Monitor One-Upmanship From IBM

openSoar writes: "So here is a solution for your lounge or media room setup and a nice display for your office. 61 inches of plasma sounds sweet but a $28K price tag doesn't. The IBM LCD will do 3840x2400 which would make me SO much more productive ;-)" Who says 200dpi is only for the labs? I'd rather have two of these than one 61" display anyhow. 3840 x 2400 would mate nicely with the Nikon D1x I also don't have.

Comments

Confusing write up.

[supine]

I thought i was being taken to something about a 61" flat panel for $28,000 but the first link actually takes you to where you can purchase a 22" IBM flat panel for US$16,000. After finding that out, the write up starts to make sense...

marty

Bit pricy!

[jweatherley]

You could buy 2 Apple 22 inch displays for $5000 AND a maxed out G4 and still have $1000s in change!

I realise the IBM has a higher pixel density than the Apple models but I can't see many peope rushing out to buy this one.

QUXGA-W

[stuffman64]

Ah yes, the acronyms keep stacking up. Ok, this is how I remeber it: MGA->CGA->EGA->VGA->SVGA->XGA->X SGA->UXGA, now the all-mighty QUXGA-W (I'm sure I missed a few in there, especially the Apple ones). This stands for "Quad Ultra eXtended Graphics Array [something]." Does anyone know what the "-W" means?

Why don't manufacturers use a simple naming convention instead of these hideously long acronyms (hell, "Quxgaw" sounds like a word), and use something a little more desciptive- namely resolution. I think saying "Hey, my monitor is 3840x2400!" sounds better than "I got a Quxgaw sitting on my desk!"

Re:not so expensive...

[rchatterjee]

It's also a better value in the long run because from what I understand the average plasma display dies in about 18 months when the plasma "wears out" (though the technology is improving) while the LCD would last quite a bit longer (though I'm not sure of the exact amount of time).

My posting was corrupted

[openSoar]

It seems something happened to my posting - I did check it thoroughly before I posted - honestly..

Anyway - the plasma TV I was referring to is here and it is indeed 61" and $28K

Re:what video card drives that?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a Matrox card with 4 digital outputs.
No 3D acceleration.
I've been using it for a few weeks now -
here's a mini-review:

After seeing it for 10 minutes, I said "I *want it* as my main monitor"...

And after 20 minutes, I added "when it'll be possible to use it with a different setup"...
right now, the card driving is slow, and it only
runs under Windows :-P

Needless to say, Windows does *not* scale well to that resolution.

Mac OS X would do much better, with picture-like icons, antialiasing, etc. But there are no drivers. Although it would be a perfect monitor
for A/V applications (AKA multimedia editing)
apparently IBM targets a much more specific market
at the moment.

Ant the biggest problem as of now:
**content**
So far, the only thing making sense is viewing large maps, images, etc. For both reasons mentioned above (slow, no SW/OS support).

But we're working on it...

(sorry, AC-posting to do it quickly)

2 sgi's USED to be affordable

[TheGratefulNet]

when the 1600sw was in the process of being discontinued (its now fully discontinued), there were many available on ebay and other outlets. I bought 2 of them along with an AGP and PCI card (one of each; both purely digital). I asked around to see if anyone could confirm that you could run Xinerama (dualhead single-logical-screen) but no one at SGI could confirm this (at least regarding xfree86) except the xf86 driver developer, himself! so I gave it a try and I couldn't be happier for it. having 2 1600x1024 lcd screens with a contrast ratio of 350 is just amazing. and the lcd+video card combo was usually less than $1k each (yes, I spent about $2k on my dualhead setup. is that a lot? well, for folks with poor/failing eyesight, all-digital lcd's are a godsend!)

however, since these are long gone from the usual retail channels, their used price has skyrocketed and the used prices are now approaching the price of the units as if they were new! guess that tells SGI that they shouldn't have retired this design. (and they replaced it with a far inferior unit that only does 1280x1024, and via analog, too!) ;-(

the downside of the lcd's is that they aren't the best for doing photo retouch work. interesting that you mentioned the nikon d1x - I just bought a used nikon d1 (original) and while its "only" 2000x1300 in output resolution, its still a darned good camera body and being able to shoot off 4.5frames/sec with no noticeable shutter lag or latency is still state of the art. but I do have to do my last stage of retouching on an actual CRT.

CRTs will never go away. LCDs are uber-cool but bright highlights get blown out when you view on an LCD. I do mostly C-coding and sysadmin type stuff at home (and only occasional photo work), so the dual LCDs pretty much fit my need. but don't think that they're a complete substitute for a CRT in all cases, 'cause they're not.