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Samsung to use Sub-Pixel VGA Screens
pdawerks writes "Samsung Electronics has developed a new graphics chip that will allow half VGA screens to produce VGA resolution. The novelty is specially aimed at future mobiles with VGA screens that will be less than 2.4 inches. It generates color using an entirely new driving method called sub-pixel unit driving methodology." Not sure if I think it is exactly new or not, but it's nifty.
More details can be found at Deisgntechnica.
Geekzone also has a similar article.
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Not a liberatarian flipflop hippie.
is it just me or did this story link mess up from the homepage?
Nothing to see here. Move along. At least /. says so.
If you can read this, thank an english teacher.
Interlacing doubles the number of lines in TV images using multiple fields. Is it likely that this is a variation of this concept?
It generates color using an entirely new driving method called sub-pixel unit driving methodology
I suppose I got my driver license from the wrong place...
Your head a splode
Is it really as simple as that? because that's been around for at least 25+ years in theory, a bit less in practice.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
1- take a small vga screen
2- pretend it was twice bigger
3- get a half size vga display with vga resolution
or did you mean a quarter of the pixel count ?
the title suggests that "VGA" indicates a default screen size (like 4" by 6"), but my understanding is that VGA says nothing about the size of the display, only the number of pixels (you can display VGA resolution of 640 x 480 on a 10" screen or a 30" screen, and its still VGA).
So isn't the whole term "half VGA screen" kinda dumb? Or is it just me?
Double the resolution, and blend the colors of neighboring pixels together to fit on a lower res. screen. Sounds like a new way of saying "anti-aliasing" ...
And the window washers are now "corporate vision enhancers!"
I wonder if this could be used with those LCD monitors that have a smaller bit depth in order to hit a low response time.
Perhaps they could decrese the bit depth even further and design them specifically for this card in order to get REALLY low times.
Victory or awesome!
Like what X on my screen is doing right now?
The new driver IC has overcome the physically impossible VGA-class and higher resolution images on small size TFT-LCD panels of less than 2.4 inches
Why is it physically impossible to design VGA displays less than 2.4 inches? Too small pixels?
The article is really short, but it says that the screen will use sub-pixel technology to allow a half-VGA screen to render VGA resolution. MS Cleartype also uses sub-pixel technology, though to make text sharper.
A linkie with information about sub-pixels in general (though it's on grc.com, whatever.) http://grc.com/cleartype.htm
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
Subpixel rendering takes into account the physical position of the red, green, and blue subpixels of an LCD display, and can therefore provide up to 3X the horizontal resolution of a typical display (with distortion, of course)
Here's a nice writeup
Sounds basically like cleartype, right? I mean, all THAT is is using the RGB (or CYM) sub-pixels to smoothe out lines and curves, correct? Err, so what's the BFD?
-theGreater Muller.Half VGA Screen means half of the VGA resolution, 640x240. To quote:
"By composing a new pixel with the sub-pixel on the adjacent scanning line, 480x640 (VGA) resolution can be attained from a 240x640 (half VGA) panel. The device can display up to 260K colors for TFT panels in mobile phones."
So basically, this is like separating Chrominance and Luminance, à la YUV. I always found having crappy and blurry colors, especially with RED, some bad compromise, often encountered on TV. Lavished colors won't help. The biggest problem i encountered with my mobile was reflection from the sun. Maybe they should look at the techs used on PDAs, you know, like transflective screens. Anyway, not everybody can read at such high resolution (2.4" screens!)
Wow. 2 entire minutes for someone to post something like that! I'm disappointed - I figured it would have been faster!
As usual, Wikipedia has a good article. To quote:
Interlacing is a method of displaying images on a raster-scanned display, such as a cathode ray tube (CRT), that results in less visible flickering than non-interlaced methods. The display draws first the even-numbered lines, then the odd numbered lines of each picture.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
How are these relinks possible? Embedded in the hex-code ?
As they say in Germany "ich habe gemüse in das leiderhosen". Which means that it might be looking like new fancy things but it is still the same old clothes.
Kinda like the Swedish "min trusse lugter af tis",, it's new but then again, it's not.
Is it a case of someone applying existing technologies like smoothing to the hardware layer if you look into what's really going on?
The article suggests that they added "White pixels". Additionally, the problem of dark screen due to the increased pixel density on high resolution panels has been solved using 4-color (R-G-B-W) rendering algorithm, improving the brightness of TFT-LCD panels. That's radicaly different than ClearType. ClearType uses the normalized RVB subpixels arrangement to triple the "perceived" resolution. That's because the humain eye is more sensitive to luminance than to chrominance (try to recognize colors in the dark, you can't, but you can still read B&W text). The problem here is not text aesthetics. It's global luminosity, as your backlight often has to battle with sunlignt. They add more "white pixels" to enhance the luminosity. In percentage, the number of "color" pixels are lower in this system. But the eye won't actually see the difference.
Quote:
By composing a new pixel with the sub-pixel on the adjacent scanning line, 480*640 VGA resolution can be attained from a 240*640 half-VGA panel.
Drop all the "MacOS does this", "ClearType does this", etc. shit please.
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
thanks.
Actually its been around a lot longer then you think. The Apple II used a form of sub pixel rendering written by steve wozniak himself.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
My question is, is this something new because its more clear? or because it's a hardware implementation?
They're parsed through google, as if you would feed google a valid URL and google brings you there.
Posted by CmdrTaco: Not sure if I think...
FWIW Taco, you're not the only one.
Joke. Actually you're not too bad, a couple of the other "editors" though... yeesh.
Here is a link to the Samsung website about the technology: http://www.samsung.com/Products/TFTLCD/Technology/ 4colorrandering.htm
I wouldn't complain too hard about the confusion in the details. They couldn't even spell 'rendering' right on their own site (4 color randering???).
It also discusses 'physicail' pixels. I dunno about that.
They seem to have created smaller pixels, which are spatially located across a different area than normal.
They then need fewer wires to connect the given number of pixels. Meaning a higher resolution with fewer interconnects. Maybe I'm completely wrong in this 1 minutes evaluation.
The neat thing is the overlap of their 'logical' pixel arrangements. It would seem they are using traditional dithering with a complicated arrangement of pixels. This should do exactly what they state. Ther weird thing is that their sub-pixel seems to have the wrong number of color sub-elements.
One would expect a ratio of 2:1:1 for green:red:blue emitters. They have 4:2:1. Maybe their red emitters are much brighter than the blue, which would make sense.
They mention replacing some rows with white pixels, but their diagrams don't show anything. Maybe the media-relations people just don't know how the technology works, and are making stuff up until someone corrects them.
According to the article, they're generating a white signal from the RGB input and have four color elements for each pixel-- RGBW. I suspect they're arranged in a square, like:
RG
BW
or some such. This would let them apply a system like ClearType or OSX or the old Apple II subpixel rendering in two dimensions, rather than just one as with the typical horizontal RGB subpixel arrangement.
You can get a VGA screen that is only 0.2 inches. It is about 2000 dpi.
But, it's always a price/resolution tradeoff; I suspect this lets them use cheaper production techniques to produce these smaller displays (which, as volumes ramp up, are now being squeezed on price).
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
Another turn of the Great Wheel. Give something old a new name and it's brand new. It's been this way since MicroSoft invented computers in 1981. Choke off Arizona's oxygen!
No. Hex code would look like this:
7 4%74%70%3a%2f%2f%77%77%77%2e%61%64%65%72%6b%61%63% 68%2e%6f%72%67%2f%3fu=%49%63%68
/ /www.aderkach.org/?u=Ich
http://www.google.com/%75r%6C?%73%61=D&%71=%68%
This is the hyperlink for a google redirect:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=D&q=http:
I hope you find this useful. The above hex is simply masking the URL in the above redirect. Unfortunately, when you use the hex to post to slashdot as the link, it converts it into text. The text "https://gmail.google.com/08udjfou38494o5rjd9357" is just text, the same way that "CLICK HERE!" would be text.
Samsung's press release about "sub-pixel unit driving methodology" is total hype and bull in my opinion. This technique provides better color and smoothing but no higher resolution by any means. They should be honest and call is what it is - color contrast and sharness enhancing technology - and not suggest that it provides a higher resolution for a given and fixed physical resolution.
for Acronym Whore...
They better change the name of the gun/emitter from Sub-Pixel Unit to something else, or it will be "stuck" with the acronym...
S.P.U.G.E.
Maybe Micro-Pixel Unit.
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
... VGA has only 16 colors in 640x480. It could only show 256 colors in the 320x200. Comparing it to what most PDAs do now, it seems that getting 64K colors in 320x200 is already beyound what VGA did!
Wrote about this some time ago; http://www.grc.com/cleartype.htm
They seem to be indicating that the RGBW trick is a whole different thing used to increase brightness (similar to CMYK for printers to make dark black colors).
There is a chance the subpixel rendering trick might depend on the new RGBW setup though, but it seems like they're two seperate technologies.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Well, because it doesn't work that way. You can combine lines and display the right color values, but in the end, you only have half as many pixels, and you simply don't have VGA resolution. You can maybe make it look better than half-VGA, but you can't make it really VGA. When you try to push this "just like VGA" display, you find out that you can't push it as far as VGA before things start losing sharpness. There is a Spanish saying: "Although the monkey may dress in silk, she remains a monkey."
I'm sure Samsung won't want to cannibalise their own panel business, but if they make some sort of inline attachment that we can connect to existing LCDs to boast their resolution, wow... its gonna be so cool!
I'm sure everyone will buy one!
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Here's a very good writeup on how subpixel rendering works:
http://grc.com/ctwhat.htm
It goes into detail with pictures and everything, demonstrating how the technology takes advantage of the separate red, green, and blue subpixels to achieve additional smoothing.
I'm not sure how Samsung intends to implement "white subpixels" though.
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Ahh, the venerable Apple ][, inspiring people even today!
Did anyone else notice that the acronym for this technology is "SPUD Methodology"?
I ordered a Dell 8600 last week for my mom and chose a lower resolution screen as an option thinking I was choosing the higher resolution. WTF? WXGA?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
...I will now offer the new Samsmug chip.
I can remember a race between two students at the university to get the highest polygon count on an ISA VGA card using all kind of tricks. They got pretty far, but while playing UT2004 for a couple of seconds, I've probably used more polygons then they generated all that time tweaking that VGA adapter :). When first Vesa local bus and then PCI came out they lost count and left it to the game industry.
First, it sounds like they're simply scaling 640x480 down to 320x240 with antialiasing. Big whoop.
Second, if they only do a luma blend (ie, ignore the nonlinearity of human perception of light), then it really won't be quite the same thing. I just don't think they're doing it right, because a proper luminance blend is computationally expensive.
Technically VGA is.. you can't increase resolution...blah blah blah. This is why people at Slashdot need to all be slapped. This is a press release, of course it's not technically correct. I'll help you guys out here.
This tech is to increase visibility and clarity on low res screens by taking into account sub-pixels. They are not increasing resolution, they're just stepping back and reconsidering what a pixel is. Mac OS X does this, but it's not the same thing as Samsung's tech, since it's only for text and it's done in software. Same concept though, Samsung has just taken it a step farther. On an ultra low-res, underpowered device, having sub-pixel rendering/antialiasing on silicon would help readability immensely.
The parent post is perfectly on topic. The article is talking about sub pixel rendering:
By composing a new pixel with the sub-pixel on the adjacent scanning line, 480x640 (VGA) resolution can be attained from a 240x640 (half VGA) panel.
Using adjacent triads from different pixels to increase the optical resolution of screen output is old technology. X uses it for fonts (Gnome Menu -> Preferences -> Fonts -> Subpixel Smoothing), as does Windows XP.
The article merely mentions Samsung are now using for mobile phones displays (and for more than fonts, but again this isn't a big deal - just a new implementation of existing technology).
The article is too light on details to tell wtf they are talking about, but it sounds to me like what they're saying is that the software operates on a virtual display device which gets automatically scaled down by blending virtual pixels into a smaller number of real pixels. If so, it's not rocket science, and it doesn't really do jack for image quality compared to just telling the software the display was the correct size to begin with.
11*43+456^2
I know they are working with other panel folks too, so you will probably see more of these type of sub-pixel displays soon.
Microsoft holds patents relating to sub-pixel rendering. I don't know if they are specific to font rendering, or generic to any sub-pixel rendering to increase perceived resolution.
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Wasn't VGA 640x480 at a mere 256 colors? And didn't it imply a particular ISA bus interface as well? Plus, who can keep track of what WUXGA and QWVGA and UHDWMRXGA all mean? Was somebody just leaning on the keyboard,
/DCGA - double scan CGA, no increase in addressable resolution, but dump it on a QCGA screen.
VGA was 640x480x16 color, and it MEANT MCA (Microchannel) with VGA bus lines, and PS/2 (not Sony, like your keyboard port rather) VGA BIOS.
IT also was 320x240x256;
MCGA, meant ISA at 320x200x256.
Q - quad, just multiply everything by 2. (2x2=4)
W - take the vertical resolution and do the 16:9 to it to get the horizontal.
DSCGA
CGA - 40x25x16
MDA - 80x25x4
CGA - 80x25x16
EGA - 80x43x4
VGA - 80x50x4
CGA - 132x25x4
EGA - 132x43x4
VGA - 132x50x4
CGA - 160x200x16
CGA - 320x200x4
MCGA - 320x200x256
EGA - 320x240x16
VGA - 320x240x256
EGA - 320x400x16
CGA - 640x240x2
EGA - 640x350x4
PGA - 640x400x16
VGA - 640x480x16, used to be called SuperEGA/SEGA
HGC - 720x348x16
MDA - 80x25
CGA - 320x200
MCGA - 320x240
SCGA - 640x240
EGA - 640x350
PGA - 640x400
VGA - 640x480
HGC - 720x350
SVGA - 800x600, SuperVGA
EVGA - 1024x768, ExtendedVGA, now called XGA
UVGA - 1280x1024, UltraVGA, now called SXGA
XVGA - 1600x1200, ExtraVGA, now called UXGA
Note that VGA is also 8512/A ; and XGA was preceded by 8514/A, at the same resolution.
Great! ;-(
I already have to carry around reading glasses to use my phone.
Actually its been around a lot longer then you think. The Apple II used a form of sub pixel rendering written by steve wozniak himself.
Brilliant hardware design but messy for software writers. Actually the kind of display you saw depended on what type of monitor you used. Two adjacent bits determined the color of the pixel on a color display plus the high bit of each byte introduced a color shift for all the bits in that byte. That lead to a bizarre set of rules for mixing colors. It was possible, as was used in a number of games, to create the illusion of a larger number of colors by *dithering* which combined patterns of dots. On a black and white monitor you might be able to see 1 dot per bit but if I remember correctly, setting two adjacent bits on just increased the brightness of the pixels so I'm not sure you really increased the horizontal resolution of the screen. (I'll spare you the horrors of the non linear screen addressing and the wonders of "screen holes".)
Ooh, reminds me of the Amiga's fabulous HAM mode where you could--with some effort--display up to 4096 simultaneous colors on the screen! I think HAM stood for hold and modify... was it really only 4096 colors? Sigh...
OK guys. If anybody here thinks this is new, you need your head examined. Here is a great explanation of how it works, along with a demo, by Steve Gibson:
How Sub-Pixel Font Rendering Works
The Free & Clear Demo
Also, this technology has long been available in your pirated copy of Windblows XP (and quite possibly long before XP). Right click desktop | Properties | Appearance tab | Effects | Use the following method to smooth edges of screen fonts: ClearType. This works best on your notebook's LCD.
Must-not-watch TV!
For best results set your resolution low, otherwise it has very visible moire patterns. As a side effect of the conversion, the image gets darker. My program also has a colour cast, which the article claims is due to adding the white pixel. The article also says that Samsung has overcome this problem.
It works by setting up the subpixels as a 640x480 square grid, with each pixel consisting of a starting pixel, and the right, lower, and lower right subpixels. Subpixel values are calculated using the average intensity of the corresponding colour value in each of the four pixels the subpixel is a part of.
Visually, aside from the darkness and colour cast which are artifacts of the simulation and wouldn't appear in the real product, it looks decent. It's blurrier than a true 640x480 display, but retains more detail than the 320x240 downsampled version.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
http://grc.com/ctwhat.htm
...) to form a linear array of 2400 single-color sub-pixels. ........ (go to site to read more)
A single picture element (a "pixel") of an LCD screen is actually composed of three "sub-pixels": one red, one green, and one blue (R-G-B). Taken together this sub-pixel triplet makes up what we've traditionally thought of as a single pixel.
This means that an LCD screen boasting a horizontal resolution of 800 whole pixels is actually composed of 800 red, 800 green, and 800 blue sub-pixels interleaved together (R-G-B-R-G-B-R-G-B
A typical pixel is three lights a red a green and a blue. They typically line up like:
RGB|RGB|RGB|RGB|RGB
When you set a pixel you are setting the brightness of each RGB set. What sub-pixeling allows you to do is to address pixels at different bounderies such as:
RG|BRG|BRG|BRG|BRG|B or
R|GBR|GBR|GBR|GBR|GB
This allows you to double or tripple the perceptual resolution without increasing the number of physical pixels. In software you figure out what the actual pixel colors should be. This works well on LCD screens where the pixels line up nice. Your results may vary on other types of screens. Similar concept as clear-type.
" Humans are much less sensitive to blue than red or green, and they're more sensitive to green than red."
So now we who are red-green color blind (color deficient is more acurate; we lack one red absorbing pigment in our retina) are not human ??
The apple][ in graphics mode?
I think you underestimate just how much I just dont care.
from dpreview
Casio has announced the highest resolution LCD display to date, a 2.2" HAST TFT LCD monitor with full VGA (640 x 480) resolution. The majority of LCD monitors used in digital cameras today have QVGA (320 x 240) resolution (230,000 total pixels), this new screen would deliver over 900,000 pixels which would produce a far more detailed reproduction of images, very useful for immediate record review or playback verification. Casio claim that this new screen has the same power consumption as the older models.
I guess it wouldn't be difficult to slam one of theese babies on a PDA?
Wow. So let's take a few seconds to summarize these technologies:
1. Zooming an image to the proportion 1:2.
2. Inverted CMYK.
If they're actually using a while pixel on the screen though, then that is pretty clever.
Wow. So let's take a few seconds to summarize these technologies:
1. Zooming an image to the proportion 1:2.
2. Inverted CMYK.
The white pixel on the screen's pretty clever though...
why they are bothering to do this, and should they really be concentrating on developing smaller true VGA screens, but then they've probably got sheds full of existing screens that they can't shift at a profit and intend to use this as a stopgap until they've shifted them. Then they can stuff real VGA screens in and make use of the same technology to drive "1024x768" displays on 640x480 screens...
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This technology does have a lot in common with the idea of classical sub pixel rendering. The essential difference is that the actual physical arrangement of the subpixels has been changed to allow much more powerful changes in the way the whole pixels are composed. An added benefit is that less physical pixels means less transistors on the driver chip in addition to less wiring on the panel. This is also a bonus for small devices and of course a cost decrease for all devices.
The essential reason is that growing LCD density means less actual pixel in relation to wiring on the actual panel. This leads to a loss of brighness which makes displays inusable for many situations like mobile phones and PDAs. A notable exception is electronic viewfinders (mentioned in another reply) as they are viewed fron a very short distance with outside light shut out and thus no need for transflective properties which require more pixel area than pure transmissive or reflective displays.
There are several researchers and companies working on different solutions of this type (physical subpixel rearrangement). Many of them have been presented in recent SID conferences. Try creative googling (subpixel, arrangement, lcd) to find some pages.
It looks like they use technique commonly used in the modern 3D videocards - full-screen antialiasing based on the multisampling (callsed also supersampling). The idea is that the picture produced in the render buffer with higher resolution , and after that each screen pixel produced as an averege of the several render buffer pixels.
If they could manufacture, say, 30" LCD TVs, using half as many pixels as other 30" LCD TVs, that'd probably cut the price considerably.
And considering the flaws and low resolution of NTSC video, any problems with Samsung's technique would probably not be significant.
Such LCD tvs might not be up to snuff for a serious movie fan's media room, but they'd be good for a cheap Wal-Mart tv to hang on the wall in the kitchen.