ViewSonic shows 200 dpi display

prostoalex writes "On Intel Developer Forum ViewSonic introduced its 200 dpi display. The 22.2 inch 3840x2400 monitor will sell for around $8,000." Maybe there's hope for all those obsessive folks trying to run Quake 3 at insane resolutions. Provided they'd rather have a monitor than eight grand!

Comments

Reviewer.

[undeg chwech]

Dear ViewSonic

I have decided, today, to become a professional monitor reviewer. Please send me one of theses ASAP so I can get my new career started,

Thank you very much,

Undeg.

I wonder

[cr@ckwhore]

I wonder how many folks will look at the picture of that monitor, and honestly think to themselves, "Wow, that looks like a really clear picture."

IBM T221 is $8400

[jlund]

The article makes it sound as if the IBM is still 20k, this is not the case.

http://commerce.www.ibm.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce/Pr od uctDisplay?cntrfnbr=1&prmenbr=1&prnbr=9503DG3&cntr y=840&lang=en_US

Clarify - should be PPI

[ip_vjl]

Not that anyone cares, but it should be 200ppi (pixels per inch)

DPI (dots per inch) more accurately describes print devices where a number of print dots are needed to accurately describe a single pixel.

For example, to show a single 50% black square pixel - you'd need a 2x2 array of black dots (BWBW) - so if your image is 100PPI - you need a print device at least 200PPI to show the same resolution. For a monitor this doesn't really apply - as each pixel corresponds to a single pixel of image data. (Unless of course they were talking about the individual R G B elements - but the article seemed to indicate the contrary)

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Just a pet peeve, as its often hard to get people to understand that there ARE differences between DPI, PPI, and LPI in the print world.

- vin

Re:How high? Depends on the OS

[Gryffin]

how high can I set the resolution with having to be able to squint to see the letters that I am typing. I can barely see the letters that I type at 1600x1200. I can imagine what 3840x2400 would look like.

How high? That depends on whether or not OS developers get their sh*t together.

Current, mainstream operating systems, or more properly, windowing systems (Windows, Mac OS X, X11) all tend to assume a screen resolution, or offer limited capability to change the resolution.

• X Window System: for font scaling, allows you to choose from 75dpi or 100dpi. Woo whee.
• Mac OS X: no capability to scale the display resolution at all, despite the fact that their Quartz rendering engine, with it's PostScript base, should be able to handle the chore in it's sleep.
• Windows: While it allows the user to choose the DPI of her monitor, this seems to be applied to application fonts only; the fonts used in many user interface elements are not scaled, making it difficult to use many UI elements at high resolutions.

None of these systems have truly separated the "internal" measurement of graphic objects with their display size; all rely on an assumed point-to-pixel ratio. The cost, of course, for this level of abstraction would be performance, i.e. display speed.

But it seems to me that modern display adapters shold be more than capable of doing this. What are lacking are the APIs to make the graphics hardware do the math, and the OS support to enable this feature. I think Mac OS X already has most of the capability already; lets see if they actually take the next step.

Re:How high?

[marmoset]

You're approaching it the wrong way. On a 72-dpi screen, a 12-point character can be represented by 144 pixels (I know, I'm deliberately omitting the effects of subpixel aliasing / anti-aliasing, hinting, and all those other tricks that modern display technologies use to boost perceived resolution in order to make this easier to follow) On a 200 dpi screen, over 1100 pixels can be brought to bear on that very same character. This means that the character can be rendered with much greater fidelity, so that if it's rendered at the same height as on the 72DPI screen it should be far more readable. Of course, your OS has to be smart enough to compensate for the much smaller pixels, but modern GUIs have this one figured out, for the most part.

it's sane, 1600x1200 w/ current tech may not be

[frovingslosh]

The resolution can go as high as 3840x2400. That is insane. I think the question is no longer how high can the resolution go. But on the otherhand, how high can I set the resolution with having to be able to squint to see the letters that I am typing. I can barely see the letters that I type at 1600x1200. I can imagine what 3840x2400 would look like.

This isn't insane, although running a display at a resolution you claim to hardly be able to read might be. The extra resolution gives more dots, so you end up with easier to view type. It's easy to demonstrate how this affects things: Hold a piece of printed text with small but clearly readable text next to text o your monitor. You'll likely find (if you can read the text on your monitor) that the printed text is both smaller and more readable. The reason for this is that there is a greater dot density to the printed text, helping you to read it despite it's apparent small size. Most current monitors just don't have the dot density to match this, so once text shrinks beyond a certain point it's the compromise in pixel selection, not the actual small text, that makes it hard to read the type. A higher density monitor does help in this area. Of course, if you try to make characters the same number of pixels on he new screen then your problem only gets worse, but you can have both more pixels and smaller text, which can result in a very readable display.

Then again, maybe you just need reading glasses.

Re:Too small

[Phork]

here's a thought, maybe you need bigger icons. There is nothing that says icons MUST be 64 pixels tall(well, maybe windows ui guidlines, but they dont count). The idea behind these new displays is that you will use gui elements designed to be rendered on 200dpi displays, not on 72 or 100 dpi displays. So if things were done properly an incon on this monitor would be the same size or larger than one on your current monitor, it would just ne higher quality.