So I'm in the middle of planning an install, and so far I have yet to find a display that is good quality, sunlight readable, and cheap.
I was thinking about getting this panel:
http://www.logicsupply.com/products/800tpc_l_of
because of the native resolution and contrast ratio.
The big problem is that I have a convertible and need something that is sunlight readable. With the prices of transreflective displays I was thinking about either adding a film of plastic with a two way mirror coating on it between the backlight and the LCD or to take out the ccfl tubes and replace each with a row of SMD LEDs.
It comes down to me being worried about the two way mirror effecting image quality and lowering the backlight even more for viewing not in sunlight. Plus if I make the backlight LED then I can use less power and dim the system with a photovoltaic based system, maybe even using a fusion brain.
Essentially what I am looking for is numbers. The research I have done (or at least what I understood) is that the backlight without the panel in front of it is roughly ten times brighter the the end result brightness. I have also heard that 600mcd is just at the daylight readable point with 800-1000mcd being good.
So basic logic (assuming the above is true) says that I want to produce 10,000mcds of diffuse light.
The part that confuses me is while I keep reading that I need to use very bright LEDs, none of them say a numerical value. I have shopped around for surface mount LEDs and can find a single 2,500 mcd LED very easily, I have even found a few at 10,000 mcds each.
All the places I have looked say that I need to get very bright LEDs, but logic says that if I use the most amount of LEDs possible to make the most diffuse light that reaches my target then the backlight will look better.
So, did I do the estimating correct? Do I need to make 10,000 mcds or did I forget something?
Should I get 370mm (width of the display * 2 for top and bottom to replace the ccfl tubes) worth of the lowest power LEDs that add up to the 10,000mcd goal? Or should I go brighter then that keeping in mind that if I go too bright the color will change when I dim the setup low enough not to blind me at night.