Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The World's Smallest Full HD Display

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the i-can-see-clearly-now dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ever heard of Ortustech? Probably not. But you have heard of Casio, right? Ortustech is a joint venture between Casio Computer and Toppan Printing to develop small and medium sized displays. Today, the company is announcing a doozy with its 4.8-inch 1920 x 1080 pixel HAST (Hyper Amorphous Silicon TFT) LCD with 160-degree viewing angle, 16.8 million colors, and a pixel density of 458ppi. Amazing when you compare that to the lauded 326ppi of iPhone 4's Retina display."

8 of 243 comments (clear)

  1. Usable by humans by tomalpha · · Score: 4, Interesting

    New tech is all good, but if this is now (supposedly) even more higher res than the human eye compared to Retina, is there any point?

    Can you tell the difference?

    1. Re:Usable by humans by bemymonkey · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I could definitely go for a display like this, whether or not I can see the single pixels. Devices with displays this size usually run OS's that are relatively good at scaling - Android or iOS for instance.

      Current screens, especially the huge 4"+ monsters on Android devices lately, are just too pixely at a measly WVGA, and I'd welcome higher resolutions such as 720p at 3.7" or so. Viewing web pages and large amounts of text is just more fun when you have enough pixels to play with - especially with web sites being designed for 1024x768 and higher these days.

      The iPhone4 is close to perfect. Definitely the best display on the market, IMO, and mainly because of the nice pixel density.

      No, I don't mind holding the phone 10" from my face in order to read text, as long as that text is nice and sharp, and I still have the option of zooming in with fantastic scaling. :)

    2. Re:Usable by humans by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      -1, does not understand Nyquist.

      Rather than try to explain Nyquist, I will show why your "tell a square wave from a sine wave" example is irrelevant:

      A square wave of frequency N is the sum of a sine wave of frequency N and its odd harmonics (sine wave of frequence 3*N, 5*N, 7*N, etc). While you can easily tell the difference between a 500 Hz sine wave and a 500 Hz square wave, that is because you can hear the 1500 Hz, 2500 Hz, 3500 Hz, etc. harmonics.

      If you have a sine wave of frequency 22 KHz and a square wave of frequency 22 KHz, unless you can hear the 66 KHz harmonic, they will be indistinguishable. You might annoy some dogs with the square wave, but it is beyond the ability of the human ear to tell the difference.

      Nyquist only deals in sine waves, and all more complex waves can be built by combining sine waves.

  2. Re:Small screens are great but... by multipartmixed · · Score: 2, Interesting

    > When will the pixel density of my desktop monitor go up?

    Not for a while if you own a mac.

    For some strange reason, no matter the size and resolution of my monitor, Leopard insists that it's 96 dpi.

    Ridiculous!

    --

    Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
  3. Re:From the TFA by captainpanic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "the iPhone 4s infamous Retina display packs in 326 pixels"

    Why INfamous ? Can we mod the TFA as Troll or Flamebait ? :)

    Assuming you're not joking, I will reply and request a -1 Offtopic for myself rather than for you.

    The use of a single subjective word is not trolling or flaming. It's just a poor choice of words and can happen to anyone.
    If however the whole purpose of the sentence is to misinform, to be off-topic (like me in this post!) or to insult, then it can be called trolling or flaming.
    Now, TFA has a lot of very objective information, and its goal seems to inform us.

    On topic again: when would a display be "good enough"? When do we reach a point that we cannot possibly see the difference between a resolution, and an even higher pixel density?

  4. 10 mA per hour? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    What the fuck is

    10 mA per hour

    anyway?

    I know, I know. Units nazi here.

  5. Re:Too small.... by clone53421 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    At some point, wouldn’t it make sense to use a vector-based format to define the contents of rectangular “pixels”? For images that were already pixel-based you could just send a simple rectangle or maybe use a gradient to smooth out the corners, but for vector-based shapes (e.g. fonts) you could get an ultra-smooth laser-print-quality rendering by sending the mathematical curve to display.

    In other words, just like pixels are currently made up of red/green/blue sub-pixels, these pixels would be made up of red/green/blue sub-pixels, but more than one of each colour sub-pixel per pixel and with smarter sub-pixel rendering built into the display so that you could send it vector-based data to control the sub-pixel rendering.

    The data transfer rate would be manageable for the entire display, and the individual “pixel” sub-units could manage their own block of physical pixels.

    --
    Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
  6. Re:Small screens are great but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Quartz Debug is supposed to do what you're asking for. But as previously mentioned, I don't think it works perfectly.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolution_independence

    Meanwhile:
    This'll go great in a DIY projector.