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New 20" iMac Screens Show 98% Fewer Colors
Trintech points us to an AppleInsider article about another class-action lawsuit directed against Apple Inc. This one claims that the displays on new 20" iMacs are only capable of 6-bit-per-pixel color, 98% fewer colors than Apple advertises. Rather than the 8-bit, in-plane switching (IPS) screens used in 24" iMacs and earlier 20" models, "[t]he new 20-inch iMac features a 6-bit twisted nematic film (TN) LCD screen," according to the article, "which the [law] firm claims is the 'least expensive of its type,' sporting a narrower viewing angle than the display of the 24-inch model, less color depth, less color accuracy, and greater susceptibility to washout." Apple recently settled a very similar class-action suit about the displays on MacBook and MacBook Pro models.
Good job slashdot, I think you successfully managed to show that reality is stranger than fiction by holding back on the fake articles this year. And you've thoroughly confused everyone.
Mac Fanboys converging in 3... 2... 1...
...the new OSX interface has shown us that we don't need so many colours. Colours in a computer eat up the memory bits and distract us from our reverence. Personally, I'm going to take Steve's advice and go get my eyes chromed.
Moderation Total: -1 Troll, +3 Goat
Bad advertising? Who cares that an underpowered overpriced computer is not living up to the expectations. Who cares? Itä's Abble. Look, man, SHINY!!!!
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
the Windows Guy could retaliate in one of those commercials.
But cutting costs is part of innovation, so Apple is still the best, OBVIOUSLY.
I don't have a Mac, but I do sometimes buy computer monitors. I can understand specifications like the physical size, resolution, viewing angle and (just about) contrast ratio. But do manufacturers publish specs on what colour depth is supported? Is there some quantitative measure of how well a display shows different colours and how wide the gamut is? How can I avoid getting caught out like these hapless iMac buyers?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Strange, the first case that was "settled out of court under undisclosed terms" seems to have been just two guys. Surely there are more than two photographers who bought macs thinking they would get 8-bit color and later realized it was only 6-bit. I wonder why no class-action was initiated? Since it wasn't though, it seems like Apple is still open to potentially thousands or more lawsuits for this false advertising.
That's what it is, right? They say "millions of colors" when it's really 262k colors. Or is there some precedent that lets a company claim dithering = unique color?
everything in moderation
I work at an Apple shop, I love Apple products, but I'd be happy to tell you how shitty the 20" Aluminum iMac screens are. They really, really suck, and here's hoping Apple finally gets their head out of their ass and puts a quality screen on what should be a quality product.
Apple is just trying to bring back the glory days of black and white screens.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
640 colors ought to be enough for anyone.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Hasn't apple prided itself in that mac's are for "fun and artistic purposes" rather than business purposes? It seems to me that apple is shooting itself in the foot here, and then pouring lemon juice on the wound just for good measure.
Quick, ban this guy for posting something that might be construed as anti-apple... We all know they can't do wrong. Someone change Apple -> Microsoft and all will be well...
If you are really into photography, you wouldn't buy the non IPS monitors regardless. These guys are idiots for buying a product clearly labeled as having a cheap screen and then being surprised when the screen was, well, cheap!
It's not like dithering is not used in plenty of other applications to produce more colors than the device can physically output - I assume they are going after printer makers next?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
6-bit colors? In 2008? What were they thinking? The trend is towards 10 bits. At 6 bits, gradients look awful; false edges appear. Go into Photoshop, generate a single color gradient, and then "posterize" to 64 colors to see what this looks like. Yuck.
Dithering won't help; it puts noise into a nice, smooth gradient.
I'm going to be madder then Hell if I take a monitor home, and look at the connector, and it has a 9-pin RS-232 Connector (Thats not a serial connector, the Serial ones are Female.)
Apple uses octal.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Just a reminder this is 6 Bits per pixel not the Bit depth that you set on your OS. Having 64 Colors per Pixel and combination of hardware dithering makes a decent screen for most people. However for true videophobes that would get in the way 8 bit would be prefered. But for most people they wouldn't know the difference betwen 8 bit and 6 bit displays.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If it was advertised as an 18-bit screen we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
18 bits is plenty for many people, but it's not plenty for graphic artists - the very people who buy Macs.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I'd call this 98% color reduction a healthy, green approach, great for the environment... except that green was one of the colors that was removed...
Mod parent up. This is absolutely true. I'd estimate that the vast majority of LCD panels on the market are 6-bit screens. Whether you are buying Benq, LG, Dell, Viewsonic, it doesn't matter. Most of them are 6 bit.
They are cheaper, and they have faster response times.
8-bit LCD panels are almost a niche specialty 'pro product' in today's market, and unless you went out of your way to buy an 8 bit screen odds are you took home a 6-bit TN panel, advertised as showing "16.2 million colours" without even knowing it.
Its not just Apple. Although they seem to have gone beyond marketing deceptiveness to outright lies and deserve to be taken to task about it.
But don't for a minute think all those free Dell monitors bundled with low end PCs are anything better. Hell, even the ones you can pay to upgrade to aren't often anything better than 6-bit.
Things like this make it more painful that Apple doesn't have a good performing display-less model. I don't need the power of the Mac Pro, but need more than a Mac mini. The iMac is about the right specs except I'd prefer something that had room for a couple of hard disks. Also more importantly I upgrade my machine more often than I want/need to upgrade my display. I could easily envision going that route getting a good display and then using it for 2~3 machines and buying a MacBook for my portable needs.
The lawsuit should be aimed at the manufacturer.
So Apple uses a TN panel for one of their consumer products. Just like it is used in a majority of all consumer-grade flat-screens on the market. Sure, it is a bit misleading stating "it's going to look stunning on an iMac", but TN is in my opinion a logical choice of panel for a product like the iMac. That makes the rant about all the ways TN is inferior to IPS feel a bit unnecessary.
What the hell is the complaint about? Even a screen with an 8-bit DAC is only capable of displaying 766 colours - each subpixel can show 255 brightnesses of three distinct wavelengths of light (as each subpixel can show the same black this makes 766, not 768). And if you want to get really picky, you can only display three colours - a flourescent backlit display does not emit light like a blackbody, it has a particular spectrum which is filtered by one of three filters. No matter the brightness, each red subpixel displays the same spectrum.
So why the claims of millions of colours? Because the eye dithers. Light from all three subpixels land on cosited cones on the retina, and the optic nerve processes this weighted tristimulus response so that the brain perceives the equivalent of a particular wavelength.
So a single pixel can appear to produce 16 million colours by being made up of three different coloured subpixels. In some rendering situations, subpixels can be individually lit. This all works because the eye has very poor resolution for colours. This is also why video is invariable encoded in a YUV colour-space.
Whether an individual subpixel can display 256 levels is quite irrelevant since dithering is capable of producing a higher colour depth at the expense of colour resolution. You still get full brightness resolution. And this is ok, because its not really possible to tell the difference.
What next, suing Nikon for daring to include Bayer filters on their CCDs? Yes, it is possible to build CCDs where the R, G and B are cosited, nobody actually uses the Foveon sensor because the difference in the capture picture is not discernable.
This whole thing is stupid. It sounds like people nitpicking advertising, without actually being aware of the technical concepts involved the image display process.
This is the only post based on facts regarding color in the entire discussion.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Also who was the moderator who doesn't realise the LSBs of a word change at higher magnitudes too? These are not unary coded words ... idiots.
It looks like this is specifically for the new 20-inch iMac model. My bad for not RTFAing.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
No, they don't. Please read the article. (And no, I'm not new here. I just dislike inaccuracy.)
What Apple has claimed is that the screen can display millions of colours. Depending on which interpretation you use, this may or may not be true.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
Actually, there were two 6-bit modes on the Amiga - EHB, as described, and HAM (Hold And Modify), which caused the pixels defined as colors 32-63 to be defined as "the color of the pixel to the left, but with its (R|G|B) value replaced with ...", thus allowing for all 4096 colors on-screen at once, but usually with a slight fudge-factor, depending on your image and how you arranged your 32-color palette.
And that's not getting into the later chipsets, which mostly just added bits... (:
Go to Newegg and try to buy a flat panel that actually has 8 bit color. Even ones advertised as the full 16.7M colors don't - there are a number of websites out that either have or show you how to make a proper test pattern in PS - a non-dithered screen will produce smooth gradients, while a dithered screen will show 'steps' of color. Final test - watch a cutscene in a 3D game like NWN2 on a flat screen - dithering GALORE.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
They made a deal with Micro$haft to port M$Paint. I actually have a 20" iMac coming today. (Oh great..)
I just don't see what all the hubbub is about.
Of course, I also don't see red dots on a green background, green dots on a red background, nor any discernible difference between many colors my wife swears exist, either. (Of course, I think I share that particular feature with most men as is.)
This is how some technologies, such as CRT and plasma, work.
This is not how LCD screens work.
A pixel on an LCD monitor emits a single color. There is no dithering involved. The pixel filters out a set of wavelengths from a white light source to produce a single pixel with a single, even color.
The pixels on Apple's new 6-bit iMac displays are only capable of about 262,000 individual color states. The 24-inch iMacs are capable of over 16 million color states.
90%+ LCD monitors are TN screens like the low end iMacs. They all claim 16+Million colors. The Panel itself is a LG.Philips LM201WE3(teardowns online). The manufacture web says it is 16.7million colors with FRC.
This would only affect the clueless. It was widely complained about that apple switched to TN panel on the 20" as soon as the Aluminum iMacs came out. It is not a hidden fact, you can tell by the viewing angle specs.
Apple will probably fight this one, because there is a chance the laptops did not have FRC dithering (many laptop screens don't) and thus did not have millions of colors, OTOH the FRC dithering panels are classed as having millions of colors industry wide, and the viewing angles were quoted to industry standards in the spec that would make it clear to anyone who knew or cared about display or even asked anyone for advice that these were TN panels.
In fact you would have to be living under a rock to not know, but that won't stop some people for trying for a small cash grab and lawyers from trying for a big one.
Take for example the last PPC iMac (had a G5 CPU, and was released in October 2005). It was the first Mac to come with Front Row pre-installed. It clearly had a 6 bit display. Banding was evident in the background gradient. You have to update to at least version 1.2 of Front Row to really be sure, but it's definitely there.
Just a few months later, the first Intel iMac came out and it had a true 8 bit display. It was very easy to tell the difference using the original Front Row background. Set one of those next to an older G5 iMac, both running Front Row 1.2, and the G5 shows banding while the Intel one is completely smooth.
Now it sounds as though these new iMacs with the metal form factor shaved a little off the cost by going back to a 6 bit display. The gradient background in Front Row is gone in Leopard, but I'm sure a simple gradient generator test could take its place.
The trouble with this lawsuit is, I don't think Apple (or any other OEM for that matter) ever made any claims about the bit-ness of the display. Just the same, I wish they would tell you ... it would certainly help in making purchasing decisions. People probably wouldn't be so ga-ga about some of the cheaper desktop LCDs on the market if it were clear up front which were 6-bit and which weren't. Maybe that will be the ultimate result of this lawsuit. OEMs will have to start telling you that sort of thing up front. Similar to how they were eventually forced to list the "viewable" area on large CRTs back in the day.
I'm the guy that you'd find arguing over how much LCDs suck and how much better CRTs are a couple years ago. But my CRT died last month (Mitsubishi 19" Aperture Grille, it was about the best monitor you could get short of the 22" version of the same), and I picked up a Samsung 226CW. There are only two things it doesn't do as well as the CRT:
Absolute black level.
Off-axis viewing degradation.
The color is actually BETTER, DESPITE the 6 bit panel. The reason why 6 bit is not a big deal is because the panel response is so fast that it can temporally dither two colors into one, and you don't even notice that its doing it. For photography, its actually better color reproduction because its more consistent than CRT. On top of that, the "C" model in particular (as opposed to the 226BW) has a 95 CRI backlight, which means the spectrum the backlight produces is much less peaky and closer to natural sunlight. Altogether, the result is more accurate color than I'd get on a CRT. Plus I get 2ms response time so gaming is fine too.
The 226CW may be TN, but its one of the best panels out there. I thought I was going to be more disappointed than I actually was. In fact, I wasn't disappointed at all because it turned out better in most regards, not just "almost as good." It can produce smooth color because spatial and temporal dithering on fast monitors is surprisingly effective, and its actually more accurate because of the better quality back light.
Not that this was an article about CRT vs LCD, but I'm saying that TN panels have become common not just BECAUSE they're cheap but because the good ones (as cheap as they are) are SURPRISINGLY good. Apple may have used a shitty 6 bit panel instead of, say, Samsung's 6 bit panel, but the number of native colors is surprisingly not that big a deal, even if you're a picture-accuracy freak.
(It doesn't excuse them from not clarifying whether it was TN or IPS though, and in fact it pisses me off that no manufacturers are clear on what overall technology goes into their LCDs)
With sufficient resolution that noise is averaged out by the eye, but LCD displays don't have near the resolution necessary for that. It is "really possible" to tell the difference,
...for professionals. It's absolutely true. Nevermind the the awful, glossy displays. For any kind of serious work you'd be better of getting a $30 CRT if you own a 20" iMac.
24" iMac displays are sourced from a different part and are much much superior, but the gloss ruins it again for any kind of real photography or print work.
Then again, if you're serious about the picture quality and pixel accuracy, what the hell are you doing with an obvious consumer machine?
How can you say this? How do you know what they did and didn't say? Sound's you have a bias against Apple because your opinion sounds subjective.
For all we know Apple thought they were getting hardware in their spec. Look at any industry - especially government suppliers and you'll see its the component manufacturers lying rather than the gadget-vendor.
*This in-betweening process is what knocks down the available number of colors on 6-bit displays to 16.2 million instead of 16.7 million.
... Photoshop! All these Apple advocates keep telling me that the Mac is the way to go for digital publishing and all that. But guess what? You're now even better off using a Windows box*! How did Apple screw up like this? This way they are losing their original userbase.
*It appears pro's don't use Linux+wine because of some software color... 'thing'. No I am not a troll I use Linux everyday. I honestly dont understand it myself because one can use color calibration software on Linux anyway but oh well... I am not an expert in the field.
Here be signatures
Make me hug my 19" CRTs.
would have been Vista Service Pack 2 will support 486 computers. Service Pack 3 will be backwardly compatible to 8086 machines.
for christ's sake! This guy knows nothing about either monitors or the human eye.
If you can't see the difference between dithered 6-bit and 8-bit you must be legally blind. In fact you need at least 10 bits to completely eliminate banding; if the panel is 8-bit and using 8-bit source, some adjacent source values will produce the same output value after gamma correction and color calibration - 10-bit gives you more headroom. There's a *reason* why people editing photos and video buy more expensive gear, and it isn't psychological.
Anyone who works in any color-critical business knows to NEVER-EVER buy any apple branded monitor if color quality is your goal. They are the worst bang for your buck on all fronts. Even a cheap panasonic (sub $400) after calibration will yield better color than its apple counterpart with the same calibration. The only reason people buy the apple monitor is so their setup "matches" like you match your shoes to your belt.
It's sad but very true. As a professional in digital photography we carry 30in cinema displays and take note that the people who rent them only do so for 3 reasons.
They are big and honestly are a great gimmick to impress clients who work on shitty setups at their offices.
Their shooting style is such that color accuracy is not relevant at the time of capture.
They are ignorant to the nature of color and how it can potentially screw up their workflow. Both during and after capture.
And the forth ( I know I said 3 ) In the business of digital capture you have to offer what the other guys offer or you risk losing clients who don't want to pay for the top of the line
( ie any EIZO monitor )
... Apple's market segment are probably the people who would most notice the difference between 18 bit color and 24 bit color. This is one reason I don't like to shop for displays online -- specs are nice, but I want to SEE it. Personally, IANA graphic artist, and I wasn't sure if I'd be able to tell the difference, but I found this page that has an 18 bit and 24 bit test pattern. Apparently, the difference is quite noticeable.
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
No, it's not 6-bits per pixel. It's 18-bits per pixel. It used to be 24 (8 red, 8 green and 8 blue.) Apple reduced it to 18 (5 red, 8 green, and 5 blue) as a part of their new green computing initiative.
A Mac mini with a MXM-module slot would be really nice. For unknown reasons Apple has always used subpar GPUs in their non-pro products.
- Raynet --> .
I just got a 20" iMac and just installed Windows through Bootcamp. One of the first things that I noticed is that there is visual artifacts (looks like dot crawl) on solid blocks of color. I tried to resolve the issue by installing ATIs drivers but it didn't help.
Now I'm beginning to wonder if the issue I'm experiencing may be due to the display and it's attempt to dither the 32bpp color on Windows. Perhaps Apple worked side-stepped the issue on the OS X side by limiting color depth in either the OS or driver.
This just in: dimmer switches simulate a range of brightnesses from on to off by "temporal dithering" of the electric current supplying the bulb.... that is, they send longer or shorter pulses of electricity, which correspond to more or less light. These pulses "smoothed out" to some extent by the lightbulb itself, but any remaining flicker is smoothed out by the human eye.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
If you look closely enough you will see THREE pixels, one red, one green, one blue. Each of these (on an actual 8-bit screen) can display 255 different shades of their color, plus black. 255red + 255green + 255blue + 1black = 766 different colors.
This in fact is the only way to count the colors if you want to claim that dithering does not count. (Conversely if you do count dithering you could claim that the screen can display an astronomical number of colors, if viewed from so far away that the entire display looks like a single dot)
However the 6-bit screen only puts out 63+63+63+1 = 190 different colors. Thus you could still claim the number of colors is 75% less.
Whether you are buying Benq, LG, Dell, Viewsonic, it doesn't matter. Most of them are 6 bit. ... But don't for a minute think all those free Dell monitors bundled with low end PCs are anything better. Hell, even the ones you can pay to upgrade to aren't often anything better than 6-bit.
For those interested in looking up the monitors, here is a handy guide that gives you the inside scoop on most of the Dell flat panels. Also why the the 200x, 240x, and 300x series monitors get the loving they do and were worth the extra dollars.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
A 6 bit chip can only produce 190 colors per pixel.
Right. But then it rapidly switches between two of those colors to simulate interim colors. This is called temporal dithering; see more here. To most people (even graphic designers, of which I am one) this dithering is virtually undetectable, and still achieves millions of colors. (Some sensitive people can see the difference -- the same people who can detect the flicker in old flourescent lighting.) You cannot discuss 6-bit pixels separately from temporal dithering, because the latter makes the former commercially possible.
Apple may still be doing it badly, of course, but there are still millions of percieved colors.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
MDA, CGA, TDA/Tandy and EGA adapters used an inverted 9-pin port that looked like a female serial port but wasn't. That connected to the respective monitor that was male. Was supposed to be an April Fools joke but nobody got it.
I don't expect them to produce a decent headless Mac, but then a month before the Mini came out I bought a Radeon 9200 for my "Beige G4" because I wasn't expecting them to ever produce a headless Mac again, decent or not.
But I agree, they need a "Mini pro" with a 3.5" drive, a real GPU, audio in, and full power USB ports.
For one, there are laptop screens that use other panel types. For example LG Display makes the LP201WE1 which is a full 8-bit laptop LCD panel.
Also it is easy to get non-TN panels for desktop displays, you just have to be willing to pay more. For example the LG L1910S is a 19" S-IPS monitor. However, it's going to run you like $350, not the $150 you may be accustomed to for monitors that size. Same deal with larger panels. Yep, you can get 24" TN panels, and you can get them for an extremely good deal. Just $350 will get you a cheap KDS 24" TN panel. However, you can get a nicer panel if you like. $600 gets you a BenQ FP241VW which has an A-MVA panel. Need even better? Ok the NEC 2490WUXi has an amazing LG H-IPS panel in it, and tons of professional features (like hardware calibration with 12-bit per channel look up tables), however it'll run you about $1100.
So it isn't that you can't get good displays, it is that most people don't chose to. For them, they'll take the cheap TN panels.
The reason Apple is getting in trouble is twofunavaliable
1) They DO charge a hefty premium for their devices.
2) All the dick waving they do about things looking better. They talk about the "rich vivid color" and in the case of the Macbook talked about how much better of a display it was. Ok, fair enough, but if you are going to tell people you are giving them a quality display, it'd better actually back that up.
So if Dell wants to sell crap screens, it works out ok because they don't ever seem to indicate anything about them. Even their better screens are only marketed as "extra bright". However if they started talking about how much better color they gave, well then they'd better actually do that, or there'd be trouble.
No. The post in question is a train wreck. Combinatorial math does not work like that. Nor is that the reason that video recording is historically done in YUV. The human eye is very much capable of perceiving millions of distinguishable colors.
Bringing in the mechanics of color perception is irrelevant, not to mention that the post is using misleading and incorrect terminology (it's nothing to do with "dithering") and that it is conveniently overlooking the fact that the three wavelengths that the cones in the eye are sensitive to are red, green, and blue.
Punctuation inside parentheses should be used if the content of the parenthesis is a full sentence or (It should not be used if it is a mere phrase, unless the phrase requires a ? or !.).
Punctuation for the main sentence should be used outside the parentheses, typically after the closing parenthesis (as above and as follows).
We now resume our regular slashdot April Fools edit wars (oh please make it stop!).
I learned American English. Real English may be different.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Unfortunately, that isn't a good indicator anymore. This is in part because companies are deceptive, but mostly because retailers don't know what they are talking about. At any rate, just do a little searching around and you'll find 6-bit TN panels that are listed on a site as "16.7 million colours". The reason is that the site isn't even checking, they just put that for ALL monitors.
It also goes the other way too. I am thinking about getting an NEC 2690WUXi which is a pro monitor. It is, of course, an 8-bit panel. NEC verifies this, you can check the specs on the LG panel it uses too. Ok, one would expect this for the price. However, it seems not all the resellers know this. One lists it as "more than 16 million" and another as 16.2 million. Again, it isn't that they think it is a 6-bit panel, it is that they just list that for all monitors.
So really the only way to be sure is to find out what panel a monitor uses, then look up that panel. Thus far, I've never seen a panel manufacturer lie about it. For 6-bit panels, they even say 262k colours.
The only other guideline you ca use is price. If there's a big price jump, chances are you jumped panel quality. For example you find 24" monitors in the $350-400 range, and then they suddenly jump to $550+. Sure enough, you go from TN to VA when you do that, and thus also from 6 to 8 bit. This isn't foolproof, but generally if there is a big jump and the monitors are "expensive" all of a sudden for a given size, you are getting an 8-bit panel.
Also, regarding the article, why the heck is Apple of all manufacturers using TN panels, everyone knows they suck! A supply issue perhaps? I know there was a panel factory that went up in flames a while ago, which caused the Lenovo L220X to be severely short in supply.
True confidence comes not from realising you are as good as your peers, but that your peers are as bad as you are.
So, how does one find out what type of panel their computer uses? I tried searching online but Dell doesn't seem to want to list the specs on my Vostro laptop. Does anybody know of a way to find this information out so that I can make a more informed decision next time I purchase a screen?
At such a high DPI value, your 766 colors actually blend pretty well. Do you see rainbows on a white page ? I do, but only at a few inches from the screen.
If the screen use only 6bits+temporal dithering+large scale spatial dithering it becomes clearly ugly.
Whether an individual subpixel can display 256 levels is quite irrelevant since dithering is capable of producing a higher colour depth at the expense of colour resolution.
Then it seems you still can't simultaneously claim the listed resolution and the listed color depth. You don't get colors for nothing and your bits for free...
There's no army of Apple fan boys coming to their defense in this particular case. Come on, you can start posting defensive comments now, it's past noon.
I'm curious - and completely ignorant of how to find this information. What type of screen does the iPhone use? The WikiPedia entry doesn't give that much detail, or I don't know what I'm looking for. Thanks!
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
Well, on an LCD the colors don't get overlapped anyway, so what you're looking at is nothing but dithered red, green and blue (at different intensities).
So one could argue that a 6 bit LCD display can only display 2^6 + 2^6 + 2^6 (192) unique colors.
An 8 bit LCD display can only display 2^8 + 2^8 + 2^8 (768) unique colors.
The manufacturers used multiplication where they should have used addition.
Lets sue EVERY LCD manufacturer!
Saying Millions of colors is wrong.
Hell, only 10 bit displays can even say thousands of colors.
Viewsonic has a pro line (vpxxx), they're not very expensive. I have a vp930 and it's an 8 bit MVA screen. Unfortunately you cannot find this information in the specs on their website.
View angle is good but there is still too much color shifting for my taste. (Note that I am more demanding than most people, I bought a cheap Philips TN panel for some other people and the color shifting on that thing is MUCH worse and they don't seem to notice it.) Would IPS have less shifting than MVA?
Typically, 24" screens and greater are not TN. This article claims that the first 24" TN panel came out in mid 2007.
I can't imagine that there are many larger LCD TVs with TN panels, even among the cheap ones; the viewing angles would be unacceptable.
I use one of these exact machines on the weekend and in the last few weeks I've been having serious eye strain. When I come home during the week and use generic 17" LCDs or my 19" CRT the need to rest my eyes constantly goes away by about Wednesday, but it comes back every weekend when I use that 20" iMac. Seems like a pretty direct correlation. It could be something else like the lighting in the room there, but I'm wondering if anybody else who has used one of these had noticed unusual eye troubles after prolonged usage.
I worked at an apple store when those mbp's rolled out. I was going to trade in my core duo mbp but after some research found out about this issue and witnessed it first hand-its a pretty big difference, especially in the reds-initially it was passed off as a firmware bug (and technically it was-the screens weren't dithering, but even after the fact there was a visible difference). I was pretty pissed/baffled that apple would (out of all their computer models) pull this on their high end laptops often bought by creative pros and students. I mean come ON, of all the things to cheap out on, and of all the hardware apple sells, this had to be the stupidest, most negatively impacting choice. if they cheaped out on the already scuzzy macbook screens no one would notice, but they picked the photographers laptop of choice. If they released those laptops on april fools day it would be the most epic (and expensive) prank ever-but really they were just being cheap wads. Thank you apple for proving to me that even you are not above being cheap, stupid wads once in awhile. D:!
As much as i like apples OS(mind you I'm still using Tiger) and products, I guess I'll have to go back to trusting no one who stands to make money off of me.
Notebook panels are universally 6-bit. They are *all* 262K panels, with the exception of some desktop replacements using 17" panels.
What you mean by "real screen" is not clear.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
No one buying these low-end machines can tell the difference. Fact is the promotional specification advertised in this case is really too vague to mean what the litigious goons are hoping. I put this in the same class as the byte counting from a couple years ago (kibibyte vs kilobyte).
"...objectivity resides in recognizing your preferences, subjecting them to especially harsh scrutiny." -Gould
And that's not getting into the later chipsets, which mostly just added bits... (:
In fact, AGA HAM8 mode gave you 262,144 colours - and it wouldn't be quantised like this iMac, so subtle gradients would still look nice.
You are wrong. Look at an apple display and see if you can see streaking and banding. You won't be able to find any. That's because the screen "dithers" the color over several screen refreshes to achieve more colors. The refreshes happen so fast and are so subtle that your eyes can't see them. People keep saying that "graphics professionals" will be affected, but they don't have super-human eyes, and they won't be affected. Adding more colors to a LCD display is non-trivial, and there's no good reason to do it if you can achieve the same color quality with a cheaper display. You can call it false advertising if you want to, but if no human on earth can tell the difference it's hard to say there really is one.
For those interested in how they come up with that 16.2 million number, it works like this.
A true 8-bit display has (2^8)^3 = 16,777,216 colors/pixel.
A true 6-bit display has (2^6)^3 = 262,144 colors/pixel.
Now consider dithering four pixels in a single channel (say red), where each of the four pixels has an intensity of either V or V+1. If half of the pixel are V and half are V+1, the dithered value will appear to have an intensity of V+1/2, same for 1/4 or 3/4 - effectively giving three more intensities between V and V+1. So there are (2^6-1)*3 dithered values that each channel can represent in addition to the (2^6) real intensities. This gives a grand total of:
Dithered 6-bit display has ((2^6-1)*3 + 2^6)^3 = 16,194,277 colors/(4 pixels).
Since all the colors you see on a monitor are dithered (r,g,b) anyway, the 16.2 million colors wouldn't be lie by itself - if they claimed 16.2 million colors at 1/4 the resolution and 4 times the dot pitch, but of course they don't bother to mention that fact. What is par
Seems like using a good calibrated CRT or a nice Truecolor LCD as the iMac's second monitor would be the best hack around using it for colour-sensitive work.
Not sure if the dvi-analog conversion will cause problems with calibration, but the imac supports an extra monitor.
Damn those pesky terrorists
Go to an Apple store and tell me the iMac displays aren't much nicer than most the crap on sale at Best Buy then I might listen. No, they aren't high-end monitors used for professional color management. Yes, they do look great to the rest of us.
because he is colorblind. That is why the original Macintosh and Lisa were in black and white with shades of gray. It wasn't that it was cheaper, it was that Steve Jobs is colorblind. 6-bit or 8-bit color, it all looks the same to Steve Jobs.
On the other hand, Windows and PCs are the way they are because Bill Gates has asperger syndrome.
Linux is the way it is because Linus Torvalds worked his way through college as a nude model for art students to paint or draw pictures of the human body. That is why Linux is open, totally naked.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
I guess most people wouldn't even know, at least not by reading the specs from Appels Website: Glass widescreen display. Display Whether youve got your eye on the 20-inch or breathtaking 24-inch iMac, youll enjoy a wondrous widescreen performance from every seat in the house. The big picture. All iMac models feature a display with a 16:10 wide aspect ratio perfect for watching movies, viewing photos, and using applications with lots of palettes. Display How do the displays compare? The 20-inch widescreen iMac offers a resolution of 1680 by 1050 pixels on its flat-panel LCD screen 36 percent more than the previous 17-inch iMac. The 24-inch iMac offers a panoramic resolution of 1920 by 1200 pixels 30 percent more screen real estate than the 20-inch model. Rich, vivid color. No matter what you like to do on your computer watch movies, edit photos, play games, even just view a screen saver its going to look stunning on an iMac. Thats because iMac now features a glossy display with glass cover that makes graphics, photos, and videos come alive with richer colors and deeper blacks. --------------- Note they don't mention the colour depth number, but they do say it has a nice glossy surface.
I bought a macbook 13" for school and the viewing angle and color were so poor I couldn't get a consistent contrast from top to bottom.
TN screens are pieces of crap, period.
The color was washed out, so washed out the best I could do for calibration forced apple's colorsync tool to the edge of the charts. If I were able I would have dragged the controls off the charts, and perhaps attained a passable color accuracy. That said, the lack of consistent contrast from top to bottom of the screen is incurable.
Apple seems to have caved to the flow of the rest of the pc market, which is toward screens which are no longer built for fidelity, but for hyper-exaggerated flashiness on the salesfloor.
My cinema was the last generation before this shift, and now im stuck unserviced in the computing marketplace when i want to upgrade.
I like the OSX environment a LOT. I can't stand an interface which is not document centered, and column view is important to me, but I also want color fidelity! Whenever I see an improperly calibrated screen it grates at me like a thousand papercuts, and I've locked that macbook away in a dark corner because I want to cry whenever I look at that screen.
What has happened to apple's quality standards since 2002 can best be compared to BBC news devolving into MTV news.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Very true.
When I was looking around for a LCD screen for my new system build (decided to upgrade from the old dieing CRT), I had to specifically check the specs of various LCDs to see which displayed 16.7 million colours compared to those which did 16.2 million.
I got a Philips 190P for almost 50% higher price compared to other similar 19inchers just cos of the higher colour resolution.
But he didn't claim the eye can't see millions of colors. What he said was that the eye has a lower resolution for color than for intensity (spatial resolution), which, AFAIK is true.
Id like to see a software version of this trick used on real 24bit displays, ie. make a true 30bit RGB TIFF, or 48bit HDR TIFF.
So your code just has to generate 4 seperate internal memory bitmaps, and cycle through them in sequence, if your LCD is set to
75hz then it might just work, 100hz perhaps.
Sounds like a great trick. I feel like coding up a 30bit display test pattern.
Anyone done this already?? Im going to google this up, sounds like a great thing to write for summer of code thing.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
obviously.
The resolution of the 20" iMac screen is 1680 by 1050 pixels.
So no matter how many colors it has, the limited of simultaneously displayed colors is 1,764,000
-- Boycott Shell
This is very true. The settlement that apple made on the macbook case WAS NOT a class action. In fact, the parties that were suing apple, or their lawyers, said it was "very difficult" to form a class because it was almost impossible to determine who purchased macbooks for the sole purpose of the millions of colors claim. I don't see how this would be any different on an iMac than on a macbook.
There was another mode called "Sliced HAM" which was invented by a software hacker. I'm not exactly sure how it worked, but I know it was very CPU intensive, because it was using standard 5-bit mode but with a constantly rotating color palette.
;-)
The benefit of Sliced HAM photos was 4096 colors, but without the HAM blur, because each pixel was entirely independent from the others. It created a crystal clear image and was fantastic for looking at porn..... er, SI Swimsuit Issues. Yeah, that's it.
It's a shame Amiga died.
It would have been cool to see it survive to the present day like the Macintosh has survived. It took the Macs and IBM until circa 1995 to achieve what Amiga was doing (near-CD quality sound, thousands of colors, true preemptive multitasking) ten years earlier. A machine truly ahead of its time, but squandered by mismanagement. I suspect if Jack Tramiel has been there, he would have made the Amiga 500 as popular as the Commodore 64 was (via aggressive price reduction to ~$200 per A500 unit & retail sales in place like Sears, Kmart).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
The so called TN or 6-bit LCD screens are usually marked as 16.2 million color in end user oriented material. Notice the 16 dot TWO million mark! In fact, this value is artifically created from a baseline of about 262 thousand colour combinations by applying rapid running dither patterns on the screen, which only about 6-8% of human population can recognize with the naked eye. It is distracting for them, but the 90%+ majority does not see or care.
The more expensive, 8-bit and usually wider angle MVA, PVA, IPS or S-IPS screens are usually called 16.7 million color in end user oriented literature, notice the 16 dot SEVEN million mark! This is true millions of color, no dithering needed.
However, there is a drawback. Only TN (6-bit) screens have enough speed for hardcore action gaming or thriller movies. The PVA or IPS would leave a visible and distracting comet trail. Fast AND high color fidelity wide viewing angle monitors exist, but they are way too pricey for the consumer market.
If Apple released the new models with PVA or IPS screens, the same angry people would be suing them for substandard HALO and CRYSIS experience.
In my opinion, if Apple's recommended end-user sales price was justifiable for a comparable alternative PC vendor model equipped with similar TN technology screen (factoring in the Apple brand and style premium), then the lawsuit is warrantless.
The price difference in raw TN and S-IPS panels as they come out of factory is significant enough to allow for deterministic result from the above test, therefore the judge will be able to issue a fact-based ruling.
Sliced HAM (also called many other names) worked by actually using the Blitter to swap what hardware address the palette was at every 64 pixels or so, so several times per scan line, based on a table that the programmer set up that pointed to them. The biggest problem with it was it had to be rewritten for each chipset, because the timing was (by necessity) hard-coded into the Blitter commands.
And actually, the Amiga is still around, just not in the same form. See their home page for details. (Full Disclosure: I worked for a time as their New OS Development Lead several years back.)