it tint the light as it passes through somehow.
Video Credit: PCGamer
The technology currently dedicates an HDMI port to itself, which could be a scarce resource for multi-monitor users with a single graphics card, but a USB version is expected at some point. It's purely aesthetic, but I could see it having a practical, aesthetic purpose: dimming. I'm not sure if iBuypower will officially support this, but I could see users outputting black, or even just a really deep shade of grey, onto their case windows if they want to, say, darken the room to view a movie.
Currently no word on pricing, availability, or the like.
Good to see them bring this
Good to see them bring this technology down to a less expensive category.
My first “custom PC” back in
My first “custom PC” back in 2002 was an IBuyPower. I would totally get a case where you could adjust how much or what inside you see. Plus the dimming is nice when you have random lights inside at night.
Screens don’t “output
Screens don’t “output black…” Regardless of the color (unless this is an OLED panel, which I highly doubt) the backlight will be on.
Not sure if you’re referring
Not sure if you're referring to the first paragraph, or the last, so I'll clarify them both.
On the first paragraph: "When they are fully closed, you see as black as the panel is capable of producing." meant that LCD panels are not capable of removing all light. A small amount will always transmit from the back, and a small amount will always be emit (reflection, etc.) on top of that. You won't get pure black, which is why TVs do local dimming (etc.) to try and get the contrast ratio as high as possible.
On the last paragraph: "I'm not sure if iBuypower will officially support this, but I could see users outputting black, or even just a really deep shade of grey, onto their case windows if they want to, say, darken the room to view a movie." meant the user outputting a black video signal to the display through HDMI or USB. Also, there is no physical backlight in this display — it's a window into your case. It uses the brightness inside the case, as a result of your custom case lighting, as its backlight. If given a black signal, which I assume is what iBuypower maps to the LCD crystals being closed, this could hide your case lights when you don't want your room to be lit up by your component lights.
“They apparently even
“They apparently even successfully made it tint the light as it passes”
How would you tint it? You can’t put the color filter for on it since it would obscure the view inside the case.
No idea, but the video shows
No idea, but the video shows brief moments of tinting beyond the variation of the case's lighting. Figured it could be from the viewing angle of the panel, but PCGamer says it's capable of color.
Backlights are generally not
Backlights are generally not very close to a white light source. The old CCFL based models may have come close. My old 30 inch Dell UltraSharp (CCFL) puts out a lot of heat due to all of the wasted light which doesn’t make it through the color filters. For a backlight, we don’t care about any frequencies which will be blocked by the color filters. If you have something like a quantum dot based black light, it will only produce a very narrow range of red, green, and blue frequencies. Regular LED backlights probably use a blue or ultra-violet LED which is passed through a filter with red, green, and blue phosphors to produce the other colors. For a general purpose light, you want the light emitted from the phosphors to be as close to a full spectrum as possible. For a backlight, you want the spectrum to be narrow peaks in red, green, and blue; this is not even a good approximation of a white light source.