If I might pinch a piece of news from one of my news-posting peers over at Hardocp, New Scientist has an article discussing a new patent from Belgium company Barco, which could make those nasty dead pixels nearly impossible to see.This technology should be finding its way into plasma and LCD TVs. I wonder if they can pull it off on LCD monitors, given that the user is a lot closer to the screen when viewing it?Barco's idea exploits the fact that, to the human eye, picture cells blur and overlap when a screen is viewed from a normal distance - say a few metres away. The company says algorithms can reliably determine how the eye should perceive an area containing a defective pixel and alter the brightness of the ones around it to compensate.
If, for instance, a red sub-pixel generates too little light, the sub-pixels in surrounding picture cells can be toned down to keep the overall colour balance correct. The reverse can be done if a sub-pixel is too bright. From a normal viewing distance the fault should then become far less noticeable.