BrightSide Technologies Inc.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

BrightSide Technologies Inc.

Type	Private
Founded
Headquarters	Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Key people	Richard MacKellar, CEO, and Helge Seetzen, CTO
Industry	Electronics
Products	Electronic display technologies
Website	www.brightsidetech.com

BrightSide Technologies Inc. (formerly Sunnybrook Technologies) is developing and commercializing electronic display technologies developed at the Structured Surface Physics Laboratory of the University of British Columbia, specifically high brightness display technology called HDR. The privately held company also develops technology for capture, processing, and storage of HDR image. BrightSide Technologies Inc.'s headquarters are located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The Chief Executive Officer of BrightSide Technologies Inc. is Richard MacKellar and the Chief Technology Officer is Helge Seetzen.

The main electronic display technology developed by BrightSide Technologies Inc. is IMLED-LCD which consists of a LCD display with an array of individually modulated LED semiconductors as the backlights, instead of cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL) that diffuse light in a layer of plastic. Each LED has 256 brightness steps, where step 0 switches the LED off and step 255 switches it to maximum luminance. As a result, the device can display true black and very bright white, with a contrast ratio technically of infinity, where minimal luminance is 0 cd/m² (the denominator) and maximal luminance is almost 4000 cd/m². To address the confusion that may accompany a display with a quoted contrast ratio of infinity, Brightside calculates its quoted contrast ratio using the next-darkest level available on the display to arrive at a contrast ratio of 200,000:1.

BrightSide Technologies Inc. produces a prototype display to showcase this technology: the DR37-P. Targeted industries include the medical field, CAD, film post-production, geophysical data and satellite imaging. The display has a list price of of $49,000.

On April 25, 2007 Dolby Laboratories, Inc. announced that it completed the acquisition of Brightside Technologies. The acquisition of Brightside by Dolby, the company also responsible for licensing its influential surround-sound technologies to consumer electronics manufacturers, suggests that mass production of IMLED technology in consumer displays based on Brightside's patents may not be far away.