Slashdot Mirror
Super Large, Super Hi-Res LCD Screens?
"I did some digging and found that while the VP181 is advertised as having a maximum resolution of 1600x1200, its native resolution is a piddly 1280x1024 (every image I've seen so far is intended to be displayed on a device with square pixels, and 1280x1024 crams a 5:4 resolution into a 4:3 space resulting in squished pixels) and the higher res is just emulated. Then there's the 17.3-inch SGI 1600SW, which does 1600x1024, but I understand it locks you into a specific video card and the product is no longer supported. Every once in a while we hear about new flat panel technologies being developed (IBM developed the QX20, a 20.8-inch, 2048x1536 LCD (this was last year. Where is it now?). Then there's the 22" Apple Cinema Display, which can do 1600x1024, but it's made by Apple, and I'm not quite so sure about that one."
My laptop has a ATI Rage Mobility in it that can apply what I think is a bi-linear filter to the image before it displays it. The result is that the image does not have any of the horrible aliasing that results with most video cards. The result is a little fuzzy, but rather than annoying it has an almost attractive "magnified" look to it.
The result is that the lower resolution are 100% usable. To be honest, I don't even know why vendors implemented the old stretching method at all. It looked so crappy as to be useless. I always turned it off, and just had the display use the center 640x480 pixels with a huge black border. At least then I could read things.
However, I don't know if this solution is available outside of laptops. It is a function of the video chipset, and I don't know if the desktop ATI's implement it. I also don't know how it would work with the VGA connection that most LCD displays use. I wouldn't be suprised if it didn't. But, if you get a laptop with the ATI Rage Mobility, you won't have this problem. However, you might want to check for a BIOS setting to let you turn the stretching off on your laptop. All the one's I've used have had an option for this. The 1:1 mapping isn't great because it's so small, but at least it looks OK.
As long as you don't switch resolutions they are great, but the instant you do, you have:
;-)
Aliasing.
And it looks like crap.
I have a 2 year old laptop with a LCD screen of 1024x768. You switch to a resolution like 640x480 and you have TERRIBLE aliasing problems. The video card scales the 640 pixels up to the same physical width as the 1024, and the 480 up to the same physical height as the 768 instead of just doing a 1:1 scale and having the 640x480 image shrink. Now, since you need 1.6 pixels across and down (1024/640 = 768/480 = 1.6 scaling) and the LCD screen doesn't have fractional LCD's you end up with very bad aliasing artifacts.
Analog tubes do NOT have this problem. (They have temporal aliasing, but that's another discussion
For most uses, you just leave the LCD screen running at max (highest) resolution and it's not an issue. But playing, or developing games, on a LCD, and unfortunately the problem shows up.
I love the cleaner and sharper look of the LCD screen. It seems to be easier on the eyes. I would switch over to LCD screens in a second, if this is non-issue nowadays.
Have "modern" LCD screens fixed this scaling problem?
Cheers
--
"Those who fail to learn from the past, are condemned to repeat it" - paraphrasing George Santayana
The 1600SW is fantastic but the Number Nine card could be better (and doesn't have a driver in XFree86 4). They now supply a MultiLink adapter which allows the monitor to accept many types of video input.
How is it that Dell has a laptop with 15" 1600 X 1200 resolution (native), but you can't find one for a desktop computer? You'd think whoever builds their screens (Quanta? not sure) would be able to market that tech elsewhere. Of course, I'd like to see that pixel density on a 20" screen...
This is the kind of think I would advise waiting on. You can use this argument for anything(wait 5 more months and you can get a faster computer for the same price) but when looking at getting a flat screen monitor it would probably be prudent to wait for the technology to further develop. If you are looking for a flat screen with the same quality as a nice CRT then you should wait a while. CRTs have been around forever and have had a really long time to develop. Buying a flatscreen now could be a waste of money because Im sure new better technology will come around tomorrow. Then again... they look cool so maybe you should get one now. Chicks dig them.
Because of rising demand for high quality hangable high resolution imaging, the new company known as ArtistInc has been formed.
ArtistInc has some very major selling points in their special project code-named Painting. It has an infinite maximum resolution, with the average being 6 feet wide by 4 feet long. When asked about Flicker the CEO demonstrated the project in front of a large group -- one person their commented that "It looked like it was real and right in front of my face."
One possible problem with this new technology is that it is incompatible with turpentine.
(Someone please mod this information up as it's fairly important to combat the misinformation raised in the extended posting.)
The SGI 1600SW is definitely still sold an supported and still winning awards. With the fairly new MultiLink Adapter it is no longer necessary to have special video cards -- absolutely any VGA signal capable of doing 60 Hz refresh can drive the screen.
Keep in mind however that a standard VGA signal will go through an analog stage so you lose some of the theoretically possible crispness of pure digital. To keep pure digital you would indeed need one of the supported digital cards.
Here's a set of questions and answers about the 1600SW and the MultiLink Adapter.
I just wish I had one on my desk!
Cyrano de Maniac
I think I read that both ATI and Nvidia (sp?) are going to make ADC versions of their cards. This is the kind of thing that gets thrown out there and sometimes there's no follow-up, although the ATI one is a no-brainer since they make the cards that Apple ships right now.
... if you're dropping $3000-$4000, it's worth doing an audition. Maybe you can still find one with the plain DVI connector as well, in one of the stores that carry them, although the adapter is only $39 or so, which is only an extra 1% on top, and if the ADC thing catches on in the next couple of years, you might be glad you have both on your display. It is also the best-looking display I've personally seen so far, and the way the picture-frame foot works is really nice ... the thing just sort of glides to new angles as you gently push or pull on the top of the display.
FWIW, the Cinema Display is the biggest on the market, and it has a truly stunning image. Very, very high contrast. You've got to actually look at these things
Yes, I like the Samsung SyncMaster 770TFT as well (and am using it now!), but the poster asked for;
So it doesn't really fit the bill, does it?
I think the poster need the SyncMaster 1100p+. It has
but it is still a standard 15-pin connector. A USB option is apparently available, but I'm guessing (does anybody know?) that it involves a converter :-)
Unfortunately I have no experiences with this monitor, but if somebody would lend me a sample.....
Hi!
This has been bugging me for years now.
Everyone knows that the reason LCD screens are expensive is that they have to be made as a single piece, and the larger the piece the more likely that a few pixels are out causing them to have to throw the whole mess away.
What on earth is stopping them from producing a bunch of those little gameboy color screens, or maybe even something cheaper, and placing them side-by side??
You would be able to have a TV the size of your whole living room wall where you could place various channels, perhaps even nature settings. Add a touch sensor and you could even have the worlds coolest (and largest) white board.
And the price should be relativly trivial--probably under $1000/wall for the LCDs, a bit more for the control hardware.
If something like this was available, I would even forgive a little bit of a line or border where two LCDs meet (Hell, putting 4 TVs side-by-side to show one ballgame looks pretty cool, this would be MUCH better than that).
Anyway, anyone out there know why?
Good question, and in fact, it's been done. And discussed in this slashdot article. It's not exactly what you describe, and costs well more than $1000/wall, but it's in the right direction.
My name is 11223.
And what is your quest?
I seek the holy grail of flat-panel technology!
And what is the ModeLine of an ATI Rage Fury Pro with DVI connector neccessary to hook up to an Apple Cinema Display?
Uhh.. uhh... I don't know... Aieeee!
I see what you mean, then.
USB is a 4 wire standard; 2 for power/ground and 2 for signal. All you add to the ADC then would be the 2 signal wires, assuming that there is hardware on the monitor end and the PC end to handle the power conversion (as opposed to having 2 sets of power on the cable, though stupid engineering could very well have allowed for that as well). This is speculation on my part.
So you can conceivably get rid of the wiring and shielding necessary for the power, if it rides along the same line as the monitor's power lines.
You don't get an argument that it will take more engineering to get the wires, at different clocks, shielded, flexible, and working. On the other hand a new solution was needed for next generation displays, at least as defined by VESA, due to the fact that clock/refresh was increasing, display size/resolution was increasing, and the old VGA cables could not handle the bandwidth, limited at 150MHz, to the 2GHz limit of the newer interface.
See <a href="http://www.vesa.org/news81798.html">this page</a> for more info.
Your second point is also noted; but it is definitely an engineering solution, and not one that is insurmountable. I suspect Apple's future plan is to integrate Firewire as well into the cable, and produce a product with only one cable out the back:
ADC.
Speakers would migrate to USB, which collapses into the ADC, while video, firewire, and power are also provided by the ADC(Advanced Display Connector, if it's adopted outside of Apple, I would hope). Networking, of course, would be wireless.
And it isn't the cable that your saving money on; it's the ports and complexity and chipsets on the motherboard that get condensed. Say future PCI/AGP chipsets collect USB and FireWire functionality onto them. Instead of 3 or 4 chips, you now have 1 chip running all four functions. Instead of 3 ports, you now have one. Engineering wise, this makes placement and layout easier, I think, as well as heat disippation and traces simpler.
This has nothing to do with the stupidity of the user, though stupid people definitely benefit/gain from this arrangement. It is a convenience thing too. One less cable to package and ship. One less cable to test and try. One less cable to produce and buy. A $2 cable, a $1 in chips, $3 in ports, across a million machines => $6 million not spent. And since Apple seems to be shipping in the millions a year, I don't think saving $10-20 million is something one can laugh at easily...
Considering that's 250 engineers for a year of about $80k, it would be worth it if it cost 5 engineers 3 years of development time to design/implement this, at $100k salaries. One year of sales, if it's even close to $6mil saved, is enough to warrant the cost/difficulty in implementation.
My numbers are pure guesswork and rough numbers, nothing scientific. But on cost analysis, it isn't *outrageous* for Apple to implement something like this...
On the user end, it really is 2 less cables: Instead of video, power, and USB, it is only ADC.
So it may not be such a big deal on our end...
The nick is a joke! Really!
GPL Deconstructed
Well, I have a SGI FlatPanel 1600SW. This is, by far, the best LCD monitor I could find today--and that includes LCDs by Apple.
With a Number Nine Rev 4-FP (Do they make these anymore?) 1600x1024 @ 32-bit color really kicks ass in X. What I like most is that it's unusually crisp and very clear... I can read small text from a few feet away.
People have already mentioned that X 4.0 hasn't had the Number Nine drivers ported over, but that's trivial--I know they are working on this.
In any case, the SW-1600 is unbeatable. They just had a deal over at sgi.com where they were selling a kind of "G3"-looking Flatpanel for something like $US 1,699. It normally sells for $3,000 and I think they throw in a card too, a 16 MB Formac if you have a Mac, or a 32 MB Oxygen VX1-1600SW if you have a PC (Oxygen VX1-1600SW is not supported under X, unfortunately, not even with Xig's (www.xig.com) Oxygen VX1 driver.) But so what? Sell it (Value=$400) and get a Number Nine Revolution 4-FP instead.
So, that's about a 3,500 value which they are selling for 1,699. And no, I don't work for SGI, it's just that I think that this FlatPanel LCD is the best. (And believe me, I've looked.)
For price versus quality, I think this deal is quite good--if the deal is still there. (http://www.sgi.com/flatpanel).
Even so, I would shell out $5000 for this monitor, because I can't live with anything else anymore. I know most people don't have the money for this, but apparently the poster of this story does.
Hope this helps.
My roommate works at Panasonic and brought home one of their Plasma Displays. There's nothing quite as cool as playing Quake 3 Arena on a 42" 16x9 aspect screen. :)
:)
For our Y2K party we set it up to use Ryan Geiss' Winamp Plugin as a nice conversion piece.
Of course it costs around $13999.95...
---
I wear pants.