Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology recently announced it has developed an LCD panel for use in car navigation and entertainment systems that maintains a high performance even in very low temperatures. Existing LCD panels need almost a second before liquid crystals respond and the screen displays intermediate colors such as grey when operating in a temperature of minus 20C. Toshiba Matsushita Display's new panel uses OCB (Optically Compensated Birefringence) technology, which aligns the liquid crystal molecules in an arc between the front and back panes of the glass in such a way that they are able to move faster, reducing response time of liquid crystals at a temperature of minus 20C to less than 100 milliseconds, approximately ten times faster than current LCD panels. The company's new product has a size of nine inches, has a VGA resolution of 640 x 480 dots, while having the ability to operate between minus 30C and 85C.

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