Rearranging Pixels For Performance

tepes writes "From bottomquark, A new method of sub-pixel rendering could make monitors cheaper to produce. ClairVoyante Laboratories developed the PenTile Matrix, which uses five sub-pixels instead of the typical three, to take advantage of the fact that the human eye is more sensitive to blue colors."

Comments

It is not Blue

[hottoh]

The human eye is least sensitive to blue. It it most sensitive to green, followed by red then blue. R

Re:It is not Blue

[Mr Thinly Sliced]

All they had to do was open a computer graphics text book to the section on colour spaces.

Peaks are:
Red at 630nm, green at 530nm, and blue at 450nm.

Its kinda a bell curve at each, with green having greatest sensitivity, followed by red then blue.

The human eye can distinguish about 128 different hues, and about 130 different tints (source Computer Graphics, Prentice Hall 1986).

Mr Thinly Sliced

Summary.

[mindstrm]

As with all slashdot posts, the posting is inaccurate.

The human eye is *least* sensitive to blue... that's what this thing is about, sort of.

It's also not a new method of sub-pixel rendering.. it's a new method of sub-pixel layout.

The theory is that in a conventional LCD, there is too much blue.. it's wasted space, resources, etc.
This thing both changes the color proportion, and the way the thing is wired up. adjacent subpixels of the same color are driven by the same driver.

Re:gee..

[RovingSlug]

Yeah, I thought it was green too. That's why in 16-bit color, it's 5 bits for red, 6 bits for green, and 5 bits for blue.

Hmm, hard to find a definitive source. But, some support for that assertion is here ("10Eh : 320x200 64k-colour (5:6:5)", "111h : 640x480 64k-colour (5:6:5)", ...) and here ("16 bit color depth is supported through several different bit arrangements, including 5-5-5 and 5-6-5.").

That is a horrible article, the source is better

[victim]

The linked article is awful. You will not understand PenTiles from it. Go to the source to get the facts.

Briefly...

• Human perception has lower spatial resolution for blue, so have fewer blue pixles. this has nothing to do with intensity sensitivity.
  
• Apparently the column drivers on an LCD cost more than the row drivers. I have no idea why, but I will accept that. The pentiles use twice as many row drivers for red and green to boost the spatial resolution without requiring more column drivers.
  
• Much like cleartype, they can position pixels on other than the natural boundaries to accomplish subpixel effects. The example on the page is a special case of a single white point. Mostly this will be useful for smoothing edges.

It is a really well written desription, it is a shame Design Engineering didn't have an writer that could understand it.

Re:similar to a recent dead-tree concept

[MegaGremlin]

Hexacrome is not exactly new.

Pantone Hexachrome is a six-color ultra high-fidelity process for enhanced color reproduction. Introduced in 1995, Hexachrome includes a new ink set, separations, proofing, and color selector. The proprietary ink set developed by Pantone consists of enhanced versions of the subtractive primaries yellow, magenta, and cyan, along with black, orange, and green inks.

Original Article

Bolding in block quote is mine.

Doh! What about us colorblind folks?

[cmckay]

Okay, I agree that this technology is cool, but I think I would still opt for a traditional LCD display. I'm red-green colorblind, so I am most sensitive to blue, rather than red or green as this display assumes.

I'm surprised that nobody else has posted about colorblindness yet-- I was under the impression that more of us engineering types were affected!