The technology prevents the users from seeing a blurred or distorted image when viewing a liquid crystal display (LCD) from an angle instead of straight on, say its developers.

"Viewing angle is an inherent, fundamental problem for the LCD because of its working principle," says Wayne Cheng, who developed the screen with colleague Chih-Nan Wu at the Photonics and Display Institute, National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan.

Normally, altering the angle of the liquid crystals held between two polarising elements controls the brightness of each pixel in an LCD. The crystals act like tiny valves, varying the amount of light that can pass through.

As such, when a viewer looks at an LCD from one side, they effectively alter the viewing angle of these crystals, which reduces the brightness and contrast of a pixel and distorts the clarity and colours of an overall image.

The prototype display developed by Cheng and Wu connects to a miniature camera that tracks the location of the viewer’s head. The software then calculates how to adjust the liquid crystals within the display to produce the clearest possible image, reports New Scientist.

Cheng and Wu say trials of the screen have been promising and they are now working on a simpler, infrared sensor that tracks a user by the position of their eyes.