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.
