Palm Offers Refund to m130 Owners

EyesWideOpen writes "On Wednesday Palm began notifying registered m130 owners "that they were entitled to a full refund, including taxes paid on the PDA" for misleading them about the actual number of colors the product supports. The m130 was originally advertised as supporting 65,536 colors when in actuality it can only display 58,621. Owners who choose to forfeit the refund and keep the PDA could instead download a free version of the video game SimCity." Looks like a great deal for those who don't care about the bit depth of their PDA, and a way out for those who do.

Comments

Comparison

[SiMac]

For the lazy, the comparison between the Prism (real 16-bit) and m130 can be found here.

However, by inspecting this picture, i think that Palm may actually be trying to cover up the fact that there are only 58000-some colors using the dithering technique and that in real life there are actually only 4096 colors.

Actually,

[shepd]

Its not even 58k colours for real. That's simluated from the hardware limited 12-bit (4k) colour depth. (Or at least that's what TechTV sez).

Palm users were really ripped off, IMHO.

Re:Actually,

[shepd]

Okay, I know quite a bit about how LCDs and CRTs use separate colour pixes and simulate the real colour.

I learned a LOT about the lies of LCD resolutions when I was shopping for a VR/Television headset (that I never bought because _no one_ had them for show in the Kitchener-Waterloo area, except for a barely pre-beta-production pair at the Sony shop that were priced exorbitantly).

Non-consumer LCD specs are rated at their monochrome specifications, that is to say they are rated at 3x their resolution with no colour guarantees (because that's the job of the controller, not the LCD).

Consumer LCD specs are rated at their full colour specifications whenever they mention "colours" in the same line. For example, "Displays 160x160 resolution at 16-bit colour". However, if colours are *not* listed on the same line, its fair game to say its a 480x180 pixel display, _but_ on a fully fledged consumer device one would have to back that up with OS support for a fake monochome display using the separate colour pixels (which Palm does _not_ have).

Now, as far as raw CRTs and raw LCDs actually having bit depths associated with them, this is false. As the raw pixels on LCDs and the minimum size points formed by the shadow mask CRTs are purely analog in nature, you cannot state a bit depth for them. You are only limited by what the controller can do for an LCD, and with a CRT you are unlimited (unless the designer of the controller was on LSD at the time).

Anyways, since you seem so interested in learning how all this works (as you asked me to look it up for you, but I don't need to, since I learned all this in the few EET courses I passed handily) I'll explain why all this is to you. What a nice guy I am, huh?

Okay, lets start with CRTs. These are complicated little beasties when you get into colour, so lets start with monochrome.

The tube you are looking at right now is evacuated of all air. In the rear of it is a heating element, which causes a material in front of it to emit electrons. The amount of electrons emitted is controlled by a control grid in front of this material. This is what allows us to control the intensity, or brightness of the beam. This is controlled through voltage, and therefore is completely analog unless you choose to hook it up to a digital controller. After the beam is attenuated by the control grid, it then passes by "yokes", or electromagnetic coils in a standard CRT, or for an oscilloscope CRT, these are deflection plates. In either case, a voltage is applied to these. A higher voltage moves the electon beam away from that yoke/plate, however a lower voltage does not move it closer (this is why a TV requires at least a 4-way yoke, or 4 deflection plates). Moving the beam causes a spot on the phospor covered, lead impregnated part of the screen you see to light up (it actually excites the phosphor and causes it to emit light waves and x-rays rather than electrons). X-Rays (which are mostly of the soft form anyways) are curtailed by the lead, and the lead is grouned to remove the resulting electrical charge caused by all this electronic conversion away from the screen. Not to mention it keeps the EXTREMELY high voltage used called the "screen" from killing you. Beats me what this was about, nobody ever explained it (could that just be part of why I failed out of EET? :-)

Now we can see if this beam is moved about the screen it will create points of light all over. P22 phospor (which is what is used in starndard computer monitors) does not instantly stop emitting light when charged and, knowing this, we can use it to our advantage and move the beam quickly enough about the screen to keep the entire screen bright.

Now, modulating the yoke and control grid we can produce a picture. NTSC combines all this into one signal (bad). Fortunately, VGA does not, and is still completely analog (and could display google bit colour, if you so desired). VGA uses separate vertical and horizontal deflection signals, and also has separate voltage controls for the different colours red, green and blue (which we're about to get to).

A shadow mask placed behind the phospor on a screen allows the three beams integrated into a colour monitor to selectively hit various coloured phosphors on a computer screen. Basically, I really don't want to go into this anymore, because again, computer monitors are NOT my expertise.

So, as you can see, I've proven CRTs are purely analog, and therefore can display an infinite range of colour (disproving your bit-based theory of CRT colour).

Now to disprove your bit-based theory of LCDs.

LCDs are far more simple than CRTs. A fluid inside an LCD can be polarized at various angles with an applied voltage. The voltage directly controls the angle, and is completely analog. A polarized lense is placed either behind or infront of the LCD. A standard LCD (such as the one in a digital watch) has a mirror behind it which light bounces from when it strikes the LCD.

When a 90 degree twist is applied to the LCD is causes the display to be totally black, because it is a completely perpendicular angle to the polarized glass in front or behind it. If enough voltage to cause a 39.37837 degree twist to be placed on the LCD element, it will show up as a shade of grey, and that shade of grey is different than one at 39.28374 degrees.

When a Red, Green, and Blue colour filter is applied to these elements, you get a colour display, at the cost of requiring three times as many pixels. The display is still analog, and can display an infinite amount of colours, only limited by the controller attached to it.

HTH!

Re:Woo Classic Maxis!

[BagOBones]

The only site I ever needed to Palm software.
http://www.pilotgear.com/
Just do a search for Simcity in the software section

Hey

[mindstrm]

It doesn't even display the 50,000 color number the claim.. it is 12 bit color.

They claim that by 'color mixing' you can get more colors..

Re:Does it make a big difference to people?

[RatBastard]

Actually, yes. Paml M130's generate 58,000 colors through some sort of dithering or pixel strobing technique. The display can only generate 4096 actuall colors. The problem is that this makes for really crappy images and, more to the point, is a flat-out lie.

The REAL point of contention is not the number of colors, but the fact that Palm Inc. lied to its customers.

Re:is this really a big deal?

[martyn s]

That link doesn't work, so try this

I didn't know what dithering was before I looked at the picture but this is what I gather from it. If you have a 1 bit display (just black and white), if you make every other pixel black, and every other pixel white, it will give the appearance of being gray (especially at higher resolutions). That is what dithering is. This is opposed to showing a pixel that is actually gray (half black half white, that is, each sub pixel [red, blue, green] on equal intensity, at half intensity). So the difference between 12 bit dithering, as the m130 does, and true 58,000 colors is considerable. The fact that Palm's spin on it is that it shows 58,000 colors instead of 64,000 leads me to believe that they knew all along about the limitations in the device.

Even if you can get 12-bit (dithered) color to look almost as good as non-dithered 16 bit color (which you can't, but lets just assume), it's still fraud. 16 bit color can be made to look even better if it is dithered. The only way they could've avoided fraud (and even then it would've been sketchy) is if they said "16-bit quality color" or "as good as 16-bit color"

And whoever thinks that the difference between 12 bit color and 16 bit color is just for bragging rights, I suggest they play video games. Even with 32 bit color, if alpha is using some of those bits, you will *still* see color banding, especially in motion. The next generation of videocards is working on 64-bit color (although, they're not actually displaying at 64 bits, just 64 bits are used for calculations, to minimize cumulative color distortion through multiple passes).

Re:is this really a big deal?

[xswl0931]

How about if you bought a 650 Mhz processor, but it turns out to be 580 Mhz? Well, the reality is that the m120 is actually 12-bit which displays 4096 colors and cheats to get the 58k magic colors. From seeing it myself, there's no mistake this is a 12-bit display, not a pseudo 15.5 bit display. Just compare it to other 12-bit displays and you'll easily see the difference (or similarities as the case may be). They lied once, and now they lie again. I suppose you could say my Pentium III is a 128 bit processor since it could do 128 bit calculations... right....

4096 is not 58,621

[frovingslosh]

The m130 was originally advertised as supporting 65,536 colors when in actuality it can only display 58,621.

Lets be accurate here. It can only display 4096 colors. It's a 12 bit color display, not 16. However Palm marketing wants to twist things, it does not serve the user to repeat marketing hype. They sold this thing as a 16 bit display and it was a 12 bit display. Matters a lot if you want to view photos or color images, and that's the reason many paid for a color toy. The problem is more serious than the "only 58,621 colors as contrasted to 64k" marketing hype.