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US 7,379,243 B2Granted
Mirror with built-in display
AssigneeKoninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
InventorsJan Baptist Adrianus Maria Horsten, Markus Cornelis Jakobus Lazeroms, Dirk Jan Broer, Johannes Johanna Van Herk, Hugo Johan Cornelissen
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A mirror device (1) which can be simultaneously used for display purposes, based on e.g. an LCD display (5) with a polarizing mirror (2) placed in front of it. The polarizing mirror (2) has the characteristics that it does not disturb the transmission of the light from the display (5), but does reflect the light from outside the area of the screen.
Claims17
A device for viewing reflected images and displayed images, comprising:
- a polarizing mirror that reflects light of a first kind of polarization and passes light of a second kind of polarization, and is configured to provide the reflected images on a viewing side of the polarizing mirror in a first area of a surface of the device, and
- a display device that is configured to provide light of the second kind of polarization from a non-viewing side to the viewing side of the polarizing mirror to selectively provide the displayed images in a second area, the second area being within the first area and significantly smaller than the first area.
A device comprising:
- a first polarizing mirror that reflects light of a first polarization toward a viewing side of the device and passes light of a second polarization,
- a second polarizing mirror that reflects light of the second polarization toward the viewing side and passes light of the first polarization,
- a switchable optical element situated between the first and second polarizing mirrors that is configured to selectively:
- pass light of the second polarization in a first state, so that light of a second polarization from the first polarizing mirror is reflected from the second polarizing mirror, and
- transform light of the first polarization from the second polarization mirror to light of the second polarization in a second state, so that light of the first polarization from a non-viewing side of the device is passed through the device to the viewing side, and
- a display element that is situated on the non-viewing side of the device, and is configured to provide an image to be displayed via the light of the first polarization from the non-viewing side of the device.
3 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.