HDTV Has Ruined the LCD Market

alvin67 writes "Microsoft Evangelist Pete Brown rants about the lack of pixels available in today's LCD screens: 'OK, that's it. I've had it. I want my pixels, damn it! For a while, screen resolution has been going up on our desktop displays. The trend was good, as I've always wanted the largest monitor with the highest DPI that I could afford. I mean, I used to have one of the first hulking 17-inch CRTs on my desk. I later upgraded to a 21-inch job that was so huge, that if you didn't stick it in a corner, it took up the whole desk. It was flat-panel, though and full of pixels. It cost me around $1,100 at the time." After some years of improvements, we've regressed, in Brown's opinion: "At the rate we were going for a while, we should have had twice or three times the DPI on a 24- or 23-inch screen. But nooo."

Comments

Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[PhrostyMcByte]

When Windows Vista added better support for high DPI and scRGB for 16-bit-per-component color with higher gamuts, I was really looking forward to some awesome screens. Given that screens stopped being able to compete with response times and contrast, it seemed like the next thing for them to go for. Unfortunately, it's basically just been ignored.

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[djrobxx]

People with less than perfect vision find modern screens with high DPI tough to read - and frustratingly, the only fix that works with everything is running at non-native resolution. Vista definitely improved higher-DPI support. IE8 was another huge step. But large fonts support still breaks lots of applications, even popular ones. Try using large fonts with Trillian or many Adobe products. OSX still doesn't support DPI changing at all. It seems to be a dropped Leopard feature. There's some hacks you can do to modify DPI, but the result is more broken than XP's large font mode. I really don't get why we've been able to have printers scale documents beautifully from 150DPI to 1200DPI, but we're unable to solve the same problem on the display!

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[Anonymous Coward]

Because NeXT is dead... :(

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[bar-agent]

Because NeXT is dead... :(

An explanation, for those who don't know:

NeXT supported "Display PostScript," which is basically what it sounds like. Thus, unlimited scaling and DPI, splines, fonts, etc.... Basically, applying laser printer techniques to your screen.

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[mrchaotica]

NeXT supported "Display PostScript," which is basically what it sounds like.

And of course, OS X uses "Display PDF" which should still do all that stuff too... yet it doesn't, for no good reason.

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[kevinmenzel]

DPI is different than resolution. Think about it this way - imagine, the circle that indicates that you close a window is physically .25" in diameter at 640x480. (Obviously that's a made up number). Now imagine you have more pixels avaliable. You can either make that circle smaller (same number of pixels, but the pixels are a smaller size), or make that circle more detailed (increased number of pixels used to render the shape at the same size). Changing your resolution accomplishes the first situation - the higher you set your resolution, the smaller everything on your screen gets. On an LCD screen, one issue that comes up is that the display looks "best" at it's native resolution. So making things bigger, also tends to make things blurry or ugly or distorted, etc. If you could make things bigger by adjusting the DPI, AND your operating system/application supported it, you could take advantage of those small pixels to render your big object more clearly. On today's screens, if you have great eyesight you might say "So what? Things look pretty good right now... and I like how everything is small." However, what some people want are high DPI screen - ie, screens where the number of dots per inch approaches the equivalent of printed text. So where a screen might have 72 DPI (lets say dots are pixels), so a native resolution of 72 pixels per inch, what some people want is a screen where that might be instead 300 DPI, or 600 DPI... or whatever. The benefit of this would be that - if your screen has so many pixels that the eye physically can't distinguish one from the other, then text that's 1" high is gonna look smooth. A game rendered at the new ludicrously high resolution, wouldn't need anti-aliasing, because you wouldn't be able to distinguish between the pixels anyway, so stuff wouldn't render "blocky". Etc. The problem is - when you can't adjust the DPI, instead of having something look crisp, you'd just have something that's really tiny. That .25" circle becomes too small to see. All that 12 point text becomes illegible greyish lines. However, the other problem is, when you CAN adjust the DPI, SO many applications break, because they've all been developed to ASSUME a certain DPI, so either the layout breaks, or the text doesn't flow properly, or raster graphics look ugly when scaled up, etc. Which is why, say, Apple getting rid of the ability to change the DPI could be frustrating to people who want high DPI devices - because if the OPTION doesn't exist, then you can't even see what WOULD break. And it indicates that the developer of the OS probably doesn't care too much about things breaking.

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[cgenman]

Second this. Vista / Windows 7 were both scheduled to handle resolution-independent UI rendering, and neither of them can. Until the OS can render icons at 3/4ths of an inch at super-high DPI, most people will want a screen appropriately sized for their inputs. Similarly, web pages and other rendering will need to be resolution-independent... though the OS comes first.

I'm a bit surprised this rant is coming from a Microsoft Evangelist, considering that this is something that Microsoft has promised to fix for years.

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[beelsebob]

OS X uses "Display PDF", Display PostScript's successor. It basically does the exact same thing, but with rather more flexibility, unfortunately, apple's 3D accelerated implementations are a bit buggy at the moment :(. Changing the base resolution in 10.6 actually gets surprisingly close to what it should do though, so there's hope yet.

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[sco08y]

OS X does do all that stuff and has been resolution independent under the hood since at least 10.5. If you have Developer Tools installed, Quartz Debug can alter the UI resolution.

Most apps have issues, even some Apple apps are still glitchy. Interestingly, in 10.6, I noticed that iTunes will actually zoom the whole window, indicating that they have an upgrade path for non-resolution independent apps. So we'll probably see it working smoothly by 10.7.

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[drinkypoo]

Most apps have issues, even some Apple apps are still glitchy. Interestingly, in 10.6, I noticed that iTunes will actually zoom the whole window, indicating that they have an upgrade path for non-resolution independent apps. So we'll probably see it working smoothly by 10.7.

The question is how and why Apple broke this when they got their hands on NeXTStep. This should have been working in the very first release, since it was a major feature of NeXTStep. That is to say, the OS did this when Apple got their hands on it. Now it doesn't. WTF? Apple truly ruined everything good about NeXTStep except for Objective C, and a lot of people think that's a drawback.

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[Blakey Rat]

Second this. Vista / Windows 7 were both scheduled to handle resolution-independent UI rendering, and neither of them can. Until the OS can render icons at 3/4ths of an inch at super-high DPI, most people will want a screen appropriately sized for their inputs. Similarly, web pages and other rendering will need to be resolution-independent... though the OS comes first.

Have you tried it in Vista/Windows 7? It's really, really good... I'm not sure exactly how they could improve it, frankly, except maybe increasing the possible magnification factor. (IIRC, it stops at 200% now.) Whenever I see complaints like yours, I have to kind of wonder if you've actually tried using the feature, or if you're just ranting from habit...

Either way, I think you're being really unfair, especially compared to Apple who has been promising the same thing in OS X since version freakin' 10.2 and hasn't shown the teeniest bit of progress in all that time.

Make sure you turn off "XP-style DPI scaling" when you set it-- the XP-style scaling still leaves layout up to the app, which is why apps that don't use native layout tools (like Adobe apps and GTK+ apps) will still look correct.

Re:Higher DPI and Gamut, please!

[willy_me]

The question is how and why Apple broke this when they got their hands on NeXTStep.

In order to support Carbon which was required for 90% + of the initial OSX applications - even components of OSX such as Quicktime. The changeover to OSX was actually quite successful considering how big a change it was. Now people have more or less abandoned Carbon in favour of Cocoa but it was still an important stepping stone for all of those Classic MacOS developers.

Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Bigjeff5]

Seriously, I used to hunt for pixels too, but after about 1280x1024 I stopped caring.

I don't like my desktop at much higher resolution than that, it becomes uncomfortable. I know gamers and drafters really want giant screens at massive resolutions, but besides them who else really wants it? 2560x2048 resolution doesn't exactly help me see my web pages or documents any better - in fact it can make them downright hard to see, so why do I need it?

Unfortunately for Pete Brown, I think more people fall into my category than do his, or he wouldn't have anything to complain about.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[dotgain]

I know gamers and drafters really want giant screens at massive resolutions, but besides them who else really wants it?

People with good eyesight who use complicated applications or requirements.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Tumbleweed]

I know gamers and drafters really want giant screens at massive resolutions, but besides them who else really wants it? 2560x2048 resolution doesn't exactly help me see my web pages or documents any better - in fact it can make them downright hard to see, so why do I need it?

This is a combination of bad UI in operating systems and programs, and user cluelessness about how to make use of high resolution displays. What you want to do is configure your system to display things larger. The OS and programs should make sure they either default to that on a high res display, or at least make it really apparent that you should with popup boxes when you first set up the machine/program.

Some OSes and programs also don't always work well with very large size fonts, though modern ones should.

You really WANT super-high res displays with 'normal' size letters - your text will be far crisper that way than even font smudging, err, anti-aliasing, at lower resolutions.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[PhrostyMcByte]

You're doing it wrong. You should be increasing the DPI setting in your operating system, which will let you increase the size of things but will let them have far more detail. This should lead to a better browsing experience because the text will be more legible.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[dangitman]

People with good eyesight who use complicated applications or requirements.

How does one use a requirement?

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Jazz-Masta]

This is a combination of bad UI in operating systems and programs, and user cluelessness about how to make use of high resolution displays.

It is mostly bad UI.

Changing the font size or DPI settings in Windows wreaks havoc on many programs. Some mainstream applications handle it nicely, but a change to either setting destroys a number of industry applications that my clients use.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Neil Hodges]

How does one use a requirement?

Well, some people often abuse requirements, so using a requirement is probably similar to that.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[tsotha]

This is a combination of bad UI in operating systems and programs, and user cluelessness about how to make use of high resolution displays.

This is something that drives me crazy. I bought a screen with a relatively high DPI, and on half the websites I visit now the content is provided on some kind of fixed size (in pixels) flash thingee. It sits in the upper left corner of my monitor and I need a magnifying glass to read it. A higher DPI makes for some ultra-smooth fonts and allows for detailed images, but only if the moron creating content didn't decide to do everything in pixels.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[maxwell demon]

Another display will not increase the resolution (dpi) on the one display you have. I rarely wish more physical space on my display. What I'd like is higher resolution.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[TopSpin]

People do care. Just not about resolution. People care about price.

How many 1080i/p TVs are sold for every WUXGA (1920x1200) display? 10-1? 50-1? I don't know but I'm betting there are a lot more TVs being shifted. The LCD manufacturers have most of their capacity allocated to HDTV panels. This makes for low, low prices.

So when Joe Blow waddles his 290lbs ass into Best Buy to pick up a display he has a choice; he can get the super-cheap on-sale rebated HDTV that works just fine with his 'puter due to HDMI, or he can pay a $100 premium for a *real* monitor with the extra 120 pixels. Which one do you think gets added to the $20,000 card balance?

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Freedom Bug]

30" screens are great for developers, too. Everybody knows how useful multiple displays are, but nobody seems to realize just how much better a 30" 2560x1600 screen is than a couple of 21" screens, even though you're pushing about the same number of pixels and display area.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Bourdain]

This only works, to varying extents, in the more modern OS's.

For example, the relevant application(s) has to be DPI aware as well as either have additional higher resolution raster based graphics or use something like SVG

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Chuck Chunder]

2560x2048 resolution doesn't exactly help me see my web pages or documents any better

I think for people who are mostly a "consumer" of information (and that is most people) you are pretty much spot on, there are diminishing returns.

On the other hand if you are in some way producer, especially of something remotely complex, then the increased resolution is definately useful as it provides room to both see what you are producing and have the relevant tools available (eg an IDE or photoshop) and possibly some additional reference material.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Zan Lynx]

I guess you're incapable of finding the DPI settings in your OS. You probably also wish we were still using dot matrix printers with a DPI less than 100. All those extra dots in modern printing must hurt your eyes.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[npsimons]

This is something that drives me crazy. I bought a screen with a relatively high DPI, and on half the websites I visit now the content is provided on some kind of fixed size (in pixels) flash thingee.

This is just another in a long line of examples of why Flash is Evil.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Tumbleweed]

This is just another in a long line of examples of why Flash is Evil.

This is just another in a long line of examples of why the word 'kneejerk' is 50% 'jerk'.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Z34107]

This is a lot better on Vista/7. Legacy programs at high DPI are bitmap enlarged to maintain correct proportions. (Although yes, this does make some programs look fuzzy.) Smarter programs that handle DPI properly can set a flag in their application manifest if they handle different DPI properly. .NET programs written using WPF are entirely vector based, and so scale to any resolution.

This was wonderful for my grandparents - they had been running XP at 640x480 because of their poor vision. When they got a Windows 7 computer, we ran the screen at its native resolution and just turned the DPI settings way down.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[mario_grgic]

Actually it's opposite. If you have higher DPI you use more pixels to describe each element on screen. So typical 10 pt font that is perhaps 12 pixels high would be 24 pixels high on a 2 times higher DPI screen. This means more, smaller pixels to finely define edges of complex things which means less aliasing for everything.

This is the same as printing with dot matrix printers of old vs printing with modern laser printer at 2000 DPI. Which one looks better? Laser of course. Same height letter is described with hundred times more smaller pixels.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[EdIII]

but only if the moron creating content didn't decide to do everything in pixels.

Uh huh. Riiiiggggghhhhhtt.

What about those pesky things called pictures? We have enough problems just trying to make our websites render properly on IE fucktard version X, and even different versions of Firefox. Not to mention Chrome, Safari, Opera, etc.

We are expected to make a website that renders 99.99999999% the same on all browsers, and now... we must cater to YOU or be called a moron too?

Unless we find a way to scale those pictures, and sometimes backgrounds, up in size without any reduction in quality (impossible) we need to find a consistent reliable way (multiOS-multiplatform way) of determining your viewable browsing area and then giving you effectively a whole other website to visit with bigger images. Sure, we can make a website that can expand and fit the viewable browsing area dynamically. Not really impossible, but just more effort to give you a website with access to higher resolution pictures which leads us to.........

Bandwidth ain't free. Your big ass pictures needed to render the page nicely on your big ass screen cost considerably more bandwidth per user, and why we would do this in the first place if you represent an impossibly small fraction of the potential website visitors?

Development ain't free either. The vast majority of websites don't even take the development time to create versions of their websites that render well on smartphones which is much the same situation as you are in. That's why websurfing on smart phones has been such a pathetic joke for the most part, and especially on WAP. A lot of companies made a lot of money trying to come up with conversion solutions to force fit regular websites on to smartphones. The really nice smartphone browsers these days allow to zoom in to certain spots and then zoom back out instead of trying to convert the site.

Nahhh..... You're right. Web developers are just lazy morons.

If you want to understand fucking ridiculous, any web developer, or firm, that has its/their game-face on will need to do a target market analysis to determine the average screen size and average viewable screen size before starting development.

Ohhh, and throughout all of this we have to balance a development budget. We could come up with some super duper awesome stuff to account for every conceivable use case, but we are constrained by time and money.

How many times have you heard of the horror stories of major companies spending millions on some website only to have it crash and burn and not be worth its weight in piss?

Sorry, buddy. I feel your pain, believe me, I have 8 monitors right now all at 1920x1200, but it is just not as simple as you think. All of 'us' can't just click our red ruby slippers and have Web 2.0 +20 INT magically appear... Too many other considerations and we have to be a lowest common denominator development community overall.

P.S - If that were not enough there are web standards we have to deal with and browsers that still cannot handle everything we want do because they don't fully support CSS3/HTML5 yet.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[msuarezalvarez]

The arrival of 2000DPI printers did not result in people printing in 0.02 point font sizes, did it? (And, by the way, the size of text set in 10 points does *not* change with the DPI...)

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[tsotha]

I don't have as much problem with pictures as I have with text. I'm not saying people should design different versions of web sites based on the screen resolution. What I *am* saying is don't make a site that's rendered in such a way that the text is too small to read on a monitor with a lot of DPI. Any reasonably well written HTML can be adjusted on my end - I'm used to hitting to increase the text size.

But to make a website that can only be read without a magnifying glass on the wrong monoitor... yeah, that makes you a moron.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

His complaint is about non-scaling small fonts in Flash, which are virtually unreadable on high resolution monitors. I don't think any of your post addressed that.

Yes, you must cater to your users or be called a moron. If a site is unreadable on some of your user's monitors (1920x1200 is not rare), you have failed.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[peas_n_carrots]

Bitmap pictures are easily scaled. Loss of quality is a minor issue compared to a postage-stamp-sized pic that shouldn't be so small.

Maybe your ilk of web designers should stop getting so defensive and start finding solutions. You know, kind of like how engineers find solutions.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[shutdown -p now]

.NET programs written using WPF are entirely vector based, and so scale to any resolution.

This is mostly correct, but (having worked on a large real-world WPF application) there is a catch. There's nothing precluding a WPF application from using bitmaps in its UI - there is full support for that - and, of course, the bitmaps can't be scaled smoothly. They will be scaled, but you'll get the same "blurred pixels" effect.

This is why VS2010 doesn't scale perfectly, to give an example. In contrast, Expression Blend uses XAML vector images for its icons - and therefore scales everything smoothly.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[ejtttje]

Unless we find a way to scale those pictures, and sometimes backgrounds, up in size without any reduction in quality (impossible)

Uhh, it's called SVG - Scalable Vector Graphics. If IE didn't suck it'd be more widespread already. I hear they're finally getting onboard in the next release or something.
Anyway, you're right it doesn't help with photo images, but a lot of website graphics are just rasterized vector images, and it's perfect for those. The photos can be given point sizes and the browser will just scale them as needed.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[shutdown -p now]

We are expected to make a website that renders 99.99999999% the same on all browsers

No, you aren't. You are expected to make a website that renders correctly on all browsers, which doesn't mean the same. The latter is clearly impossible, because there are too many things you don't control with respect to layout.

For example, fonts - you cannot guarantee the presence of any particular font on the user's machine, and even if it is there, depending on the OS and its settings, the exact metrics of the font can be different (e.g. OS X uses ideal layout for fonts, while Windows snips vertical lines to pixel boundaries - so text is wider on Windows, and the difference can be as high as 20%).

If that were not enough there are web standards we have to deal with and browsers that still cannot handle everything we want do because they don't fully support CSS3/HTML5 yet.

There's no browser today that claims, much less truly supports, 100% of CSS3/HTML5. It would be rather tricky, anyway, given that they're still not finalized.

Given that, the only sane course of action is to design the website such that, for any reasonable font size - and with images not scaled up/down - the layout remains consistent and accessible. If you do that, then you may as well use DPI-independent units for font sizes.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[shutdown -p now]

Some apps just plain ignore the DPI setting, while others display funny, such as chopped-off text because it "grows" outside of intended sizing-box boundaries.

In Vista and above, the application has to explicitly say in its manifest that it's DPI-aware (i.e. the author has to claim that he understands the issues). This is a new manifest setting that wasn't present in XP. Any application that doesn't have that setting in its manifest will be treated as non-DPI-aware (even if it really is).

What this means in practice is that Windows will tell it to render at 92 DPI (the old default, to which everyone normally codes), and then scale the produced bitmap as needed - as a bitmap. The result is pixellated, of course, but at least the layout is completely preserved, so you won't see chopped-off text on controls etc.

Companies don't seem to test their apps very well at higher DPI, perhaps because they are multi-language apps, which means testing at both common and high DPI for every language.

Actually, multi-language apps are more likely to be handling high DPI better, because most languages have longer words compared to English. So those apps would either have to use flexible layouts (so that controls auto-adjust size to text labels) - which means that they will just scale up with more text; or they use fixed layouts, but upsize controls so that extra text on any localization would still fit - which means that text enlarged via DPI is more likely to fit, as well.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahhh, web developers -- the Wal-Mart cashiers of the computing industry...

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[BobPaul]

We are expected to make a website that renders 99.99999999% the same on all browsers, and now... we must cater to YOU or be called a moron too?

That is correct. Additionally, I'll require you meet my needs as well as him, though I'll think of something more creative than moron to call you if you don't. Also, I won't tell you my needs unless you fail to meet them. ;)

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[LinuxAndLube]

As far as I know, IE8 is the only browser that behaves as expected given a high DPI setting. It is one of the very few advantages that IE8 has over the other mainstream browsers.

Note that DPI-awareness is very different from zoom functionality.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[drinkypoo]

Bitmap pictures are easily scaled. Loss of quality is a minor issue compared to a postage-stamp-sized pic that shouldn't be so small.

This is truly a non-trivial problem when you're trying to make page loads as small as possible. In order to gracefully allow image scaling I'll need multiple resolutions (they can be generated programatically when needed, but still must be cached on disk for performance reasons) and I'll need to use some javascript to replace the image with the higher-resolution version if they scale. Ideally I'd detect if they have scaled up before I even sent them content. Or in other words, it's a lot harder than you think.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[macbuzz01]

If you measure it in pixels, it's jerk is really only 45% of the word.

Re:Perhaps nobody else cares?

[shutdown -p now]

The problem with font embedding (and specifying fixed font size) is that this disregards user's preferences and disabilities (low vision etc).

To give a very simple example, I hate Arial with a passion for purely aesthetic reasons; my browser sans-serif font is sent to Verdana, and if a website comes with CSS which says something like "font-family: Arial, sans-serif" (so Arial always takes precedence if present), my first urge is to find the designer and punch him in the face. My second urge is to immediately leave the site, which is what I normally end up doing.

To the guy in the adjacent cube...

[Anonymous Coward]

...Because I know you spend all day reading Slashdot instead of what you are supposed to be doing...

Would you please stop making disgusting sounds with your dentures???

Please?

Re:To the guy in the adjacent cube...

[zill]

I was deliberating whether to mod you "troll" or "offtopic" when I finally realized you were talking about me.

Sorry, I'll stop now :(

Laptop pains too

[stokessd]

I feel your pain. I have a 17" laptop screen that is 1920x1200. By that token a high dpi 30" screen should be a lot more than ~2500x1600

I would also love a second display for my laptop but good luck finding a desktop monitor of any size with the same DPI as the laptop. As a result I've got small windows and big windows.

Sheldon

Not everyone wants more pixels, but better aspect

[slashuzer]

Frankly for most people the existing 'HDTV' resolution has more than enough pixels, to get full benefit from increased number of pixels you would need a larger screen and sit closer to it. As it is, reading text on these high DPI screens is hard enough, and I often find myself increasing the default font size. This issue is particularly pronounced in laptop screens.

What I do want is more vertical resolution. The 16:9 craze means today we buy displays that are physcially larger and have more pixels overall than ten years ago, yet do not provide any more area for vertical display. You still have to scroll down far too much. It would be nice if someone still made decent, affordable 4:3 displays; a 1600 X 1200 in 21" format is going to be a killer!

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[WrongSizeGlass]

I think Mr 'Evangelist' Brown should accept the fact that cramming more and more pixels into displays will make them more and more expensive. Since LCD displays have become commodity items in the PC market people want them to be good quality and cheap, not super duper mega high quality & pixel count and very very expensive. The normal consumer doesn't have a need for a shit load of pixel so he needs to find an HDTV maker who will deliver on to his desk so he can stop whining about it.

BTW, if this is his biggest complaint about things then he's got it pretty easy and obviously doesn't have enough to worry about.

Price has gone up...

[Braintrust]

My 2.5 year old Samsung 275T monitor is currently retailing at the same location for appox $75 more than I paid for it at purchase. In 30+ years of building systems I think that may be a first.

(Freaking great monitor, btw.)

Some of this is of course due to currency fluctuations, I think... never seen a piece of hardware increase in price over time before.

Re:Price has gone up...

[Tumbleweed]

Some of this is of course due to currency fluctuations, I think... never seen a piece of hardware increase in price over time before.

Haven't priced a Ford Mustang made in the 1960s lately, have you? :)

Need small native resolution screens too!

[Jazz-Masta]

I agree with increasing DPI on a screen, to a point.

I find a 22" screen with 1680x1050 is perfect. The new 21.5" screens with 1920x1080 are a bit too "small" when dealing with XP and the native resolution.

Most business users I deal with still want 4:3 screens. 16:9 and 16:10 screens are far too short vertically. Many people still want to see a full page of text on a screen. Widescreen works well for spreadsheets and databases.

I would also like to see more screens with a lower DPI for older users. I have yet to set a 20", 21.5" or 22" screen at native resolution for older workers. Most tend to move to a ~1440x900 or even ~1280x800 from the 1680x1050 or 1920x1080. When I move to those resolutions, or any resolution that keeps the same aspect ratio, but is not the native resolution, the LCDs are blurry (even more troublesome for older users).

Not everyone watches movies on their computers all day, in fact, I would believe most people view more vertical than horizontal documents for the better part of the day - both at work and at home.

Re:Need small native resolution screens too!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

16:9 and 16:10 screens actually kick ass for text, assuming you have the right setup.

Most programs and websites(in terms of sidebars and toolbars and stuff) are still laid out for screens that are wider than they are tall, so you do usually need one monitor in the usual configuration.

Your second monitor, though, you just rotate so that it is now taller than it is wide, and offers rather more horizontal resolution than any but the nicest 4:3 monitors ever did.

All but the cheapest video cards support dual monitors(and we are talking really cheap here. the 20-30 dollar card might not; but for $50 you'll have a hard time not getting dual monitor support, albeit often 1VGA, 1DVI), and the software is mature enough(you'll have to suffer through looking at your BIOS bootup sideways on one of the screens; but you'll survive).

Unless your environment is quite space constrained, or has to fit in a laptop bag and go with you, a second monitor, rotated so that its dimensions closely match those of your common paper document, is a fairly cheap way to make an office-type worker's life more pleasant and productive.

Re:Need small native resolution screens too!

[PhrostyMcByte]

Don't think of sizes in terms of pixels -- think of them in inches. The current thing on your screen that takes up 10 inches of space, wouldn't you like it to have twice the detail, while staying at 10 inches? I'd love for my text to have twice the detail, becoming easier to read. Maybe websites could start using serif fonts, which are generally regarded as more legible but also tough to use on most present-day monitors because of the low DPI. That's what high DPI is for -- more detail, not to make things smaller.

Bloody luxury.

[gklinger]

My monitor has ONE BIG PIXEL. It ain't easy to use but I get by.

Re:Bloody luxury.

[FooAtWFU]

Bah! Whipper-snappers, the lot of ye! My monitor has one tiny pixel. And it's hardwired to black.

Re:Bloody luxury.

[adamofgreyskull]

Bah! Luxury! You think you've got it bad, at least you've got a monitor! I have to lick the VGA port and decode the signal on the fly.

Re:Bloody luxury.

[__aasqbs9791]

Bah! Decadence! I have no tongue.

Re:Bloody luxury.

[Kohath]

Try adjusting the contrast.

Re:Bloody luxury.

[Chysn]

My god, what I wouldn't give for some rocks! I have to try to simulate the universe with crushed saxophone reeds.

Which do you want?

[voss]

The 2560 monitor that sells for $1200 or the 1920 monitor that sells for $200-300? the market has decided.
The 1080p standard is beneficial to both computer users and tv watchers in driving prices down.

1440p is probably the next stepping point thats 2736x1440, its less of a step than 2160p.

Apple Displays.

[vonsneerderhooten]

Yes, really. The 30" Apple has really high ppi.
Not an Apple fanboi, just sayin'

Re:Apple Displays.

[mario_grgic]

Actually, 17'' Macbook pro with 1920x1200 has 133 DPI, while 30'' ACD is only 107 DPI by comparison.

Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[zill]

Display resolution and pixel pitch peaked back in 2001 with the introduction of IBM T220. Even now, no production display can top its resolution and pixel pitch.

Why aren't we all using WQUXGA, WHSXGA, or even WHUXGA display right now?
Simple, there's no demand for it.

Why isn't there any demand for it?
Because 90% of the consumers are still watching 480p DVD and DTV broadcasts.
Because lots of websites are still designed to be optimally viewing in 1024x768.
Because most operating systems and applications have their font sizes hardcoded (Windows 7 only allow system fonts to be enlarged by 150% while OSX cannot adjust its system font size at all).

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[Blakey Rat]

Why aren't we all using WQUXGA, WHSXGA, or even WHUXGA display right now?

Hopefully regardless of our opinions of pixel density, we can *all* agree to STOP USING THOSE RETARDED ABBREVIATIONS. How is a mortal human being supposed to know what the holy shit "WHUXGA" means in a practical sense? Just give us the actual resolution (in NUMBERS) and call it good. Thank you.

Ahem.

Anyway, I agree with your general sentiment about OS support for high-res displays, although it's getting much better. Progress has been slow. Maybe in another 5-10 years it literally will not matter what your DPI is, and desktops will all look the same regardless.

I also want to add that is Pete Brown wants higher-res displays, he's perfectly welcome to start up a business providing same and seeing how well he does. If he's right, and there's a huge demand for these, he'll make a killing. (My guess is he's not and there isn't and he'll go broke.)

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[Namarrgon]

Windows 7 only allow system fonts to be enlarged by 150%

Not true. The Set Custom Text Size setting allows up to 500%, i.e. 480dpi.

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[Tumbleweed]

How is a mortal human being supposed to know what the holy shit "WHUXGA" means in a practical sense?

I'm pretty sure WHUXGA is a volcano in Iceland.

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[PenguinBob]

I just figure the more letters it has in it, the better it is.

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[rthille]

According to a friend of mine who worked at Apple and did a white paper for them on resolution independence, you need ~200 DPI on the display before you can get away with scaling all the UI elements without them jumping around by 1/2 pixels, etc and it being annoying to the user. That's why the iPhone as a ~200 DPI screen. So, the IBM T-221 display would be awesome for resolution independence, but typical monitors, "not so much".

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[Bo'Bob'O]

It's worse then that even, they can't even decide what they mean. I've seen WXGA mean 1366x768, 1280x768, 1280x800, and 1280x720. I have even seen a projector that had a resolution that was a 17:10 aspect ratio. It probably wouldn't even bother me that much, except that many times, the only thing listed in the spec sheet is "WXGA" with no actual resolution listed.

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[shutdown -p now]

According to a friend of mine who worked at Apple and did a white paper for them on resolution independence, you need ~200 DPI on the display before you can get away with scaling all the UI elements without them jumping around by 1/2 pixels, etc and it being annoying to the user.

I don't understand this part at all. A button misplaced by 1/2 pixel will hardly be noticeable (especially on 150dpi and above!), and it's not like it will jump back and forth all the time - it will only happen once when user changes DPI setting.

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[evilviper]

you need ~200 DPI on the display before you can get away with scaling all the UI elements without them jumping around by 1/2 pixels, etc

That's assuming brain-dead "nearest-neighbor" scaling (only whole-pixel steps). Plenty of other methods perform far better. bicubic is the first one that comes to mind.

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[Big_Breaker]

Yep, draw your GUI on a large resolution 200 DPI virtual screen AKA buffer and let a GPU scale it back down to the physical display's native resolution.

Before Blu-Ray and HD-DVD there were not that many sources of HD content and people with HTPCs would upscale, filter and down res DVDs to try to clean up the picture. It wasn't 1080P blu-ray but it was better than the original, normally rendered picture to many people's eyes.

It would still have scaling artifacts but it wouldn't / shouldn't look too bad. Alternatively use SVG for everything... that's the best solution.

Re:Do we really WANT higher resoltuion displays?

[Blakey Rat]

According to a friend of mine who worked at Apple and did a white paper for them on resolution independence, you need ~200 DPI on the display before you can get away with scaling all the UI elements without them jumping around by 1/2 pixels, etc and it being annoying to the user.

Whitepaper or not, that's total bunk. Hasn't he heard of subpixel rendering? The font guys at Apple do that every day, maybe he should talk to them about it. Now, you might use the argument that widgets might become a bit blurry, but they sure wouldn't "jump around" unless you're doing something crazy-wrong.

Also, the iPhone doesn't have a 200 DPI screen, so in addition to being conceptually wrong, you're factually wrong. Apple's own webpage says it's 163: http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

Besides, even if icons "jumped around" by half a pixel, why can't I set the DPI in OS X anyway and just decide to take that risk? Could it be because (gasp) Apple doesn't have the fucking feature working yet, despite talking about it since 10.2? Ask your friend what the hold-up is... we all saw a mostly-working demo in the 10.3 dev tools, where's the finished feature?

get bigger displays

[Tumbleweed]

The market is getting there. New 22" and 24" displays are coming out that have 1920x1080 (or 1200) resolutions, and recent 27" displays like on the latest iMac and a Dell 27" display have 2560x1440 (the 16:9 version of the 16:10 2560x1600 30" displays). You should be careful about some of these monitors, as many of them are large gamut displays that require calibration, and they're generally not going to be for gaming, as they're H-IPS panels. But they're really beautiful. I'm waiting for some detailed reviews on the new HP zr24w display - 1920x1200 (16:10 FTW!) with regular color gamut. I want the wide viewing angles, but I'm not _that_ picky about color. $425, I think.

Re:get bigger displays

[evanbd]

Huh? A 24" display with 1920x1200 resolution is a completely boring 100 dpi or so. 27" at 2560x1440 is only 110 dpi or so. A high resolution display would be more like 150 dpi, ideally more like 200 dpi. Any idea where I can get a display that's at least 2560x1440, and at least 150 dpi?

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[timeOday]

That's the problem; 2560x1600 is basically just 2x 1600x1200, which has been available for... I don't even know. Surely over a decade.

what the TV industry learned from the PC industry

[FudRucker]

they learned to never give your customers what they really want, just give them something barely adequate and a year later market something just incrementally better thus prompting consumers to buy again, rinse & repeat & rinse & repeat until you can afford that retirement castle on the mountain,

high-DPI displays

[MobyDisk]

The problem with high DPI displays is bad software support. Two things need to happen for this to work:

1) Applications need to work properly with high DPIs.
2) The OS needs to do a good job scaling old applications that don't respect DPI. That may include lying to them about the resolution and DPI, and stretching the window.

For #1, we are getting better. But many modern apps *cough*iTunes*cough* completely botch it. In some cases text on buttons gets bigger but the button does not, so instead of "Configure" you get the top half of the letter C. Or maybe the text gets bigger, and it spaces just fine, but the column sizes still default incorrectly. It would be better if they just ignored DPI than supporting it half-way.

For #2, you basically need to scale the window and adjust the mouse coordinates to compensate. There's gonna be quirks, but it sure beats an app that is just too small to be usable. Also, scale it well (not bilinear!) so it isn't a blurry blob.

Resolution of the human eye: about 570 Megapixels

[Cliff Stoll]

Making many assumptions, the human eye has about 500 to 600 megapixels of resolution.

But determining visual acuity is nontrivial. Lots of physics, physiology, and neuroscience enter into it.

Visual acuity depends on a number of physical limitations set by the optics of the lens of the eye as well as the sampling on the retina.

For example, the point spread function of the lens roughly matches the sampling of the retinal mosaic (well, within a factor of 3 or so). A nicely evolved system!

Our eyes' acuity are influenced by

    - Refractive error (out of focus lens, often correctable by glasses or contacts)

    - Size of the pupil (physical optics tells us that a wide open iris will reduce diffraction)

    - Illumination (brighter scenes give more photons, and our neuroprocessing can do more

    - Time of exposure to the field

    - Area of the retina exposed

    - State of adaption of the eye (night [scotopic] vs day [photopic] vision.

    - Eye motion & object motion in scene

See http://www.clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html

For a good review of visual acuity, see:
http://webvision.med.utah.edu/KallSpatial.html

Another stupidity in the LCD display market

[Skapare]

... and even the LCD TV market, is the lack of a guarantee of NO DEAD OR STUCK PIXELS. Very few displays have any pixel issues. The industry says that fewer than one percent have problems with any pixels. Yet when you read the warranty details, they will treat a few (usually somewhere from 3 to 8 depending on manufacturer and pixel location on the screen) bad pixels as not covered by the warranty. OK, so they are cheap skates and want to screw over the fewer than 1% of the buyers that luck out and get one of their lemons.

If the figure really is less than 1%, why not offer one of those "extended warranty"-like deals the retailers like to offer ... for a cost of say 3% to 5% of the purchase price ... but in this case an "absolutely zero dead or stuck pixels no matter what ... warranty"? If only 1% of units are bad, then they should make a killing at 3% to 5% of purchase price.

Of course, not everyone would buy that. But if I'm going to plunk down big dollars for a 76 cm 2560x1600 display, I sure don't want to get a lemon with a bad pixel. I'd pay the 5% more to be sure I don't get one.

They could even test units and segregate the stock, selling the flawless ones for more, and the flawed ones for a little less. Even if this price span is break even, this can attract more buyers ... some wanting the perfect units ... some wanting a discount. Come on you MBA bozos ... go after that market.

Re:Another stupidity in the LCD display market

[baka_vic]

Philips' Perfect Panel Warranty is exactly that - no dead pixels at all. Of course they have a lower priced version of the panel without the comprehensive warranty.

Re:Another stupidity in the LCD display market

[Skapare]

So, in a program with 4,096,000 lines of code in it, you'd insist on fixing it if 0.000024% of those lines let any hacker in? I would!

I have a big problem with everything

[brxndxn]

On a computer screen, I want as much resolution as possible! And.. even on my hdtv, I want as much resolution as possible. Even in my living room, watching a Bluray at 1080p, I still see the pixels from 10-12 feet away on the couch. Maybe I'm more picky than the average person.. or maybe I have better eyes (not really.. i wear contacts)...

But here's where I really get mad.. Half the people are posting that too high of resolution causes web pages to look too small.. or GUI's to look to funky.. That is where I have a problem! Why the hell don't we have vector graphics gui's by now? First, I blame Intel.. Intel sucks so bad at graphics that they cannot even run Aero properly.. still.. in 2010. Intel, your engineers are of average intelligence. And yet, your goddamn graphics chips are in half our computers. (Maybe some of you think Intel runs Aero fine.. but I'm still not happy with it.) Second.. WTF is Aero? It's a piece of shit GUI band-aid.. that's what it is. It adds like one 3d feature just so the dumbass consumer goes 'ohhh.. pretty candy'. Weren't we promised a vector-based GUI with Vista? So Microsoft, you suck too. Your management is incompetent and your programmers lack talent. Third.. Why the hell can't I take advantage of the contrast of a computer monitor and just have a black background? Why the hell am I pretty much forced with a white background and black text whether I'm running linux, Windows, FreeBSD, Apple, OS2, YourMom (an OS I wrote in like 5 minutes that's better than Windows 7.) Seriously.. every OS basically forces white background/black text.. Why not have vector-based black background with bright green text.. like in the 80's.. back when it was hilariously easy to read text on a crappy 14" CRT monitor? Fourth, fuck you both Firefox and Opera. You both should do a better job of seperating the CONTENT (read.. the fucking text) from the rest of the bullshit on the webpage. Let me, the viewer, decide what color I want for the background and text.. and figure out how to make it look halfway decent! IE, you don't even count because you are from Microsoft and therefore cannot innovate. Apple, do not think you're getting out of this.. You're still living in pixel land. Come on, Steve Jobs, force your overworked minions to develop the best goddamn vector graphics GUI in existence.. Then open the new OS to all platforms.. Then dominate the entire marketplace. Seriously.. the entire world will be scrambling to develop the highest resolution monitor.. Steve, if you don't do this, you have tiny balls. OMG, I almost forgot the monitor companies.. God you suck. I am using a Samsung 1920x1200 26" TV as my monitor right now.. Don't think I didn't notice you went from 16:10 to 16:9 behind my back.. I found the one TV on clearance that still had the 0:+1 more than everyone else.

So, imo, where the entire computer industry is screaming, "Look at me.. I'm soo great.. I have multitouch or I have a stupid 3d feature.. or I have 1080p!", remember that you still have a lot to do.. Please hurry up and get it done..

AMD, you get a free pass.

I have a lot more to bitch about.. but I'm busy.. and I only have so much karma to blow.

Re:I have a big problem with everything

[bhtooefr]

We actually do have a vector-based GUI in Vista/7.

It works quite well on apps that are written to use it.

Aero is also a desktop compositing engine, which means that the GPU handles a lot more of the screen redraw and such.

It also handles such things as... raster-scaling GDI applications to the appropriate size (rather than relying on the GDI app to get the size right, they never do,) when you've got the DPI increased in Vista/7.

Re:I have a big problem with everything

[TypoNAM]

... Fourth, fuck you both Firefox and Opera. You both should do a better job of separating the CONTENT (read.. the fucking text) from the rest of the bullshit on the webpage. Let me, the viewer, decide what color I want for the background and text.. and figure out how to make it look halfway decent!

That's funny I can right now go to View -> Page Style -> No Style, and Firefox will display slashdot as linear context using my font and color settings in Tools -> Options -> Content tab. Of course this only works if the site only decorates the page using CSS. I think there's a Firefox add-on that allows you to override the site's CSS and replace it with your own in a user friendly manner.

It's Phillip / Sony that lead the let down !

[Taco Cowboy]

Do you know what causes the regression?

Phillip and Sony !

Unlike the great job Phillip / Sony team did for the CD, they have led a big let down on the LCD.

Sony didn't even want to go LCD - they thought LCD TV is just a temporary fad !

And Phillips? They pulled out of the LCD business (production side) altogether and sold their 50% shares to LG of Korea.

Which resulted in the Koreans (Samsung and LG) became the de-facto leaders of LCD manufacturing business and there were no competition for couple of years.

With no competition there was no urge of improvement. All the Koreans were doing was building larger and larger plants to produce larger and larger panels, while still giving us UTTER CRAP in terms of resolutions.

It took them like 5 years before they even gave us the HD 720i resolution, 3 more years before the 1080i resolution and another 3 more years before HD 1080p became available !

And the Japanese aren't making progress either. Toshiba / Sharp / Panasonic were all very late into LCD. Instead of concentrating on LCD, the Japanese were exploring other options and they wasted almost half a decade before realize that LCD is the way to go.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoosh.

I don't agree with GP but I understand that as things are moving to newer display technologies trying to wring more and more out of what is now a low cost and low profit-margin technology isn't the smartest move.

Invest heavily in trying to get the last drops out something that's going to be passé in short order? Nice knowing your company.

Bye bye.

Re:Not everyone wants more pixels, but better aspe

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Also if you rotate a 1920 X 1200 display into vertical position you get what you want.

I'll second that. I keep a second monitor, rotated to 1200x1920, dedicated to web browsing on my main system.

It totally rocks, I hardly ever have to scroll. However, I am constantly reminded that far too many web designers have their heads firmly stuck in a box of about 800x600 and do the multiple page thing forcing me to click "next" every couple of paragraphs and leaving around half of my screen wasted on empty space.

Re:Not everyone wants more pixels, but better aspe

[aztektum]

Frankly for most people the existing 'HDTV' resolution has more than enough pixels

Yeah and 640k was enough for everyone.

Can you tell the difference

[Namarrgon]

between a 300dpi printed sheet of paper, and a 1200dpi glossy magazine page? Most people can, pretty easily. By comparison, the standard 24" WUXGA monitor is a pathetic 94dpi.

The IBM T220 (22" @ 3840 x 2400, released 2001) was 204 dpi, and looked glorious. Modern phone screens are 250-270dpi, so we can potentially manufacture a 24" 5230 x 2940 screen, and it would look amazing, like a quality printed brochure but with full interaction, though still less than anyone with 20/20 vision can perceive.

This would be hugely useful for any number of visual-oriented industries (pre-press, photography, cinema, medical, data exploration etc), and a pretty large number of geeks too. What's stopping us? (Hint: it's not graphics cards - even cheap cards can manage 3840x2400 these days. It's idiot consumers who say "I want low & chunky resolution, otherwise my text is too small to see").

Re:couldn't agree more: 1920x1080 sucks

[MayonakaHa]

Honestly if you're working on papers on your computer most of the time, flip the monitor to vertical. Pretty much all of the "paperwork" based terminals I saw when doing printer maintenance at hospitals were mounted vertically for quick review of documents.

Re:Not everyone wants more pixels, but better aspe

[radish]

Agreed - I'm using a pair of 1600x1200 20" LCDs and as much as I'd like to upgrade, there's just nothing out there which really feels like an upgrade for sensible money. Oh well!

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[DMalic]

He's not a "normal consumer" so he has different concerns. He's lobbying them as best he can and if you don't share them, maybe you should STFU about him being a whiner? The availability of more 4K displays would not suddenly drive up the price on your 1080p screens so that you could no longer afford to buy a monitor.

Re:Not everyone wants more pixels, but better aspe

[jedwidz]

Pivot!

Get a pivoting display mounting arm, anchor it to your desk and off you go. Most LCDs support VESA-compliant mounts, so it doesn't matter what sort of stand the screen is bundled with.

In portrait orientation, a 16:9 (e.g. 1080p) widescreen is great for document work since you can see an entire page on-screen, and surprisingly good for a lot of other applications too.

You get much better use of screen real-estate, partly on account of window titlebars and toolbars being narrower. ClearType doesn't work as designed but I still like to have it enabled.

I want my VERTICAL resolution back

[macraig]

Fuck this moronic pandering to people who want to do nothing with a computer but watch 1080p videos: I want my vertical resolution back. Stop stealing pixels from the top and bottom and tacking them onto the sides where I don't need them for document work.

Re:I want my VERTICAL resolution back

[Skapare]

Especially with applications that put row after row of junk buttons along the top and bottom and never on the sides, making the vertical space crunch even worse. Everything from Firefox to OpenOffice has this issue. We need to knock some developer heads around.

Re:I want my VERTICAL resolution back

[musikit]

monitor.RotateInDegrees(90);

Re:2+ TB Hard Drives

[Skapare]

Because the stigma associated with the 32-bit LBA fields in the MBR (MS-DOS) partition table format. While a nearly-4TB drive could still be utilized in full, it would have to be divided up with the last partition starting at just under the 2TB mark, and be a size of 2TB. And this may not even work unless the implementing OS or partitioning tools handle the arithmetic with more than 32 bits. Windows 7, Linux, and most BSDs support the newer GUID Partition Table format (and even provide for an easy 128 primary partitions), drive makers know there will be issues that complicates the sale of the drives. Older OSes won't handle the size and/or the new partition table format. And besides, they are also working the 4096 sector size issue, too, which adds its own complications that minimize the market.

RAID arrays have already gone long past this limit (we have four 20-TB arrays at work) and use the new partition tables. But these are the exceptions, and they typically aren't even using drives beyond 1 TB (our 20-TB arrays have 24 drives of 1 TB). They will eventually get past these issues and you should be seeing 3TB and 4TB drives in a few months. But be prepared for 4096 byte sectors and a new partition table format (that is more powerful and even has a backup copy at the end of the drive or array).

I've got your DPIs right here!

[toadlife]

They're on the screen of my HTC Touch Pro 2 (259 DPI), and other smart phones like the Nexus One (252 DPI).

Gamut is already here

[Sycraft-fu]

You can get high gamut monitors all over the place. The problem is that very few apps deal with colour management. Windows Vista and 7 have powerful colour management built in so they can be aware of the gamut of different devices and let apps know. However most apps don't check, and even some of those that can don't by default (Firefox can, but doesn't unless manually told to).

Now if you mean panels with greater bit depth for smoother colour gradients, those are here though pretty scarce. The problem is that DVI doesn't handle more than 8-bits per pixel. So to do anything higher you had to hack something with using a dual-link cable sending two signals or what not. However DP supports high bit natively. As such, they are coming, but slowly as it is fairly hard to do. Heck many panels are still 6-bit panels that are dithered to 8-bit. NEC has some new monitors comming out, the PA series, that are 10-bit panels and will do that with DP input. Windows 7 has full support for that, though I don't know how many graphics cards do.

Re:Well, the highest color setting is "True Color"

[PhrostyMcByte]

It is called Deep Color.

BS: Or you have a ridiculously huge TV.

[guidryp]

"On a computer screen, I want as much resolution as possible! And.. even on my hdtv, I want as much resolution as possible. Even in my living room, watching a Bluray at 1080p, I still see the pixels from 10-12 feet away on the couch. Maybe I'm more picky than the average person.. or maybe I have better eyes (not really.. i wear contacts)..."

Really that is shenanigans worthy. 12 feet away and you see pixels??? Just how big is your TV?

I have 20:15 vision and pixels are invisible at 5 feet on my 40" TV (I just broke out a measuring tape).

one big pixel?

[Fubari]

My monitor has ONE BIG PIXEL. It ain't easy to use but I get by.

Actually that's just the disk activity light.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[Khyber]

"I think Mr 'Evangelist' Brown should accept the fact that cramming more and more pixels into displays will make them more and more expensive."

Just for the fuck of it I did a physical pixel count on my screen. Turns out 27 RGB subpixels create a 3x3 grouping of 3 RGB subpixels per section to make one pixel. I used mspaint to drop a white pixel on a black background to check.

That's for 1080p. Imagine if I could just render at the TRUE native resolution of the panel, which is higher than the 1080p it is limited to with each pixel occupying a 3x3 space of 27 subpixels.

That would be damned sharp, and finally a test for graphics cards.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[perryizgr8]

I think Mr WrongSizeGlass should accept the fact that cramming more and more gigabytes into hard drives will make them more and more expensive. Since HDDs have become commodity items in the PC market people want them to be good quality and cheap, not super duper mega high capacity & low latency and very very expensive. The normal consumer doesn't have a need for a shit load of gigabytes so he needs to find an HDD maker who will deliver on to his desk so he can stop whining about it.

BTW, if this is his biggest complaint about things then he's got it pretty easy and obviously doesn't have enough to worry about.

do you realize how weak/stupid your argument is?

Pete Brown is an idiot

[scdeimos]

The 24-inch 600dpi display he so desperately wants requires a resolution of 12,000 x 7,500 pixels. A 600dpi, 24-bit colour 12,000 x 7,500 @ 60Hz display requires a 129.6Gbps communications bandwidth, which well and truly exceeds any (currently available) display bus connectivity.

HDMI 1.4 has a maximum video bandwidth of 8.16Gbps. Even a 4-lane DisplayPort connection has a maximum bandwidth of only 17.2Gbps. It's not HDTV that's limited the progress of desktop display resolutions, it's the lack of a decent high-bandwidth display communications link.

All this is academic, though. How many people would *really* be able to tell the difference between a 96dpi and 200dpi display on their desktop (IBM makes 200dpi displays, by the way), let alone a 600dpi display.

Re:Pete Brown is an idiot

[grumbel]

All this is academic, though. How many people would *really* be able to tell the difference between a 96dpi and 200dpi display on their desktop

Basically all of them. The difference is extremely noticeable when it comes to fonts and other things that require pixels smaller then what a 96dpi display can produce to render properly. The difference between 200dpi and 600dpi might be a little trickier, as with 200dpi you can already start to render a font that looks like a print font, not like a screen font.

But 96dpi is really extremely low and its a little depressing that computer power has increased by orders of magnitude, while the last big dpi jump was back when things switched from 320x200 to 640x480, everything after that has mostly about larger displays, not higher dpi displays.

Re:Pff, noobs!

[mjwx]

I have three 21" CRTs. My total resolution is 4800x1200. I can change the resolution to whatever I want.
Wanna know what I paid?

$150!

6 CRT monitors: $300.

Cheap Shelving from Ikea: $120

Chiropractor for back problems: $12,000

Watching the whole thing collapse under it's own weight because you cheaped out and went to Ikea: priceless.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[Mad Merlin]

There's actually a lot wrong with displays these days, and the trend towards shrinking resolutions, especially with the shortscreen (16:10) and shorterscreen (16:9) fads taking off is only one of the problems. The other problem is the overwhelming majority of panels produced now are TN, meaning they have outrageously bad viewing angles and only 6-bits of colour per channel instead of 8. It wouldn't be so bad if you could actually tell what type of panel an LCD used, but the manufacturers don't list it anywhere, so it's basically impossible to tell unless you can see one in person. Good luck finding any laptop nowadays that doesn't come with a TN panel, Thinkpads and Apples included.</rant>

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[BobPaul]

That's only 100dpi. His complaint is specifically that we're still stuck at around 90dpi or less. 100dpi is still in that ballpark. When you get a 150dpi, 200dpi, or better monitor, let us know.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[hairyfeet]

Have you thought about trying Eyefinity? As it seems to me Eyefinity is gonna be the way things end up, as it is cheaper to go triple monitors than it is to make one mega screen. And if you are wanting it for coding according to Jeff Atwood you just can't beat coding on triple monitors.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[iamhassi]

"He's not a "normal consumer" so he has different concerns. He's lobbying them as best he can and if you don't share them, maybe you should STFU about him being a whiner?"

Did you bother to read his reason why he wants a ridiculous 300dpi display? "I don't want the super high DPI to fit more info, I want super high DPI so I can get extra smooth text and screen elements. "

Did he seriously just say he wanted a 6000x4000 24" LCD with a 0.08mm dot pitch (compared to average CRTs with 0.22-0.28mm) so he could look at smooth text?

Also, does he realize this is all his employers' (Microsoft) fault? XP was set by default to 96 DPI. Sure you could set it to "large size" 120 DPI when running high, but that usually ended up distorting everything. Websites didn't look right, text would be all over the pages, some text would be larger but other things wouldn't be, like text in Flash or on images. What looked normal on your screen looked huge on other's meaning you couldn't do web design any word processing. So why would manufactures offer 300dpi when customers would just set them back to the 96 DPI they're use to?

Further proof that no one cares: Steam's Hardware Survey March 2010. Most prevalent resolution amongst gamers? 1280x1024, at 19%. Second place is 1680x1050, at 18%. Neither of those are particularly high, with the highest resolution in the survey being 1920x1200 at 6% and "Other" is only 3.4%.

Besides when his eyes go in a few years he won't care about the high resolutions anymore.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[iamhassi]

"Youll get the 4Kx2K monitor when 4Kx2K video becomes mainstream. Astro Systems DM-3400 56" Professional 4K LCD Monitor"

According to this calculator, 4000x2000 on a 56" is only 80ppi. He's already complaining about 96ppi so I'm sure he won't like 80.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[LinuxAndLube]

I use high DPI settings on notebooks with small, but very high resolution screens. The result is beautiful and easy on the eyes. A bit like reading print.

Much popular MS software is DPI-aware. For example, IE8 is. Chrome and most applications by other software makers, unfortunately, are not.

It would be great if more software makers would make their products DPI-aware. Sometimes it can be done on the cheap. For example, all WPF applications automatically are DPI-aware.

Re:Microsoft Evangelist, Pete Brown

[spongman]

err... since your ssh terminal session is all text, it's probably the thing that'll benefit most from higher resolution. assuming you're not using bitmap fonts.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[FireFury03]

Further proof that no one cares: Steam's Hardware Survey March 2010. Most prevalent resolution amongst gamers? 1280x1024, at 19%. Second place is 1680x1050, at 18%. Neither of those are particularly high, with the highest resolution in the survey being 1920x1200 at 6% and "Other" is only 3.4%.

Since when were gamers ever a good measure of display resolution? Gamers have *never* pushed their hardware up to really high resolutions because high frame rates are more important to them (which makes a lot of sense - you can't appreciate high resolutions on fast moving video anyway).

The people you should be paying attention to are graphic designers, programmers, people using CAD, publishers, etc. These are the people who were using 21" 1600x1200 CRTs when "normal people" were happy with their 15" 800x600 displays and gamers were trying to squeeze high frame rates out of 320x240.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[Rockoon]

Microsoft had bet that high DPI displays (significantly greater than 100) would become common, even going to far as to upscale/resample program windows that dont declare themselves as "DPI aware" within their manifest.

The reality is that the only place you see 200DPI or better is in cell phones and MP3 players.

As many programmers will tell you, the DPI setting in Windows is a problematic farce.

The most important thing to understand is that it lies. It has absolutely nothing to do with the DPI of the display. If the setting happens to match the displays actual DPI then its merely a coincidence. This value is actually used both in practice, and as a matter of policy, as a global scaling factor. So people with bad eyesight are EXPECTED to have this value set to completely lie its ass off.

Instead of blindly betting the farm on higher DPI displays becoming common, they should have solidified what this value means, to an actual DPI setting (with prominent warning that if its set incorrectly that some programs may not render themselves in a satisfactory manner.)

If I am expected to make "DPI aware" programs (and I am, thanks Microsoft), then at least give me access to an actual god damn DPI. If you want a global scaling factor, you can have one of them in addition to the DPI setting.

WARNING: *** Text in this post may appear larger, or smaller, than it is.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[TheRaven64]

IBM was selling 225dpi TFTs about a decade ago. I played with one for a bit. It predated dual-link DVI, so you needed two separate DVI connectors to drive the 28" screen. They don't make them anymore - not enough people bought them for the line to be profitable.

The only other company I've seen ship screens that high DPI is Nokia. The 770 and its successors all use 800x480 screens at 225dpi.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[TheKidWho]

From 6088x2276 to 6000x4000 you would only need 2x the performance. And like I said, 3x GTX480s offer well over 3x the performance of a single 5870 used in that review.

And you may be surprised, the latest GTX480s push nearly 90% SLI Scaling.

And then consider the price of the gamers' setup you suggested, and what percent of users could afford it.

I never said it was cheap.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[jdgeorge]

Besides when his eyes go in a few years he won't care about the high resolutions anymore.

Because he is staring at low resolution screens! For the sake of your eyes, get a high resolution display!

This is incorrect. His eyes will go in a few years because once you hit the age of about 40 years, the lens in your eyes become less flexible, making it harder to focus on objects that are relatively close. See presbyopia.

96dpi is crap, we need better.

[nobodyman]

Did he seriously just say he wanted a 6000x4000 24" LCD with a 0.08mm dot pitch (compared to average CRTs with 0.22-0.28mm) so he could look at smooth text?

Yes he did, and he's absolutely right. In print media (color or black&white) 300dpi is considered a bare minimum, yet on computer displays we get a measly 96dpi? Yuck! We have to employ all sorts of anti-aliasing tricks to mask the problem but if we had 300dpi we wouldn't need anti-aliasing at all. And text would be much easier on the eyes.

Also, does he realize this is all his employers' (Microsoft) fault? XP was set by default to 96 DPI. Sure you could set it to "large size" 120 DPI when running high, but that usually ended up distorting everything.

In my experience this simply isn't true --whenever I specify a custom dpi for windows it handles it pretty well (I have noticed that you some apps look janky until you reboot, but fine afterwards).

Ironically, this is one UI issue that XP/Vista handles way better than OSX, I just got the 15" macbook pro with the optional 1680x1050 display, and the only way to change the dpi is with the developer tools (and when you do the UI is a total mess).

Websites didn't look right, text would be all over the pages, some text would be larger but other things wouldn't be, like text in Flash or on images.

This *is* annoying but hopefully will be getting better. Shitty web developers are finding out that if they specify "pt" instead of "px" their content is still readable on high-dpi devices like iPhone/Droid.

So why would manufactures offer 300dpi when customers would just set them back to the 96 DPI they're use to?

Sadly, you've got a point. I would love a 300dpi display, and I think people would come around if they saw the potential, but until the OS and content can maximize that potential the manufacturers won't be motivated.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[rubycodez]

you think 300dpi is "high resolution?" that's a crappy laser printer's resolution. I want Linotype quality, 2400+ dpi, then we can call that high resolution. Until screens reach that point, we're all working in low res.

Re:30 inch HP LP3605 here @ 2560x1600

[Arterion]

Totally agree! I think pixel pitch ought to be a function of DDC (or it's modern equivalent), and when you set a DPI, you're actually dealing with DPI.

So a 3" x 2" dialog box on my screen is the exact same size as one on your screen.

THEN, and ONLY THEN do we apply a second "scaling factor" which can resize the entirety of the visual interface, or maybe even apply it to individual elements.

Given LCD's are the norm now, and they have a native resolution, this kind of technology would only make sense. Even for games: you render the frames at whatever resolution you can handle, then have the video card do a computationally cheap scale up (or, gasp, down!) to fit the resolution of the screen.

I really hate when people in my old office would change their LCD to a non-native resolution and have it look all, ahm, "janky", just so they everything was big enough for them to read. I would try the ole' DPI setting, but it really just did more harm than good. Some video cards had a workaround that sent the signal to the monitor at native resolution, and scaled the image, but for the most part, we had to rely on the monitor's scaler, which usually totally sucked.