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.

Comments

Re:Class Action?

[vought]

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? The CLUT supports 24bpp color, so they advertise millions of colors. If the display dithers down to 262k, it could be argued that the display is still being sent 24bpp info - and thee iMac does have an external video out port, so I think Apple has some wiggle room here...

Personally, I think they should just send all the complainants a 21-inch Ikegami CRT monitor and adapter cable from 1992 to attach to their iMac, thus rendering the iMac useless, ugly, and perfectly capable of displaying 24bpp color.

Re:If only...

[thegnu]

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Windows PCs (including pretty much every laptop ever made) also use these "inferior" screens, and nobody's tried to sue Dell yet.

The majority of Windows PCs are non-specific about the superiority or inferiority of their screens. Dell doesn't lie about it. No fraud, no suit.

The fact is that most people can't tell the difference, and aren't interested in paying four times as much to get a product that isn't noticably better unless you make your living working with colour.

Try telling that to a bespectacled emo-haired skinny starbucks drinking douchebag that knows shit about computers, but somehow thinks he can explain the superiority of Apple's hardware to me?

This is a storm in a teacup.

OOOhhh! That's a great slogan for Apple:
iFraud: Just a storm in a teacup

Only 766 colours anyway.

[Criffer]

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.

they probably didn't lie to Apple

[Orig_Club_Soda]

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.