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Comment by khaki54 | Hacker News Reader

I think we're a little too late -- like that guy who invented a better dodo trap or the lady who came up with a more effective polio vaccine.

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There's another aspect to this development. One benefit of incandescent lamps vs. CFL or LED is superior CRI (color rendering index).

CFL/LED lamps produce output having a discontinuous spectrum, fluorescents with prominent green and LEDs blue emission. Consequently these light sources can be much less desirable where accurate color rendering is important, for example critical color matching, art galleries/museums, etc.

I've found it difficult to replace continuous spectrum sources with LED lights in particular. The latter are much more energy efficient and have greater useful life span, but unsuited to photography, etc., where quality of color rendering is crucial.

Quite likely there's a large enough market for improved incandescent lamps to warrant further development.

Agreed, and thanks for bringing this up. This is why Tungsten and HMI lighting is still a thing. Remote phosphor lights from Cineo are supposed to address this, however. But this would not be used in a residential setting, more for commercial lighting situations.

Indeed, the Cineo lights claim high CRI values. Per their website, the lights are intended for cinematography and similar applications. I surmise they wouldn't be used in homes or commercial spaces, at least that would be rare. The lighting systems are quite expensive, especially the bigger units.

Not yet seen CRI info for more ordinary incandescent replacement lamps, but potentially they could begin to approximate the traditional light emitters especially at lower color temps, <3000K.

How does remote phosphor help with color rendition? After all, white LEDs also use blue light + phosphor, so how do the remoteness help?

Not necessarily. There could still be room for these bulbs if they turn out to be as energy efficient as LEDs or CFLs, but are less expensive to manufacture (leading to lower off-the-shelf costs).

Don't hold your breath. The antireflection coatings and photonic crystals required to reach LED efficiencies would be much more complex (expensive) than the LEDs themselves.

This is just grant fishing. It's not going anywhere. Similar technologies are potentially more useful for thermophotovoltaics, but even there they aren't cost effective.

Incandescent lightbulbs often are suitable for small form factors unlike spiral incandescents, and don't suffer from the heat dissipation issues which LED lights do. A more efficient version of the technology would be advantageous in areas where those two things are important.

Can you elaborate on the heat dissipation issues?

You have to keep the LEDs relatively cool or their lifetime decreases substantially. That's why most LED bulbs of reasonable intensity have a heat sink integrated into their design. In practice, this isn't too much of a problem when you're designing the entire bulb (and perhaps the housing). But it does mean you're still stuck using incandescents as, e.g., oven light bulbs.

(I say "stuck" mostly in a design sense - the inefficiency is irrelevant in that application. But LEDs give more shape flexibility. I'm a fan of how they've been deployed in refrigerators to provide more uniform illumination, for example.)

Just about every interior design showroom or expo has "Edison bulbs" (fancy incandescents) for their aesthetic appeal.

They also have a better color light for, you know, seeing things. LEDs vary and can get pretty close.

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