original xbox lcd screen made in china

Denise Chaudhari had never touched a gamepad before stepping onto Microsoft"s campus as a contractor. The first woman to join the Xbox team, Chaudhari had studied ergonomics and industrial design at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design but didn"t have any experience with joysticks. That"s part of why Xbox"s Jim Stewart was so excited to bring her on board: Her ideas wouldn"t be based on preconceived notions of what a gamepad had to be.

It was early 2000, and the company was preparing to enter the gaming world with the Xbox. In Nov. 2001, the console was released in North America alongside the Duke, a controller that seemed comically large compared to its contemporaries. Within a year, the oversize gamepad was abandoned by Microsoft and replaced with a smaller model, but the Duke has had an impact on every controller since.

Rather than starting from scratch, Chaudhari had to work from Xbox creative director Horace Luke"s concept sketches. They"d already been approved from up top, and a third-party supplier had built circuit boards based on those early drawings. Instead of coming up with the shape and ergonomics first and figuring out how to fit the device"s internals into the shell after, Chaudhari needed to work backward.

She got to work, sculpting physical models with a wood-like modeling material called RenShape. You can see the legacy of Chaudhari"s work in every Xbox gamepad that followed. Its A, B, X, Y face button layout and button style remain today, for starters. But it"s the thumbstick placement that has made the most lasting impression on controller design. While the DualShock had parallel sticks at the bottom of the controller, the Duke"s were offset, with the left sitting higher than the right by about two inches.

It wasn"t until her conversations with Xbox architect Seamus Blackley, J Allard (the "father" of the console"s follow-up, the Xbox 360) and her now ex-husband Rob Wyatt that Chaudhari realized the hand she"d been dealt: The circuit boards, already manufactured and ready to go, were comically oversized.

A large circuit board does two things. For one, it costs more to make. It also occupies more physical space. Looking over photos of the circuit board, longtime hardware hacker Ben Heck estimated that even in 2000, the board could"ve "easily" been a third smaller. He theorized that the circuit board"s size was a necessity given the Duke"s expansion slots for memory cards and an Xbox Live chat headset (also designed by Chaudhari).

At one point, the design team met with electronics supplier Mitsumi, which made the circuit boards for the DualShock. One of the reasons Sony"s gamepads were so much smaller was because they used a two-part board that connected via a ribbon cable. The separate pieces of silicon sat perpendicular to one another and allowed for a more modest design overall. When Chaudhari asked Mitsumi if Xbox could have a similar-style board, she was flat-out refused, presumably because of Japan"s nationalistic culture. "The takeaway was kind of like, "Sony is a Japanese company; Mitsumi is a Japanese company. Xbox is an American company, and you don"t get what you get because you want it, even if you"re willing to pay for it,"" she said.

Microsoft loves bragging about how much time it spends with gamers listening to their wants and needs for consoles. It"s why Xbox gamepads had nine-foot cables with in-line breakaways, for instance, while the DualShock"s was a one-piece 6.5-foot cord. But focus testing shouldn"t inform every aspect of design. "If you let gamers design a console, it would have built-in pyrotechnics and a machine gun," Blackley said. He quickly added that he didn"t mean that as any disrespect -- he considers himself a gamer and understands the mentality.

There was a catch to the testing though: The Americans weren"t allowed to talk to or interact with the gamers directly. The worry was that once the testers saw Americans, they"d "know this is not really to be taken seriously, because it"s not a Japanese product," she said. Instead, the Xbox team had to watch the sessions through closed circuit TV.

On Nov. 15th, 2001, the Xbox hit store shelves in North America with Chaudhari"s Duke packed in. Three months later, it arrived in Japan with the svelte Controller S, designed by Microsoft"s on-staff industrial designers. Once they saw it, people all over the world naturally wanted the smaller gamepad, and that fall, Microsoft made it the default controller that shipped with every console.

"It was very easy for [Microsoft"s designers] to be like, "See? Told you so. If we had designed it, it would"ve been a hit right from the beginning,"" Chaudhari said. "They were really proud that they had vindication, that they could design a controller and that my original controller was discontinued."

At the time, Chaudhari thought the Duke"s legacy would be "shame." Microsoft was quick to throw her work under the bus, killing the Duke wholesale a few short years after making the Controller S the Xbox"s pack-in gamepad. "It was this shameful thing that happened, that we launched a controller before we should have. We should have taken more time, we should"ve pushed harder for a different board. We should"ve waited and not launched when we did," she said, a hint of forlornness in her voice. Chaudhari said that there wasn"t a jovial or congratulatory atmosphere surrounding the Xbox team"s efforts after launch.

She"s still incredibly proud of her work and doesn"t consider it a black mark on her resume, regardless of the duress. In fact, it"s quite the opposite. "It was probably the highlight of all the things I"ve worked on in my career," she said, "and there"s been a lot." She said clients for her design firm are typically excited about her work on Xbox.

For Chris Gallizzi, the Duke calls a different memory to mind. "It always reminds me of Xbox Live," he said. Gallizzi is a project manager and head of research and development at Hyperkin, the accessory maker bringing the Duke back to life. To him, it"s intrinsically tied to his first foray into online gaming, and the gamepad"s sheer size is what made the original Xbox as a whole so memorable. He speculated that if the console had shipped with a smaller controller that it wouldn"t have stood out nearly as much. When he first saw the Duke, he was enamored by the translucent jelly bean-style face buttons and the massive Xbox nameplate in the center of the controller.

"I"m like, "Wow! That controller must be so powerful for it to be so big,"" he recalled. "Then I grow up and find out that, no, there"s actually no reason [for the size]. The designer was just working with what she had." He thought the gamepad was OK at the time but didn"t particularly love it. These days, though, he likes the Xbox One gamepad so much that he uses an adapter so he doesn"t have to play with a DualShock 4 when he"s using his PlayStation 4.

Gallizzi first approached Microsoft about reissuing the Duke two or three years ago. Instead of an Xbox One controller, though, he pitched it as an accessory for the original Xbox. Hyperkin specializes in retro products for classic consoles, and while Gallizzi admits the Xbox is far from a classic, it was still a project he wanted to tackle.

Microsoft turned him down. Gallizzi was told that if Hyperkin was going to be a licensed partner, it should instead make accessories for the Xbox One. Fast-forward to early 2017 when Gallizzi got a phone call from Xbox"s licensing director, Gaylon Blank. Blank said he thought he"d "paved the way" for the project to happen and asked if Gallizzi was still interested in working on the Duke. "Without checking with my bosses, I said yes," Gallizzi said.

After initial meetings with Microsoft, Gallizzi met with Blackley. Through a lot of what Blackley described as "good faith efforts," the trio worked out an agreement for Redmond to grant access to the original Xbox logo, boot animation and the Duke"s industrial-design licenses.

Gallizzi and Blackley live a few minutes away from each other in Southern California, and over the next year they worked in secret to resurrect the gamepad. Between Feb. and June 2017, Gallizzi said Microsoft was largely quiet and he wasn"t sure what was going on, but he and Blackley kept plugging away regardless. The weekend before E3 in June, he and a coworker were building prototypes on Gallizzi"s balcony. The pair were under the assumption that Microsoft would debut the controller at E3 alongside its announcement that games from the original Xbox would be backwards compatible on the Xbox One. That never panned out.

The internal design team wasn"t happy, and even though the new Duke was being made by a third party, because of the licensing agreement, Microsoft had final approval on every aspect. Like where the shoulder buttons had to be shoehorned in, because now as an Xbox One controller, it had to have the exact same inputs as a standard gamepad. "I don"t know how many samples we sent them for testing," Gallizzi admitted. Once both teams came to terms on overall design, Microsoft started kvetching about the gamepad"s weight. The original Duke tips the scale at 425 grams; Hyperkin"s version weighs 419 grams -- lighter by about the weight of a US quarter.

When the project started, Blackley gave Gallizzi a quick way to gauge how accurate the mock-ups were: The Xbox architect told him to put a dinner plate in his lap. If Gallizzi could replicate that feeling with his Duke reissue, Hyperkin did its job. By the end, Gallizzi wasn"t prepared for how Blackley would measure success when he walked into Hyperkin"s offices. "He didn"t plug it in; he didn"t play with it. He just put it in his lap," Gallizzi said. "He"s like, "That"s all I need to know."" Gallizzi was puzzled but said if Blackley was happy, so was he.

For the first six months, Gallizzi worked under the assumption that his version of the controller would be wireless -- a feature Microsoft had introduced with the Xbox 360 in 2005. But then Microsoft changed its mind, because no third-party controller is allowed access to the company"s proprietary wireless technology.

Hyperkin also toyed with the idea of repurposing the expansion slots as USB ports, but that ultimately didn"t past muster either. The black-and-white face buttons, however, remain intact, acting as redundancies if you don"t like the new shoulder-button placement near the triggers. An approximation of the terrible D-pad from the original controller is present as well. And instead of an in-line breakaway, Hyperkin"s Duke mates to the Xbox One or a PC with a Micro USB cable that connects to the controller like a cellphone charger.

The new Duke"s standout feature is an OLED screen that replaces the Red-Bull-can-size jewel from the original gamepad. Blackley wanted a killer feature that"d help the new Duke stand out from other third-party controllers. The display is something that he always wished the gamepad had back in 2001, in part because of his love for the Sega Dreamcast"s VMU, a memory card with an LCD that slid into the console"s controller. Gallizzi harvested LCD screens from cheap Chinese MP3 players for the prototypes he cobbled together on his balcony, while Blackley used OLED screens he had laying around at home.

To force Microsoft into approving the design idea, Blackley posted the infamous video of his work on Twitter. The video made headlines and racked up enough impressions that Xbox chief Phil Spencer direct messaged Blackley that night. "I pulled some shit to force Microsoft into allowing us to have the display," Blackley said. Anytime you press the button, the Xbox"s boot animation plays, in tribute to the console"s legacy.

"I don"t think anything is perfect," he said. "I don"t think this exercise was about making the perfect Xbox controller. This is about making the perfect Duke for 2018."

Samsung Display will stop producing LCD panels by the end of the year. The display maker currently runs two LCD production lines in South Korea and two in China, according to Reuters. Samsung tells The Verge that the decision will accelerate the company’s move towards quantum dot displays, while ZDNetreports that its future quantum dot TVs will use OLED rather than LCD panels.

The decision comes as LCD panel prices are said to be falling worldwide. Last year, Nikkei reported that Chinese competitors are ramping up production of LCD screens, even as demand for TVs weakens globally. Samsung Display isn’t the only manufacturer to have closed down LCD production lines. LG Display announced it would be ending LCD production in South Korea by the end of the 2020 as well.

Last October Samsung Display announced a five-year 13.1 trillion won (around $10.7 billion) investment in quantum dot technology for its upcoming TVs, as it shifts production away from LCDs. However, Samsung’s existing quantum dot or QLED TVs still use LCD panels behind their quantum dot layer. Samsung is also working on developing self-emissive quantum-dot diodes, which would remove the need for a separate layer.

Although Samsung Display says that it will be able to continue supplying its existing LCD orders through the end of the year, there are questions about what Samsung Electronics, the largest TV manufacturer in the world, will use in its LCD TVs going forward. Samsung told The Vergethat it does not expect the shutdown to affect its LCD-based QLED TV lineup. So for the near-term, nothing changes.

One alternative is that Samsung buys its LCD panels from suppliers like TCL-owned CSOT and AUO, which already supply panels for Samsung TVs. Last year The Elec reported that Samsung could close all its South Korean LCD production lines, and make up the difference with panels bought from Chinese manufacturers like CSOT, which Samsung Display has invested in.

SEOUL (Reuters) - Chinese flat screen makers, once dismissed as second-class players in the global LCD market, are drawing envious looks from big names such as LG Display Co Ltd and Samsung.A man walks out of the headquarters of LG Display in Seoul, October 20, 2011. REUTERS/Jo Yong-Hak

While the Korean giants were busy developing next-generation organic light emitting diode (OLED) TVs, little-known Chinese companies have started selling a type of display that are sharper than the standard LCD and cheaper than OLED.

Until last year, the UHD market had been almost non-existent, with just 33,000 sets sold in the 200 million-unit LCD TV market. Since then, shipments have soared around 20-fold, thanks to China, data from research firm IHS shows.

Chinese consumers who want brighter and sharper images but can’t afford OLED screens made by LG and Samsung Display, a unit of Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, are turning to UHD.

But its slow introduction into the market and austere prices have thrown open a window of opportunity for UHD makers, in this case Chinese companies like BOE Technology Group Co Ltd and TCL Corp’s LCD unit CSOT.

By comparison, Japanese flat-screen pioneer Sharp Corp reported a razor-thin 0.5 percent margin. LG Display, the world’s No.1 LCD maker, posted a 5.6 percent margin.

Samsung Display, a unit of Samsung Electronics, had a margin of 13 percent, the biggest in the industry. But excluding its fledging OLED business, its LCD margin is between 3 and 7 percent, according to a Bernstein forecast.

Just as Korea overtook flat-screen pioneer Japan in the early 2000s, the surprise offensive by Chinese flat screen makers may be a taste of what’s to come, analysts say.

“Even with some expansion of the Chinese panel suppliers we do expect Samsung and LG Display to stay dominant and continue production in LCD,” said Sweta Dash, director at IHS.

BOE Technology is now planning to raise 46 billion yuan ($7.5 billion) in the biggest Chinese equity offering this year, to build panel production lines and increase its stake in its LCD venture BOE Display Technology.

China, we’re told, can make anything. If you need some PCBs in a few weeks, there are a few factories in China that will do it. If you need a nuclear reactor, yep, there’s probably a factory in China that’ll do it because nuclear reactors are listed as one of the items facing new tariffs when imported into the United States. No, I am not kidding. What about LCDs? What about old-school character LCDs? Is it possible to find a factory in China that will make you the LCD you want? That’s what [Robert Baruch] will find out, because he’s repairing an old computer with new parts.

The object of this repair and restomod is a TRS-80 Pocket Computer (PC-1), otherwise known as the Sharp PC-1211. It looks like a calculator, but no, it’s a legitimate computer you can program in BASIC. [Robert] bought this computer for a bit more than $5 on eBay ‘for repair’, which means the zinc-air battery was dead, and unfortunately, the LCD was shot. The LCD technically works, but it just doesn’t look good. Sometime in the last thirty years, moisture got in between the layers of glass, polarizing film, and liquid crystal. This is not unique to [Robert]’s unit — a lot of these PC-1s have the same problem, many of these broken seals rendering the computers themselves useless.

This is an ancient computer, and replacements for this LCD are impossible to find, but because the Sharp PC-1211 is well documented, it is possible to find the datasheet for the original display. With that, it’s just a question of finding an LCD manufacturer that will do it. So far, the costs look good — $800 USD ($300 for tooling and 10 samples, $500 for another 200 LCDs) is what it’ll take to get a few units. [Robert] already has a few people interested in repairing their own Pocket Computers. You can follow the eevblog thread here, or check out the video below.

Hyperkin has recreated the original Xbox controller aka "Duke" as an officially Xbox - licensed controller, compatible with Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, the Xbox One family of devices, and Windows 10 PCs. The Hyperkin Duke Wired Controller features the original Xbox® startup screen animated inside the Xbox® Button, precision analog triggers, bumpers, a 3.5 mm headset jack, a 9 ft. detachable USB cable, and the return of the Black (RB) and White (LB) buttons. The Hyperkin Duke is big, buff, and ready for action.

In 1991, a business unit called Samsung Display was formed to produce the panels used in products made by its parent company, Samsung Electronics. Afterward, it was a leading supplier of LCD panels not just for Samsung Electronics but for other companies in the industry as well.

The business received a stay of execution when the pandemic led to a global surge in demand for consumer electronics, but that demand is now declining, and projections aren"t good for LCD panel revenue.

Add to that the fact that emerging technologies like QD-OLED are the future for TV and monitors, and the case for keeping Samsung Display"s LCD business going becomes a hard one to make.

Samsung Display will now focus heavily on OLED and quantum dot. Most of the employees working in the LCD business will move to quantum dot, the publication claims.

Even if there isn"t a statement about a change in direction, the writing has been on the wall for Samsung"s LCD business. Unless something radical changes, it"s more a question of when than if at this point.

Tizen places all your apps in a row along the bottom of the Smart Hub (read: home screen). It’s got all the popular streaming apps as part of a 2,000-plus app library, and it has a neat feature that activates when you select an app, showing you popular sub-categories (like Netflix shows or Spotify playlists) for that app. There’s also a Tizen Gaming Hub which supports Google’s Stadia platform, Xbox, and GeForce Now for streaming games.

Samsung has so far avoided producing OLED displays like those of LG. So, instead of striking a deal to use LG’s panels, Samsung branded its own LCD tech “QLED.” For a detailed breakdown, check out our QLED TV versus OLED TV comparison, but the general gist is this: QLED uses quantum dots to enhance performance by producing a purer, full-spectrum white light than LEDs are capable of on their own. In practice, QLED televisions are brighter (better for bright rooms) than less-expensive LCD TVs, and unlike OLED, can be more affordably built into large displays (100 inches and beyond).

WebOS — currently in its sixth iteration, WebOS 6.1 — completely revamps the LG smart experience. Where past models relegated apps to the bottom of the display (similar to Samsung Tizen), LG’s WebOS 6.1 sets utilize the entire screen for apps and other recommended web content. LG’s Magic Motion Remote has also been redesigned to support voice commands for both Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant, along with a Magic Explorer feature that lets viewers get additional info about the show or movie they’re watching, from what actors appear in the series or film to notable trivia.

As with Tizen, WebOS allows users to screen share (using Miracast), though that ability is limited to Android devices and Windows computers. The previous 5.0 update added VR capability to WebOS, in case you’ve got any 360-degree videos or photos you’d like to view, as well as support for additional devices like the Google Stadia.

Google TV — versions of which run on many other devices, like the Amazon Fire TV family — isn’t quite as slick as WebOS, but it’s arguably more powerful. Unlike WebOS and Tizen, the Google TV home screen is laden with apps and suggestions, and you can scroll down for even more. Sony’s 2021 catalog was the first generation of sets to switch over to Google TV, an overhaul of the Android TV OS that features a faster, more intuitive user interface, complete with recommended and sponsored web content.

Before 2017, all of Vizio’s Smart TVs ran a system that required users to download an application on their smartphone or tablet, which would be used to cast any content to the screen. In a nutshell, they were designed for mirroring. SmartCast updated that system by automatically curating a wide selection of apps without the need to download anything. That includes major streamers from Disney+ to Netflix, plenty of individual channel apps, and a wide variety of niche apps. It’s particularly easy to use in a field where smart TV platforms aren’t always the most user-friendly.

Between Black Friday sales and new console launches, everyone"s talking about buying a new TV this year. It seems everyone—including our own WIRED reviewers—are extolling the virtues of modern panels when paired with the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. But do you really need a new TV, and if so, what about these new screens is so special?

For the past few years, TV tech has been in the midst of a big transition with two main improvements to picture quality: 4K and HDR. Without getting too technical, these can improve the sharpness, color, and general "pop" of your TV"s picture, and both the PS5 and Xbox Series X are primed to make the most of these technologies. If you"re still using an older 1080p set, the new consoles will still contain some improvements—see below—but they"ll feel more like incremental upgrades if you don"t have a relatively recent set.

Technically, last generation"s mid-cycle refreshes, the Xbox One X and PS4 Pro, also made use of 4K and HDR, though the Xbox Series X takes it even further with its Auto HDR feature that adds those bright highlights to backwards-compatible Xbox, Xbox 360, and Xbox One games. The disc-based versions of both consoles also contain 4K Blu-ray players, which is a nice value-add if you have a capable TV.

That"s not to say these new consoles are entirely about new TV tech. The beefier hardware inside the PS5 and Xbox Series X can play many games at higher frame rates, which means you"ll get smoother motion and more responsive controls no matter what TV you use—even if it"s an older 1080p set. Some gamers may not notice or care about the added smoothness, but I"m of the opinion that 60 frames per second is a huge improvement over the 30-fps gameplay of last generation. (Some next-gen games will even have options to play at 120 frames per second, which may require a more recent TV.)

Plus, both consoles have added features that have nothing to do with your TV—like the Xbox"s Quick Resume feature, or the PS5"s improved haptics and 3D audio for headphones. Both consoles also sport super-fast SSDs, meaning load times will be blazing fast compared to the Xbox One and PS4. These features are nice to have, even on old or cheap TVs.

Finally, if you"ve seen any TV buying guides this year, you"ll notice "HDMI 2.1" mentioned as a gaming feature to look for if you plan on buying a PS5 or Xbox Series X. HDMI 2.1, introduced in 2019, adds a few handy gaming features:Variable Refresh Rate (VRR) allows your TV to "sync" the number of times it refreshes per second to the number of frames being output by your console. This can reduce screen tearing and certain types of motion stutter. Note that the Xbox Series X can use a less powerful version of VRR called FreeSync on certain Samsung and LG TVs that don"t have HDMI 2.1.

Enhanced Audio Return Channel (ARC) allows your TV to send higher-quality audio to a receiver or soundbar. This isn"t a gaming-specific feature, but is handy if you want to pass Dolby Atmos through your TV (the PS5 supports Atmos for Blu-ray discs only, while the Xbox Series X supports it in some games).

The PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X will provide a better gaming experience than last generation"s consoles, no matter what TV you have. However, if you have an older TV that can"t do HDR, those improvements are a bit more incremental, and they may not be worth the console"s $500 price tag on their own.

If you"re still rocking an old 1080p set, you"ll get far more out of the PS5 and Xbox Series X by upgrading your TV now or soon. HDR is a huge improvement to picture quality, and it"s one of the most noticeable upgrades you"ll see over the older PlayStation 4 and Xbox One—and if you can get one with HDMI 2.1, all the better.