Are We At the Limit of Screen Resolution Improvements?

itwbennett writes "A pair of decisions by Motorola and Ubuntu to settle for 'good enough' when it comes to screen resolution for the Ubuntu Edge and the Moto X raises the question: Have we reached the limit of resolution improvements that people with average vision can actually notice?" Phone vs. laptop vs. big wall-mounted monitor seems an important distinction; the 10-foot view really is different.

Comments

I have a hard time

[vikingpower]

reading TFA...

Re:I have a hard time

[AndyAndyAndyAndy]

You probably just need more pixel density.

Re:I have a hard time

[MouseTheLuckyDog]

Is it in cursive?

Re:I have a hard time

[Kryptonian Jor-El]

Woooooosh

Re:I have a hard time

[davester666]

Maybe he's too dense?

Re:I have a hard time

[icebike]

Whooosh Woooosh.

Re:I have a hard time

[tehlinux]

He probably just needs a retina display. It's got what retinas crave.

Re:I have a hard time

[Austerity Empowers]

bzzzzt....BOOM!...."Oh, the humanity!"

Re:I have a hard time

[dantotheman]

Electrolytes?

Re:I have a hard time

[wonkey_monkey]

Be fair. If it was a joke, it was pretty lame.

Re:I have a hard time

[sensationull]

Oh, if only I had mod points :)

already passing it

[tverbeek]

We're already past the level where I can benefit from higher resolution on phones. I'm over 40 and already have reading glasses, but I'd need to get special phone-only glasses to see any more detail or smaller type.

Re:already passing it

[Anonymous Coward]

I feel your pain. I can no longer do any glasses-free browsing on my smartphone without a lot of squinting and resulting headache. I fear that increasing resolution will just tempt younger developers (who have yet to encounter the joys of presbyopia) to design things in even smaller fonts.

Re:already passing it

[Nadaka]

you can use a 2 finger "stretch" gesture to zoom in.

Re:already passing it

[Anonymous Coward]

We aren't past the limit of screen resolution improvements, but we definitely are seeing diminished returns.

Computer monitors, and TVs have not caught up to phones in terms of pixel density, and antialiasing is still needed even on the highest density screens.

However for most applications the limitation now is less screen resolution and more content size (streaming 1080p video is impractical in large portion of the US so even a 1080p monitor is waisted for applications like watching netflix streaming), and as the parent pointed out, many people can't even perceive the different between current high density and slightly lower density screens due to imperfect eyesight.

The value of screen densities higher than 300ppi is debatable, as is the value of going even that high for large format multi-viewer displays (like TVs).

Re:already passing it

[Anonymous Coward]

you can use a 2 finger "stretch" gesture to zoom in.

On websites, sure. But rarely in native applications.

Re:already passing it

[graphius]

you can use a 2 finger "stretch" gesture to zoom in.

Only works for some things and some sites...

Re:already passing it

[malignant_minded]

You shouldn't have to. What we should be/are concentrating on is better reflow and text to speech. Higher resolution should be a benefit as text becomes less blocky making shape recognition easier. Just because resolutions are higher doesn't mean you should have smaller text if you don't want it. With so many different size devices you should be able to load and manipulate content on demand. So if you don't want images because of connection or space constraints, your choice. Images should also be vectored whenever possible. Currently I have 20/10 in one eye and 20/15 in the other at 33, I am hoping to hold onto this as long as possible but it will eventually decrease, that is life. Content should be able to handle all cases as the person desires. If I can only see 1 inch icons that should be my choice and my phone should have desktops with 4 icons.

Re:already passing it

[The Grim Reefer]

you can use a 2 finger "stretch" gesture to zoom in.

Only works for some things and some sites...

Serious question(s): What sites have you been to that don't allow you to zoom and what phone are you using? I've never had this issue on the last two phones I've had that have this type of zoom (Galaxy S3 and HD2).

Re:already passing it

[Anonymous Coward]

Resolution. Is. Not. Font. Size.

Re:already passing it

[djbckr]

We're already past the level where I can benefit from higher resolution on phones. I'm over 40 and already have reading glasses, but I'd need to get special phone-only glasses to see any more detail or smaller type.

Indeed, I use 1.5 glasses for reading, and 2.0 glasses for my phone.

Re:already passing it

[Migraineman]

Doesn't seem to work with my Motorola V750. How about a 1-finger gesture?

Re:already passing it

[Dins]

Of course it isn't. But if a web site is designed for a 1080p monitor and the font size is not adjusted upwards when someone's viewing it on a 1080p smart phone, the type is damned small...

Re:already passing it

[Githaron]

I can't specifically name any off the top of my head because I will never frequent such sites but they exist. It has nothing to do with the phone. It has to do with the way they code the site.

Re:already passing it

[The Grim Reefer]

Interesting. I never ran into this.

Re:already passing it

[operagost]

Horse wangs look really terrible when they're pixellated.

Re:already passing it

[noh8rz10]

what difference does a higher resolution truly make? more time with your family? less eye strain? solution to world hunger..? or just marketing gimmicks to push upgrades and stock prices?

yes, less eye strain. for many of us this is a big blessing.

Re:already passing it

[icebike]

Serious question(s): What sites have you been to that don't allow you to zoom and what phone are you using? I've never had this issue on the last two phones I've had that have this type of zoom (Galaxy S3 and HD2).

There are some problems with this zooming in. But it depends on the capabilities of the browser.

The Android Stock Browser works well to reflow text when you zoom into a page (assuming you haven't turned that off). So when you zoom into a page, you will zoom up the text and reflow the text so that it fits on the screen.

But Google's newer Chrome browser for Android, (with which they would like to replace the stock Android browser) does not reflow, so in order to read wide pages, you end up scrolling left and right to read full lines.

Both of my phones and my Tablet work this way. Obviously its less of a problem on my tablet, but there are certain sites that use overly small text. (Like almost anything you will find on www.gpo.gov ).

Stock Android browser also has "Read Mode" (box icon at left edge of the URL bar) which rips the text out of any page and renders it in easy to read size. A godsend for aging eyes.

Unless or until reflow gets added to Chrome, these two features I can't see it surviving as the new Stock browser. Supposedly Firefox for Android does reflow.

Re:already passing it

[pipatron]

Not having to zoom the view in and out when doing CAD work and being able to read text fluently without bad kerning/font hinting getting in the way.

Re:already passing it

[UnknownSoldier]

I agree 100%

A friend of mine has designed the world smallest font: 3x3 for upper case which includes 2x2 for lowercase.

On the iPhone 5 with ~326 ppi I can't read it so it looks like 300 dpi is "good enough" for screen. (Between 600 and 1200 dpi for print.)

The problem is the cost of getting a proper 300 dpi monitor that is 24" diagonal = ~19" wide by ~15" tall makes for an effective resolution of 5700 x 4500 well over 4K resolution.

It is going to be quite a while before the economies of scale deliver cheap 300 dpi monitors. There just isn't enough demand. :-(

And don't get me started on that shitty 8-bits-per-channel, aka 24-bit color ...

Re:already passing it

[Chris Mattern]

Indeed, I use 1.5 glasses for reading, and 2.0 glasses for my phone.

I use 6.0 glasses for my iPhone. Don't want to be downlevel, you know.

Re:already passing it

[graphius]

Yes I am using a small underpowered smartphone (I got it because I don't want to carry around a huge slab of a phone). As mentioned below, there are a number of sites that don't allow zooming (and I tend to avoid those sites when I find them), also things like images do not gain clarity when zoomed in. I used to have VERY good eyes, but some sites use very small thin fonts, and even on my desktop screen, they are a bit difficult to read. Sometimes designers thing form trounces function...

Re:already passing it

[cayenne8]

Serious question(s): What sites have you been to that don't allow you to zoom and what phone are you using? I've never had this issue on the last two phones I've had that have this type of zoom (Galaxy S3 and HD2).

For those of us complaining about waining eyesight and phones...it isn't the websites that much that are the problem, but the apps and icons themselves native to the phone.

You can't usually zoom the display of icons and normal apps on the phone.

And hell, I don't websurf that much on the phone anyway, too hard to see much on that even with zooming...and then having to move all around the screen to see anything. I do web stuff mostly at home or on the tablet, the phone is mostly native apps.

Re:already passing it

[Darinbob]

We were past that limit before "retina" displays. All you have to do if you want smaller pixels is to move the phone further from your eyes. On a monitor you just sit further back. It's more important to have more pixels so you can see more information, not lots of pixels in a ridiculously small space like a phone screen.

Re:already passing it

[Austerity Empowers]

And don't get me started on that shitty 8-bits-per-channel, aka 24-bit color ...

Ok I'll bite, excepting luminosity, what value is there to >24-bit color?

The rest I agree with, I do look forward to high resolution full screen displays, as I have not yet hopped on the wagon that "the desktop is dead". Big monitors are mighty nice for many practical activities.

Re:already passing it

[LocalH]

If text gets smaller when resolution increases, your device is doing it wrong. The goal is to have higher density displays, so that your eye can be closer and closer and still not discern any individual pixels (in theory, anyway).

Re:already passing it

[Rideak]

For phones sure. But for applications in VR Head Mounted Displays like http://www.oculusvr.com/ where the small screen takes up your entire field of view even 2560x1400 isn't going to be good enough.

To meet the resolution of the human eye (a murky subject but around 576 megapixels per eye for a 120 degree field of view) we're going to need screens that are around 24,000x24,000 pixels per eye. Plus these screens would have to be small enough to fit on a head mounted display (think 7" tablet or smaller).

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

Re:already passing it

[Rideak]

There are CSS tricks used to correct for this. For example both my nexus 7" tablet and galaxy nexus phone have a 1280x720 screen. yet both get different versions of web pages based on the physical size of the screen and not just the resolution.

Re:already passing it

[fredgiblet]

The last one usually.

Re:already passing it

[tverbeek]

"so that your eye can be closer and closer "

That's kinda the problem.

Re:already passing it

[Pubstar]

If its being viewed as a regular desktop webpage, you almost never run into this problem. Certain mobile websites have it so that you are unable to zoom... atleast in the native Android browser. I ran into that problem a few times on some tech sites until I switched to Opera. Never had that problem again.

Re:already passing it

[rotaryexpress]

We're already past the level where I can benefit from higher resolution on phones. I'm over 40 and already have reading glasses, but I'd need to get special phone-only glasses to see any more detail or smaller type.

We (as a community) need to develop to fix the problem, not hack around it. Keeping the screen resolution low is a hack. Using the correct DPI for the screen size and resolution is the correct fix. We are not 100% there yet, but it's coming around.

Please don't encourage hardware manufacturers to develop for the lowest common denominator, otherwise you'll end up with the grandpa-phone with 2" square buttons.

Re:already passing it

[Githaron]

I will have to check that out. I am currently using Chrome as my mobile browser.

Re:already passing it

[profplump]

Native apps should follow your system font size settings. Complain to the developer if they do not.

Re:already passing it

[Silvrmane]

Well, ideally, it should depend on how the type size is defined in the CSS. 12pt != 12px. Well, they are equivalent if your screen resolution is 72pixels per inch, but screens have not been that coarse for quite some time. So If you specify a font-size of 12px, then the type should take up 12 pixels on the screen, no matter how large or small those pixels are. It would be better if you specify a font-size of 12pt -- then the type would be the same size across all viewing devices because a point is a finite, defined, literal measurement unit - modern usage pins it at 1/72 of an inch. But I have yet to see browsers actually treat font sizes in this way - they scale points up and down as if they were some variable measurement system.

Re:already passing it

[Derek Pomery]

Well, I'll agree his font isn't probably very useful, I'm sure he's just doing it for the heck of it, or for some ridiculously constrained circumstances, but, apart from making a recognisable B in a 3x3 space, seems distinguishing B and E is pretty easy.

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Re:already passing it

[AK Marc]

Mobile sites are already "optimized" for mobile, and thus don't allow zoom. I find that forcing the desktop site and zooming allows some mobile sites to work better.

Re:already passing it

[MartinSchou]

Not having to zoom the view in and out when doing CAD work

And why would a higher resolution help you with zoom? Unless you're only building really simple items, I have a hard time believing, you won't be zooming in and out while working.

Hell, I remember the Space Shuttle cad files included in AutoCad back in '92, and I don't think things have gotten less complicated in the last 21 years.

Re:already passing it

[UnknownSoldier]

> what value is there to > 24-bit color?

TL:DR; The eye can clearly see more then 256 levels of primary colors.

There are 3 big problems with 24-bpp.

1. Mach Banding (or Gradients)
2. Blending
3. Limited Gamut

10-bit, 12-bit, or even 16-bit per channel provides more headroom for finer gradients.

The problem is exemplified when you do multiple blends. Since most display devices are still only 24-bit the maximum error we want with 8-bit-per-channel is 1/255 = 0.00392156862745. Using 16-bit per channel means we can literally add/blend/multiply 256 images before we would start to see quantization artifacts.

Another way to think about this is that for every image you add ("process) you need 1 more bit of precision. i.e. Assuming we are "processing" 8-bit per channels, you need a total of n-bits:
  9-bit if you add a total of 2 images,
10-bit if you add a total of 4 images,
11-bit if you add a total of 8 images,
12-bit if you add a total of 16 images,
13-bit if you add a total of 32 images,
14-bit if you add a total of 64 images,
15-bit if you add a total of 128 images,
16-bit if you add a total of 256 images,

Keep in mind that part of the problem is _caused_ by the fact that we are stuck with shitty 100 dpi resolution so 24-bit images are fugly. With 333+ dpi images 24-bit is OK. One of my close photography friend argues that with 1200 dpi you could get away with 6 or 7-bit per channel and I almost inclined to believe him.

With crappy 24-bit one is forced to do Tone Mapping (aka HDR) to get around the limitations of 24-bit to better utilize the color gamut. It is a huge "Hack" / "Kludge" which better approximates what the eye can see but it is still a hack.

There are 10-bit-per-channel monitors but at $1,000 the demand just isn't there. :-( http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/accessories/10bit.shtml

Now with all that said and done the BIGGER problem is "True Blacks" - the state of the industry is even more pathetic compared to 10-bit displays. ;-(( If you google "Pioneer Kuro Black" you'll see that Kuro set the "gold" standard for blacks back in 2007 and it has largely been ignored. :-( https://www.google.com/search?q=pioneer+black

In the audio word we use 24-bit DACS to provide headroom when we add 16-bit audio signals because if you only used 16-bits for A + B you could potentially get clipping. With 24-bits you have more than enough head room to minimize overflow and underflow.

Does this help?

Re:already passing it

[JanneM]

Firefox for Android does reflow. Usually works well, but a few js-heavy sites can fail, and you end up with sidescrolling anyway. I just never visit such sites again; the internet is too big and life too short to put up with the annoyance.

Re:already passing it

[InvalidError]

You do not need 300dpi on a 24" monitor since you will usually be using a desktop at over twice the distance you would likely use a phone or tablet at. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 150dpi would be fine on the desktop - around twice what most desktop LCDs have today.

What is important is the angular resolution across the field of view; not the screen resolution alone and a 150dpi desktop display at 3' from the observer would have the same angular resolution as a 300dpi screen at 1.5'.

I went to check out the new N7 (again) (hard-locked on me within minutes the first time around) at a local store. While text and graphics look slightly sharper compared to my original N7, the improvement was largely unimpressive: details that remain visible on the v2's 1200p screen are too small for me to really notice or bother with at my typical use distance anyhow so I'm not really losing any details that matter compared to my original N7's screen.

I have a friend who keeps harping about how much sharper things are on his 1080p phone but when I ask him to actually read that "so much sharper" text, he can't because it is much too small for him to actually read comfortably so he has to scale it up to a size that would be perfectly readable on my N7v1's 800p screen before he can easily read it anyway. Not much point in obsessing over extremely high resolutions when you can barely use or appreciate the extra detail under normal use conditions.

Re:already passing it

[voidphoenix]

2x2 for lowercase. Right. That's 16 possible "characters", with one of those being empty space and 4 of them being single pixels. I call BS.

Re:already passing it

[InvalidError]

The only part of human vision that is capable of relatively high resolution is the "sweet spot" that makes up the middlemost +/- 8 degrees of your field of view. The eye's resolution drops off sharply once you get out of that zone which is part of the reason why if you fixate any word on this page, you likely cannot clearly distinguish words that are more than a few words or lines away in any direction from whichever point you fixated.

There is no need to have retina resolution across the whole field of view when only ~5% of our field of view can make any use of such a high a resolution. They could just as easily have peripheral vision rendered at a much lower resolution as a backdrop to the "sweet spot" and use head-tracking to pick which part of the overall canvas goes in the middle where your eyes will usually rest. Keeping eyes locked way off-center for more than a second or two usually causes people discomfort so most people end up subconsciously using eye movement mainly to keep up with whatever they are tracking during head movements so looking at "off-sweetspot" space should usually be a very short-lived transient condition.

Something like Oculus would not need to go much beyond 20MP total. All they need is a progressive resolution display to match the retina's non-uniform resolution.

Re:already passing it

[UnknownSoldier]

> Somewhere in the neighborhood of 150dpi would be fine on the desktop - around twice what most desktop LCDs have today.

I disagree. Windows originally was hard-coded ~ 96 dpi which is WAY too low. 150 dpi is still too low.

Around 330 dpi is more than enough. The question is "how high is good enough?" 220? 280? 300? 330? I don't know (yet).

> as a 300 dpi screen at 1.5'.

I actually _do_ sit 1.5' away from my 27" so 300 dpi IS around the target.

> I have a friend who keeps harping about how much sharper things are on his 1080p phone but when I ask him to actually read that "so much sharper" text, he can't because it is much too small for him to actually read comfortably so he has to scale it up to a size

Ha, yup I'm familiar with that problem too. The problem is shitty web browsers and web sites that don't properly re-scale the page for larger font sizes and/or assume a fixed low-density dpi. :-(

Unfortunately the problem is going to get worse before people start paying attention to the problem and start working on the solution.

Re: already passing it

[ceoyoyo]

Yes. Web designers have all decided they're laying out magazines. It's dumb, and that capability should never have been added to HTML.

Re:already passing it

[InvalidError]

> as a 300 dpi screen at 1.5'.

I actually _do_ sit 1.5' away from my 27" so 300 dpi IS around the target.

Is your eyesight alright? I would feel like the screen is ripping my eyes out at that distance unless I removed my glasses. I can't imagine focusing that close for extended amounts of time being healthy.

Re:already passing it

[XanC]

> > 2x2 for lowercase. Right. That's 16 possible "characters"
> Correct.

> > with one of those being empty space and 4 of them being single pixels.
> Wow you figured out not every possible combination is -> useful - all on your own? Here is your sticker.

So how does one display 26 letters of the alphabet with only 16 different combinations even possible, many of those being useless?

Ah. It looks like those lower case letters are 3x3, not 2x2.

Re:already passing it

[flargleblarg]

you can use a 2 finger "stretch" gesture to zoom in.

That's what she said.

Re:already passing it

[kermidge]

After 6.0 glasses I'm not doing much reading.

Re:already passing it

[kermidge]

"excepting luminosity, what value is there to >24-bit color?"

Fidelity: see True Color, Deep Color
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_depth#True_color_.2824-bit.29
from what I gather it's more than simply luminosity, although it may be down to language. As I understand it, having more bits per pixel/channel allows greater depth of rendering - larger gamut, greater range of lighting - basically, more true to what one's eyes might see, after allowing for metamerics.*

*"Absolute true-color rendering is impossible.[3] There are three major sources of color error ("metameric failure"):
Different spectral sensitivities of the human eye and of an image capture device (e.g. a "camera")
Different spectral emissions/reflections of the object and of the image render process (e.g. a "printer" or "monitor")
Differences in spectral irradiance in the case of reflective images (e.g. photo prints) or reflective objects – see color rendering index (CRI) for details"

I'm with you and the others, I want high pixels per inch. For me this means that if I view what's on my monitor (currently a 20.5" 1920x1080 @ 101ppi) from 16-24 inches when reading or watching something or stick my nose six inches from the screen it's gonna look good and I won't see any damn grid or dots. My being able to afford a larger monitor at 300dpi is another matter, but I still want one.

For the wag who said to increase font size - sure, got that. Whatever the mix of hardware, software, and font design, so long as I can set it to a comfortable size and it is smooth and easy to read, yeah.

Re:already passing it

[SuperDre]

If only it were that simple.. You clearly have no grasp on native application development, and the problems with changes in font DPI..
Also what's the use of bigger resolution if you are going to increase the fontsize..

Re:already passing it

[AmiMoJo]

It's not as simple as just resolution though. Fonts get anti-aliased and the way you do it makes a big difference. Even on "retina" displays you can see the anti-aliasing on a Mac and the letters don't look quite as sharp as print. Close, but not quite.

Windows tends to look sharp because it tries to force fonts to the pixel grid, at the expense of accurate shapes. Most standard Windows fonts are designed with this in mind though so their shapes look okay anyway. Android and Linux are somewhere in the middle. Adobe's rendering is in the middle too, but somewhat closer to the Mac style.

Anyway, depending on the font rendering used 300 dpi isn't enough, at least if you want really accurate letter shapes with no compromise.

Re: already passing it

[steveg]

I wish I had mod points. This is exactly right.

Re:already passing it

[voidphoenix]

> 2x2 for lowercase. Right. That's 16 possible "characters" Correct. > with one of those being empty space and 4 of them being single pixels. Wow you figured out not every possible combination is -> useful <- all on your own? Here is your sticker.

Condescending sarcasm only works if you're actually making an intelligent point, otherwise you just end up sounding like a jackass. The point of my statement, in case it went over your head, was that there are 26 characters in the English alphabet, and 9 pixel patterns are insufficient to portray them all. Nice try anyway.

It should also be pointed out that the 2x2 lowercase font you're bragging about isn't 2x2. The h is 2x3; n, m, u and v are 3x2, s, t and y are 3x3... and those are just the ones I spotted in the first line. So yes, BS for a 2x2 font was correct.

As you can see the uppercase is perfectly readable ...
* http://peopleofhonoronly.com/michael/dev/fonts/font_uppercase.bmp

The lowercase is "mostly" readable ... it is a great test to see what DPI is good, poor, and fail. (The lower the better for readability, but poorer for sharpness.)
* http://peopleofhonoronly.com/michael/dev/fonts/font_lowercase.bmp

Those fonts are readable in the same way grass is edible. Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's useful as a reading font. It can be used to convey information and the reader can with some adjustment get used to it. That is far from "perfectly readable." Reading anything longer than a paragraph becomes an exercise in masochism. They might be useful as a small machine readable font that needs to remain decipherable by humans, similar to OCR-A.

And just to demonstrate one can bold any font ...

Simply changing the color of text from grey to white doesn't make it boldface. What if the text is white to begin with? Boldface refers to using heavier weight strokes, which you can't do with your 3x3 font without making it unreadable.

people like you who know absolutely nothing about fonts.

So now you're passing judgement on the knowledge or lack thereof of complete strangers on the Internet, when your own demonstrated credentials are the presentation of the work of another person?

I'd normally refrain from this, but you did bring it up. I worked with 8-bit machines running CRT displays in the early 80s. Those displays are pretty low res and the built-in text patterns tended to use an 8x8 grid. To fit more information on the screen, I designed 7x5 and 5x5 pixel character sets. I also made one for 3x5 but I thought it was terribly ugly. I was 12 at the time. In high school, I was a writer and later editor of my schools' papers. In later years, I did a lot of desktop publishing work -- editing, layout and graphic design. I've also run an in-house press for one company.

None of that really matters, because the original point, which others have also raised, is that your friend's 3x3 font isn't very readable. Not unreadable, but definitely far from anything any reasonable person would describe as readable. Anyway, you have a nice day, Mr. Has-a-friend-who's-an-expert-on-fonts.

Re:already passing it

[RockDoctor]

I'm over 40 and already have reading glasses,

Similar for me, but I am finding my first pair of bi-focals to be a bit of a WOMBAT, and will probably revert to separate distance and reading glasses on the next iteration.

but I'd need to get special phone-only glasses to see any more detail or smaller type.

I got a 7in tablet instead. Surfing on a phone needs both magnifying glasses (a binocular microscope, or jeweller's hands-free binocular loupe ; I use both routinely) and probes to activate the touch screen.

It must be almost heretical to some of the younger developers to hear mantras such as "smaller is better" shrugged off as self evidently stupid. Oh dear. What a pity. Never mind.

Re:already passing it

[alexandre_ganso]

I don't know your phone, but the iphone does zoom any app with three finger scroll. Check on accessibility.

Re:already passing it

[smash]

font size != screen resolution. muppet developers will be muppets no matter what technology does.

Re:already passing it

[smash]

That's a developer problem, not a screen resolution problem.

Re:already passing it

[LocalH]

I wasn't saying that you should hold devices closer to your eyes as resolution increases. I'm just saying that the closer you have to get to discern individual pixels, the better.

Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[earlzdotnet]

We've reached this point with some devices, but a screen isn't a high enough resolution until Anti-Aliasing isn't needed in any form.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Tynin]

We've reached this point with some devices, but a screen isn't a high enough resolution until Anti-Aliasing isn't needed in any form.

Came here to say the same thing. I'm looking forward to the new 4K monitors finally starting to come out, which may spell the end for AA.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[gl4ss]

yeah.

the mentioned devices do it for parts sourcing and money reasons - and not wanting to go higher density than what's available on default configs shipped with os on the os they're shipping with.. (android, yes edge ships with android... or might ship. but they do state that it will ship with android and then later with the ubububutouch).

that's the usual line anyways, what's cheap enough is good enough - for now. and that for now part is what companies like to skip in their shitty materials.

and it's really not just anti aliasing, but getting it high enough to fool the eyes that it's not a screen at all but a window through.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[malzfreund]

You'll always need anti-aliasing. Even if we had 1000 dpi monitors.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[malzfreund]

can't seem to edit my previous post. antialiasing has nothing to do with resolution.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Seumas]

I'm really excited for 4k monitors, but it's going to be awhile before really high quality ones that are great for work (color accuracy and reproduction, no weird problems exhausting your eyes like a lot of gaming-specific monitors) as well as great for gaming (responsive, negligible lag/input-delay/ghosting) are available. Even longer before they are around $3,0000 (which is about the price at which I'd pull the trigger on at least one of them).

Hopefully, by the time those exist, GPUs will exist that can fully utilize a 4k display on a single GPU.

As for home theaters? I don't think we'll see much 4k content in a very long time. I bought my first 50" 1080p HDTV in 2001 but it seems like most of the population is only now finally moving to HDTV in 2013 (and most of those are still the people who say things like "I don't know why we need HDTV -- standard television is as good as it needs to get and I can't tell any different!". There will be a huge chicken and egg problem for the next decade. Plus, since most of the content will start to be delivered over the network, there will have to be significant improvements in speeds and data caps in this country. We can't even count on true 1080p digital distribution, yet.

Consoles will not make use of 4k this generation, so that is out of the question for the next decade, too. Yeah, the PS4 and XBOX ONE both support 4k, but I doubt that's going to be true 4k. It'll be upscaled. I just don't see how these dinky little consoles with only a few gigs of memory available will be able to push enough bits around for native 4k.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Antialiasing is faster, uses less memory and yields better results than realistic increases in screen resolution. On a screen with pixels too small to see individually, antialiasing isn't needed to remove jagged edges (because they're already too smooth to see), but it ensures correct tone / density. To create the same visual quality as antialiasing with 8 bit depth, you would need 256 times more pixels, at a prohibitive memory and CPU cost. There is absolutely no point in making displays with a resolution much higher than the human eye can resolve from the smallest distance that the display is going to be regularly viewed from.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[gl4ss]

can't seem to edit my previous post. antialiasing has nothing to do with resolution.

antialiasing and font edge smoothing as it is understood when people speak of antialiasing has pretty much everything to do with resolution.

if you can't see the individual pixels, and need say a group of 10x10 pixels to see a point on the screen, it becomes meaningless to do any subpixel effects of any kind on those 100 pixels that make up the smallest unit you can actually see.

and slashdot doesn't have an edit functionality btw.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Shadow of Eternity]

You're not going to get the response times you want until we go back to electron/phosphor tech instead of physically moving pixels. I get a new trinitron off ebay periodically because even the fastest "gaming" screens these days are still so slow compared to a CRT that I can see the blur just from moving around ingame like a smeared oilpainting.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[fyrewulff]

I can't wait for that day.

But knowing gamers, we could have a 1,920,000 x 1,080,000 pixel 15 inch screen and they'd STILL turn on 16xAA.

I actually thought this was the whole reason why Apple is pushing their Retina display - they can get more performance out of their portable GPUs if they can stay away from wasting power on an AA pass.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[fyrewulff]

AA was a solution to get around lower res screens jagging everything up. It was not designed with higher screens in mind. People were running 800x600 displays when hardware acceleration became a thing at the consumer level.

The N64, notorious for it's aggressive AA, regularly had games running in 320x240..

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Trinitron? Blah. Give me a real shadow mask any day.
I think that a lot of the issues with people not being able to really see the difference between HDTV and SDTV is the shitty way TVs come set up from the factory, Way too much brightness, contrast and color saturation all conspire to make the picture look like crap. How many TVs today come with the color temperature for white set anywhere near D6500? Most are over 10K now and the resulting color skew for skin tones makes it look like everyone is made of plastic. It's just like the loudness wars on CDs.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Go home Superman, You're drunk.

The rest of us can't make out 2ms refresh times.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[bidule]

You'll always need anti-aliasing. Even if we had 1000 dpi monitors.

That's why printed books use anti-aliased fonts.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Score Whore]

What people are talking about is pixel density. When pixels are so small that you can't distinguish from one to the next then you've reached the limit of benefit from making smaller pixels. You still can have rendering issues but they are not issues with your display technology. For example if you are ray tracing an infinite checker boarded plane you still need to do some kind of anti-aliasing but smaller pixels won't help the problem.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[operagost]

I, for one, am tired of seeing SDTV cable boxes hooked up to HDTVs and having the 4:3 picture stretched out to 16:9.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[noh8rz10]

can't seem to edit my previous post..

you must be new here.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[pla]

You're not going to get the response times you want until we go back to electron/phosphor tech instead of physically moving pixels.

Beautiful, truly beautiful... Though I expect most responses to you to miss the joke.

Heh.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Chris Mattern]

I have trouble reading your writing, but there's no resolution where aliasing isn't an issue.

Then, once again, why aren't printed books anti-aliased?

Higher resolution will eliminate some artifacts which people call aliasing, but not all of them.

Yes, it will. If you've got enough resolution, you can eliminate all aliasing artifacts.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Chris Mattern]

A sharp edge contains infinitely high frequencies, so even a very high resolution display will produce aliasing,

But once it's aliasing invisible to the human eye, anti-aliasing becomes pointless.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[TroubleMagnet]

You might want to check out some of the newer 240Hz LCDs and/or ones with lightboost.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[jon3k]

I'd be willing to bet modern 120hz TN panels are fast enough that you cannot discern a difference.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Nemyst]

Aliasing is an artifact caused by the discretization of a continuous signal, most often an image. If the discrete elements are small enough that they are beyond the typical human's visual acuity, then antialiasing techniques become unnecessary for the vast majority of situations. You can always construct an artificial scenario in which it would be, but that's irrelevant to typical use scenarii, which is all that really matters.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[fredgiblet]

That's one type of AA (Supersampling), and the least common type. The most common type is Multisampling, that does things differently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multisample_anti-aliasing

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[nmr_andrew]

(and most of those are still the people who say things like "I don't know why we need HDTV -- standard television is as good as it needs to get and I can't tell any different!".

I see you happen to know my father!

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Meneth]

I didn't need anti-aliasing on 320x240 VGA screens, and I don't need it now.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Pubstar]

My BenQ XL2420TX says you have no idea what you're talking about. 144hz refresh rate with a 1ms response time looks crisp no matter how much stuff is moving on the screen. Even my old POS Samsung SyncMaster LCD doesn't have any ghosting or blur that you speak of (60hz, 1ms refresh time). This seems like a problem with you just buying shitty monitors. If this was a few years back, then yes, you would have a point... but even the most fickle of users (CS 1.6 professionals) have recently moved off of CRT monitors to BenQ monitors for tournaments.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[wierd_w]

If they are printed using a laser printer, they *are* antialiased.

The term is "edge enhancement".

See for instance, the useful figures and descriptions of the process seen here

The assertion that laser printers do not perform anti-aliasing is simply untrue. They did it before anyone else did.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[voidphoenix]

scenarios

Sorry, pet peeve: pseudo-latin/greek plurals.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[voidphoenix]

Analog vs digital. And digital print is aliased.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[bidule]

So, a 600 dpi laser printer is analog? Maybe the Raster Image Processor for those big printing presses?

Are you saying that misregistration and ink spread make paper a better medium, or is it only because of the superior resolution of the presses?

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Shadow of Eternity]

You're claiming response times that aren't physically possible. Even the 2ms claimed response times are either flat out lies or achieved through inventing some arbitrary test procedure that gets the number they want.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Shadow of Eternity]

120hz LCD != changing a pixel 120 times a second like a CRT would.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[Shadow of Eternity]

The only joke is how many people have drowned in the "OMG WIDESCREEN FLATPANEL HD" kool-aid that's set us back so far we're only now getting flatpanels with a vertical resolution equal to what a 10+ year old trinitron could do effortlessly. That and ever shorter and wider monitors, I see some modern laptops and it's like reading off a postage envelope.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[tlhIngan]

The only joke is how many people have drowned in the "OMG WIDESCREEN FLATPANEL HD" kool-aid that's set us back so far we're only now getting flatpanels with a vertical resolution equal to what a 10+ year old trinitron could do effortlessly. That and ever shorter and wider monitors, I see some modern laptops and it's like reading off a postage envelope.

No, you can buy huge 1920x1200 screens. Just quit being a cheapskate and looking at sub-$200 monitors. Good high end CRTs that didn't blur out at 1600x1200 cost plenty back in the days as well, and if anything, the sub $200 CRTs were never good at anything more than 1024x768 unless you like seeing blur.

The only reason we have "full HD" monitors for sub $200 is economies of scale - 1080p video processors and scalers are damned cheap because they take in every input imaginable (HDMI, DVI, VGA, component, composite, S-video) and output 1080p, so they're popular for monitors and TVs.

Video processors that can handle other resolutions aren't in such high demand, so they cost more. Likewise, good LCDs to pair them up with are harder to get as well (I expect driving a 1080p display is pretty much standard now, but any other resolution isn't).

Dell sells 1920x1200 monitors that are fairly decent and on sale for under $400. You wouldn't get the size, quality, weight or picture quality for $400 back in the day of CRTs.

My BenQ XL2420TX says you have no idea what you're talking about. 144hz refresh rate with a 1ms response time looks crisp no matter how much stuff is moving on the screen. Even my old POS Samsung SyncMaster LCD doesn't have any ghosting or blur that you speak of (60hz, 1ms refresh time). This seems like a problem with you just buying shitty monitors. If this was a few years back, then yes, you would have a point... but even the most fickle of users (CS 1.6 professionals) have recently moved off of CRT monitors to BenQ monitors for tournaments.

Actually, the problem isn't how fast you update the screen, it's how the motion blurring reduces resolution. There's something called Motion Resolution that details the apparent resolution of a screen when objects are in motion on it. Now, higher rates and shorter refresh times help (though there isn't a standard - some "240" monitors really are just 120hz or even 60hz. And the 1ms is "grey to grey", black to white is often quite a bit longer which his why they never quote it anymore).

Of course, whether or not he can see it or it's psychological, that's a different matter altogether.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[voidphoenix]

Generally, books are printed with a press. Whether it uses movable type or etched plates, the printing technology is analog, even if digital technology is used to lay out the plate or type. That's why I made the distinction between analog vs. digital... analog type don't need to be anti-aliased, since their "pixels" are effectively molecules.

My statement about digital print was a hasty generalization. In retrospect, it's probably only a handful of digital printers that are capable of anti-aliasing, like one with 2-bit grayscale pixels that I read about somewhere.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[bidule]

Generally, books are printed with a press. Whether it uses movable type or etched plates, the printing technology is analog, even if digital technology is used to lay out the plate or type. That's why I made the distinction between analog vs. digital... analog type don't need to be anti-aliased, since their "pixels" are effectively molecules.

Ink spread softens the "pixel" edges, but calling molecules "pixels" might make people believe you have that level of control.

My statement about digital print was a hasty generalization. In retrospect, it's probably only a handful of digital printers that are capable of anti-aliasing, like one with 2-bit grayscale pixels that I read about somewhere.

You mean hexachrome printing, or at least a gray ink in addition to black?

No, the real problem is that ink has one and only one intensity and you cannot thin it out for anti-aliasing. And because of misregistration, using a second color will be counterproductive. Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_(printing) if you don't understand why.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[voidphoenix]

The analog I was referring to are, in this case, letter shapes. They don't need to be approximated with discrete pixels when you're using movable type, for example, or carved woodblocks; and even etched plates can use analog curves if the master image does, hence, no anti-aliasing. As to color mixing, I'm familiar with the dithering and registration required to render them because of the inks. It can be a real pain to get right.

I don't remember the details of the 2-bit grayscale printer, i read about it was some time back. I'm not even sure now if it was an experimental technology or if it was commercially available. It might even have been vaporware... :p

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[bidule]

The analog I was referring to are, in this case, letter shapes. They don't need to be approximated with discrete pixels when you're using movable type, for example, or carved woodblocks; and even etched plates can use analog curves if the master image does, hence, no anti-aliasing.

The topic was anti-aliased font, in printed books. You'll be hard-pressed finding one of those that didn't go through a RIP, hence digital.

The analog workflow (be it manual typesetting or direct carving of master plates) is only used in limited artisitic endeavor. The goalposts have been moved off-topic.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[voidphoenix]

The topic was anti-aliased font, in printed books. You'll be hard-pressed finding one of those that didn't go through a RIP, hence digital.

The analog workflow (be it manual typesetting or direct carving of master plates) is only used in limited artisitic endeavor. The goalposts have been moved off-topic.

I wasn't trying to move the goalposts on you. The last print job (black and white book with some diagrams) I worked on used film-to-plate transfers with manual layouts, but that was well over a decade ago, in a third-world country. Looks like technology has moved forward a lot from that. I'd heard about newer print processes using direct computer-to-plate transfers (which is probably what you're referring to). I didn't know how prevalent that was for predominantly monochrome text printing nowadays until your comments got me reading. I'm happy to be corrected. Thanks :)

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[bidule]

You're welcome. Glad to be of use.

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[jon3k]

Yup, and the point still stands. The vast majority of professional gamers are using LCD panels now. What game do you think you play where it makes a difference? Are you a competitive counterstrike LAN player or something?

Re:Not until Anti-Aliasing isn't a thing

[smash]

If the last decade is anything to go by, the average consumer laptop in 2023 will be 512x384 resolution with a 17" screen.

No

[wangmaster]

Come back and talk to me again when the average laptop and desktop screen hits high density PPI :)

Re:No

[wangmaster]

The average smartphone has a 720p screen with a pixel density well above 200 now. In the context of this discussion, why can't an average panel that is generally within 12-24"s of your face (desktop or laptop) not have the same requirements?

Sure, there exists laptops today that do. But those laptops don't provide you with alot of choice (both are walled gardens, yeah yeah yeah, I know you can install other things on them etc etc etc, but that's not the point here).

That said, I know this is coming. We're seeing more and more high resolution ultrabooks/laptops. So when I say come back and talk to me again, it's very likely by the end of the year :).

Re:No

[NJRoadfan]

What, isn't 1366x768 good enough for everybody? Ugh.

Re:No

[Andrio]

Phones? Yes (There's not much benefit going past 1280 * 800 )

Tablets? Getting there (Nexus 7 at 1080p, Nexus 10 at 2560 * 1600)

Monitors? NO! Let me put it like this. Most monitors sit somewhere between the previously mentioned phone and tablet resolutions, despite being 2-5 times the size.

Re:no

[azav]

1080i?

There are no 1080i monitors. The i stands for interlaced, which means that under high data rate of playing back a video, every other line of the current frame is skipped and filled in in the next frame.

The monitors are p, which stands for progressive and the progressive is progressive scan, as in top to bottom. This, today, is not really relevant on non CRT displays either since the CRTs used scanlines to display the image.

FYI, a 1080p display should be 1920 x 1080 square pixels.

Re:no

[iggymanz]

yes I mistyped

as aside my "p" monitor can go into "i" mode though

Re:no

[sjames]

But many people with less than perfect but better than dismal vision will tend to use their phones with uncorrected vision so they don't have to get out their reading glasses on the move.

Re:no

[iggymanz]

no, it is not. the article only addresses phone and laptop distance and resolutions and discusses the debate there.

maybe you remind us why AC should be under the threshold of normal viewers

Re:no

[wangmaster]

In AC's defense:
Phone vs. laptop vs. big wall-mounted monitor seems an important distinction; the 10-foot view really is different.
That was in the slashdot article itself (not the linked article).

I chose to make my post because I thought it needed to be explicitly answered :)

Re:no

[iggymanz]

well, some of us old farts use the reading portion of our /distance bifocals, which we change to monitor glasses when we get to work. so at work the phone is blurry. soon we'll get to heads up display in light weight glasses that actually zoom and focus, but that don't look like dork-ware (google glass,etc).

Re:No

[Anonymous Coward]

This is entirely the fault of the HDTV industry - they want to mass produce 1080p screens to sell as TVs, which makes them much cheaper to produce for monitors, so nobody wants to make higher resolution screens to sell as computer monitors.

When HDTV came out, computer monitor resolutions actually took a step backwards, since at the time 1920x1200 was the most common "top end" resolution, and then suddenly 1920x1200 became super rare, and it was all 1920x1080, with manufacturers and stores all advertizing it as "awesome high-definition high resolution monitor!" like they hadn't been selling something better only last month/year/... The newer tablets coming out might actually pressure some of the monitor producers into making something better, but I doubt it. Despite HDMI's current spec being able to handle 4096×2160, and DVI-d's almost-equal 3840×2400, you're not likely to see anything in that range for several years, and most of the PCs and laptops on the market are still using 11-year-old HDMI 1.0 jacks that are lucky to manage 1920x1200, attached to video cards that claim to be able to handle higher resolutions, but can't due to mismatched interface hardware. (Not that I'm bitter about the last laptop I bought's crap interface on a video card that falsely claimed to be able to handle high-end monitors or anything.)

Re:no

[phantomfive]

Pretty near everyone would notice a higher color space. Not because we can distinguish between two colors one bit apart, but because there are some colors that just aren't displayable on a current RGB screen. Oranges are a common example.

Re:no

[HappyHead]

I've seen 1080i TVs with computer interfaces - interestingly, the fine print says they run at 720p when using them.

Re:no

[CastrTroy]

I had an old 15" CRT computer monitor that could only do 1024x768 if you put it in interlaced mode, unless you wanted to use 60 Hz, which hurt my eyes. Using a computer with interlacing is quite interesting to say the least. Although it's less painful than using a CRT at 60 Hz. It's not quite 1080i, more like 768i, but I'm pretty sure there probably exists a CRT monitor that can be set to 1080i, or probably something very close, like 1024i.

Re:No

[fredgiblet]

There's no reason why it can't, there's plenty of reasons why it shouldn't. Cost, yield, being largely unimportant for the vast majority of people, etc. The average customer will not benefit significantly from the changes the resolution queens want to bring about.

Re:No

[fredgiblet]

16:10 master race. Unfortunately dying, but still master race.

Re:No

[NJRoadfan]

Typing this response on a 24" 1920x1200 LCD I tend to agree. My nearly 6 year old Dell Inspiron e1405 has a 14" 1440x900 screen that you can't get in the equivalent model today. It also has unmatched expansion capabilities like a built in firewire port, ExpressCard, ethernet, and a 56k modem. Most of today's models don't have much more than a couple of USB ports unless you go high end.

Re:No

[jon3k]

Sure you can. Unless you mean you just can't afford it?

Re:No

[neminem]

Ok, fine, you win, those do appear to be 16:10. Now... find me one that isn't an Apple. (Even if it's expensive.)

Re:No

[thegarbz]

There's no reason why it can't, there's plenty of reasons why it shouldn't. Cost, yield, being largely unimportant for the vast majority of people, etc. The average customer will not benefit significantly from the changes the resolution queens want to bring about.

The average customer? There's a lot of non-average customers out there. The fact that there's whining here is indication that some people would like to see that on the market. As for cost .... the cost can be passed on. Or do you thing Apple has some magical record industry style accounting system that allows them to produce laptops with high resolution screens without ... cost.

I'd happily pay a premium for the device I want. This goes doubly so when I consider my 26" desktop monitor has a lower screen resolution than an iPad.

Re:No

[toddestan]

DVI can drive 2560x1600 just fine. But why do I have to buy a massive 30" screen to get that kind of resolution? It'd much rather have that in a 20" panel that actually fits on my desk. And 1920x1080 would be just fine... in a 13" screen.

Re:No

[fredgiblet]

There's a lot more "average" customers then non-average ones. The vast majority of people use their computers for Facebook and e-mail, they don't need a 4K 19" monitor and there's no benefit to them paying the price for it.

Whenever I see threads about resolution on /. I wonder how many of the people want higher resolution because they are actually going to see a tangible benefit from it, and how many want higher resolutions because it's a number on their computer and thus higher must be better. I suspect that a LOT of people are in the latter camp.

Apple charges a premium for their computers, phones and tablets, part of that premium is the display. It's not coming for free.

Re:no

[bunkymag]

You had me at "testing a significant part of the female population"..

Re:No

[thegarbz]

And they are making a lot of profit. There's a market for it. Just because the average consumer exists doesn't mean products shouldn't be available for the alternative. The average person drives a 4cyl piece of shit, but I do see the occasional 12cyl on the road too. In the computer world there is only 1 manufacturer making 12cyl cars. It's like having a choice of only Ferrari as the top tier sports car.

As for your /. comment, you forget where you are. This is a forum filled with multitaskers, coders, engineers, and plenty of people who run not only dual-monitor, but as per a recent ask-slashdot post, triple monitors to allow them to do what they want. Hell I spend most of my time browsing the web and it would nice if I could run two browser windows side by side on the same screen without truncating the text in one or both windows. With only about ~750pixels available on half the screen once scroll bars and window borders are taken into account I can't even read a slashdot article without horizontal scroll bars showing up. No matter though once the Metro interface has entrenched itself and been forced down our throats we won't be able to multitask anyway.

Re:no

[iggymanz]

look it up, women on average can see more shades of color then men. also, it is believed some are tetrachromatic, that they have cones for four rather than the more usual three colors

Re:No

[MachineShedFred]

Please explain to me how the MacBook Pro is a walled garden.

iOS is a walled garden.

Mac OS X, in no way, is.

Re:No

[david_thornley]

Are you really set against an Apple laptop? It should run the OS of your choice just fine. MacBooks have often been reviewed as superb Windows laptops.

Re:No

[AbsGeekNZ]

1920 * 1080 is wonderful on my 13" Zenbook Prime.

Re:No

[AbsGeekNZ]

Just another thought, the 1920 * 1080 on my alienware M15x is too low. The screen tech is older then the zenbook, so that may be some of it.

Re:No

[fredgiblet]

My understanding is that most of the top sports car manufacturers aren't terribly profitable. I know that Lamborghini has been passed around and around losing money most of it's life. They make lots of revenue, but their costs keep them from making a profit. The risk that monitor manufacturers would have is the same, sure they make a lot of REVENUE, off of making a 300 ppi desktop monitor, but that doesn't mean they'll make much PROFIT. Maybe someone will try it and be a success, maybe not, but it's a big risk in a field without a lot of margin left.

/. is also home to nerds who are very concerned with maximizing their numbers and having a larger e-peen. I have never said (that I remember) and will never say (unless I'm drunk or high) that no one needs super-high resolution monitors, but a lot of the people that want them only want them because the numbers are higher, not because they have a real need. It's the same thing as people complaining that their new phone doesn't have a quad-core, they don't NEED it, they probably won't benefit from it, but their computer has a quad-core so damnit their phone should too!

Re:No

[neminem]

Yes - walking around with an Apple laptop immediately marks you as one of "those people". The sort of person who's willing to blow several hundred extra dollars on a laptop just to be seen as the sort of person who would blow several hundred extra dollars on a laptop to be seen as that sort of person. :p

Granted, if in a couple years when I'm looking for a new laptop again, Apple still makes laptops with 16:10 screens, and nobody else still does, I will certainly keep that in mind. But I do have something against Apple laptops, yes.

Re:No

[jon3k]

Any other arbitrary guidelines you'd like to throw in?

Here's the Chromebook Pixel. It's 3:2 at 2560x1700. I don't know if you want wider or taller since you didn't specify.

Re:No

[jon3k]

Oh you're one of those people who still has some stigma against Apple. Despite the fact that they are unequivocally better than any Windows laptop you can buy and numerous mainstream reviews have said that the Macbook with Windows is the best Windows laptop you can buy.

Re:No

[smash]

If anything, with its lack of secure boot, it's less of a walled garden than a new PC actually.

Re:No

[smash]

Macbook air 13" is 1440x900 16x10. Macbook Pro Hires (non retina) is 1680x1050 16x10. 16x10 laptops are out there, you jut need to pay for them.

no

[iggymanz]

I have rather poor vision, having to use different lens for reading, computer, distance...and I can still see the difference between 1080i and 4K monitors, a person with 20/20 should be able to benefit from even higher resolution (and I suspect even higher contrast ratios).

We know from testing a significant part of the female population would notice higher bit color space too.

Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People"

[jellomizer]

If you build for the average person, you are doomed to fail. Because 1/2 of the population is above average. Also there are the finer details that a person doesn't fully recognize. The average person cannot tell the difference between 720p and 1080p. However if you have them side by side (with colors/contract/brightness matching) They will see the a difference.

900 dpi

[jbolden]

I remember someone did a test of this when Steve Jobs came out with "retina" claim. For a young child holding a phone at arm's distance 900 ppi was really "retina" resolution. I think we are likely one double short of retina resolutions on our higher resolution devices. 20 megapixel for a laptop, 5 megapixel for a phone is probably genuinely the limit.

Right now our hardware isn't fast enough to handle that much resolution so it is still a balancing act.

Re:900 dpi

[Trepidity]

It's a bit complex, because the retina doesn't really have a static resolution: it integrates information from constant movements, responses nonlinearly to different patterns of photon impacts, and has different sensitivies across different parts. You could put a ballpark number on it, but it's difficult to really sort out what the "resolution of the retina" is.

To quote a paper:

Many would say that new display technologies, 9 megapixel panels and projectors for example, are coming ever closer to “matching the resolution of the human eye”, but how does one measure this, and in what areas are current displays and rendering techniques still lacking? [...] The resolution perceived by the eye involves both spatial and temporal derivatives of the scene; even if the image is not moving, the eye is (“drifts”), but previous attempts to characterize the resolution requirements of the human eye generally have not taken this into account. Thus our photon model explicitly simulates the image effects of drifts via motion blur techniques; we believe that this effect when combined with the spatial derivatives of receptive fields is a necessary component of building a deep quantitative model of the eye’s ability to perceive resolution in display devices.

Pretty interesting stuff, from a project that tried to build a photon-accurate model of the human eye.

Re:900 dpi

[mark-t]

I think may be ever-so-slightly shy about your estimate of being one double away from true "retina" level resolutions. The human eye has a resolution of about 1 arc minute, which although that does indeed work out to about 1/300 of an inch at a distance of 12 inches, but the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem would suggest from this that we need at least 600 dpi for that distance. Although that would suggest that doubling alone might be sufficient, not everybody actually holds a device 12 inches away from their face. 8 inches, in particular, is not that uncommon, and at that distance, one arc minute is about 1/430 of an inch, and the corresponding Nyquist limit for this distance would require a pixel spacing of no more than about 1/860th of an inch. Device resolutions need to be roughly triple what they are right now to be truly "retina".

Either way, they are well within an order of magnitude of what is required. I expect we'll see such displays within the next 3 to 4 years.

Re:900 dpi

[jbolden]

1/860 is pretty close the 900 dpi which I heard was the limit for children. I don't agree on 3-4 years the move from 96 dpi to 300 took 2 decades.

Yes.

[Anonymous Coward]

This was studied back in the beginning of the HD era. Most people cannot physically discern the difference between 720p and 1080p resolution on their TVs, viewed at normal distances. At the time I think they used 42" as the average panel size; that has probably increased somewhat, but the point stands.

Now we're putting 2 megapixels inside 5 inches? There was benefit to getting close to 300 ppi (i.e. "retina" resolution); that's basically National Geographic-level print resolution. But new phones that are pushing over 450 are wasting loads of battery life by pushing around way more pixels than are at all necessary.

Roughly 720p on a handheld is all that form factor will ever need, until we start engineering human eyes to work better. Tablets can go a bit higher, but anything more than the Nexus 10's resolution is a waste.

Re:Yes.

[bobbied]

But you always have the "My screen resolution is better than yours" crowd that will fall for the device with the better specs in droves so you can bet device makers will be designing and building resolutions that you and I can't ever hope to see.

But one should be careful to note that the issue is pixels per inch and not overall resolution here. 720P might be overkill on a 2" screen, but it might be way too low for the latest movie theater screen. Even at the best PPI you can see, the next frontier will be refresh rates (Although, going much past 120 FPS is totally overkill.. )

Personally I really *hate* watching blue ray movies in full resolution. Usually the material just looks cheesy to me, where you can see the boundaries of the CGI sequences, makeup smudges on the actors, obvious short cuts on the set construction and all kinds of things that just are not right. It actually makes it more difficult for me to suspend reality long enough to enjoy the movie. Of course, being an old projectionist from years ago makes me sensitive to vestiges of bad editing, splices, reel changes and queue marks which also distract me.

Re:Yes.

[bobbied]

My point being, even if you can see it, having more resolution is not necessarily a good thing.

Re:Yes.

[ThosLives]

Personally I really *hate* watching blue ray movies in full resolution. Usually the material just looks cheesy to me, where you can see the boundaries of the CGI sequences, makeup smudges on the actors, obvious short cuts on the set construction and all kinds of things that just are not right. It actually makes it more difficult for me to suspend reality long enough to enjoy the movie.

Change the settings on your TV and/or BD player. Usually it's some kind of strange over-scan or post-processing mode with a name like "cinema view" or something unequally helpful. But I agree that "feature" makes movies look like they are stage plays - and it is crap, because SFX are made assuming you can't see it in that much clarity.

Re:Yes.

[bobbied]

After thinking about it, you are correct. There will be a minimum detectable angle.

Depends on screen size & typical viewing dista

[AlexOsadzinski]

Many technologies have already caught up with human physiology limits. The best example, I think, is audio: it's relatively trivial, given current mainstream CPU capability, storage size and bandwidth, and network bandwidth, to exceed the aural capabilities of most humans. 192kHz 24-bit audio, or DSD streams, exceed the hearing limits of most people, although there are still intangibles between that and traditional analog sources, that some people can, or think that they can, hear.

Video and stills are the next frontier. Many (MANY) people can't tell the difference between 480i and 1080p video on a typical TV at typical viewing distances. Why? If they have 20/20 vision, it's a brain thing.

1080p on, say, an iPad Mini Retina (not yet announced or shipping, of course) will exceed the resolving power of most people's eyes and brains at normal viewing distances. 1080p on a 10-foot home theater screen shows pixels for some people at normal viewing distances. 4K does not. But, if you've ever seen 8K, "something" makes it pop much more than 4K, and it's very close to looking through a window at something. The illusion is shattered if the POV changes at all, e.g. a camera pan. But, for a static camera, 8K is very convincing. So, while 1080p may be "good enough", 4K is a step function upwards for large-screen TVs and home theater projector applications, and 8K may approach the limits of human vision. We won't know until someone tries 16K and we see if there's an intangible difference.

Printers

[Princeofcups]

Didn't laser printers show us that 300dpi is still a bit jaggy, and 600dpi is perfectly smooth at arm's length? When screen resolution is around 400dpi then we are probably done.

Re:Printers

[Cassini2]

The article quotes researchers delivering numbers between about 240 dpi and 477 dpi. When 300 dpi laser printers were popular, I remember being able to spot the dots. However, I had to try. Since then 600+ dpi laser printers have taken over the market, and I can't easily spot the dots with the newer high-resolution laser printers.

As such, the observations from both the print and the display researchers are consistent. Somewhere between 200 and 400 dpi the technology becomes "good enough" for many people. Somewhere between 400 and 600 dpi, the technology becomes "good enough" for almost everyone.

Re:Printers

[jbolden]

My guess is you can easily see the difference between 600 dpi and 2400 dpi print, especially for a photo. Print something on your 600 dpi printer that came from a fashion magazine. Resolution is worse on screens than on paper but no the cutoff isn't where you think it is.

Re:Printers

[Anonymous Coward]

600dpi is pretty nice, but you can still easily see the difference to 1200dpi when using fonts like Computer Modern that use hairlines tapering into bends.

Re:Printers

[jonbryce]

Printers are 300/600 dpi in 2 bit colour, or 2 bit mono. Displays have at least 6 bit colour, and usualy 8 bit.

Re:Printers

[bobbied]

Yea, but they will just start on refresh rates then.. Followed by 3D?

It is not close to the end.. ;)

Re:Printers

[sribe]

My guess is you can easily see the difference between 600 dpi and 2400 dpi print, especially for a photo. Print something on your 600 dpi printer that came from a fashion magazine. Resolution is worse on screens than on paper but no the cutoff isn't where you think it is.

As long as you're talking about dots that are simply on or off, yes. As soon as you start using dots whose size can be modulated, the comparisons get much fuzzier (haha), and of course fewer dots are needed.

Re:Printers

[gnasher719]

The article quotes researchers delivering numbers between about 240 dpi and 477 dpi. When 300 dpi laser printers were popular, I remember being able to spot the dots. However, I had to try. Since then 600+ dpi laser printers have taken over the market, and I can't easily spot the dots with the newer high-resolution laser printers.

Remember with laser printers the individual dots were either black or white, and nothing else. On a usual screen today, a single dot can be either 256 or 253 shades of grey, depending on the technology (on Pentile displays you need two pixels; on pure six bit displays without temporal dithering you only have 64 shades of grey).

Re:Printers

[wiredlogic]

Laser printers are bitonal devices and need extra resolution for dithering. That's why there is even a detectable, although slight, difference between 600dpi and 1200dpi.

Re:Printers

[matfud]

A laser printers dpi is not directly comparable to a screen dpi. Printers have overlapping "dots" that are not always symmetrical. Even in black & white printers have for a long time been able to modify the size of the "pixels" they produce. This helps massively with handling aliasing artefacts.

Colour laser printers tend also to print colours over earlier pigments to produce the required tone. This is unlike display tech that requires spacial separation for RGB element (possibly RGBY or RGBG) masks.

A kindle can produce very high resolution as regards to seeing letters on a white background but it does not have a very high dpi. Could I tell the difference between one and a paper back? Yes the paperback would have paper bleed. (I still prefer holding a book)

Re:Printers

[matfud]

Oh a feel like a rant now :)

People can easily see the difference between things but that is not any way to measure the quality of what they are seeing. Just as people can tell the difference between a coat hanger and a 99% pure copper audio cable. Yes they may sound minisculy different but neither is better.

sort of how you can measure something on a linear scale or a vernier scale. The instruments are the same but one lets you measure it more accurately by using our ability to notice tiny differences without judging them much. Neither is better or worse unless you can measure it. If you can not measure it it will be judged as a matter of preference.

Fontguy

[Anonymous Coward]

Until print serif fonts can be read without getting headaches: No.

We've fixed resolution...

[maroberts]

how about sorting out readability in bright sunlight and battery life (without losing the gains in the other factors)?

Re:We've fixed resolution...

[smash]

Here here. I pine for the days of reflective monochrome LCD laptop availability. Back when i could use a laptop outside in the field for programming network equipment without getting somebody to stand in front of the sun.

Holograms

[Arthur B.]

If you want to make high resolution true holograms, you'll need to square the pixel density (intuitively, each pixel has to contain an entire high resolution image which would correspond to the hologram as seen though a pinhole placed on this pixel).

Bring on the 1M PPI displays.

Re:Holograms

[iggymanz]

that's overengineering. you only need to provide a a position-dependent view for each eyeball in the room. so number of viewers x 2 x 2D pixel resolution.

Re:Holograms

[Arthur B.]

I agree, it gets you 98% there, but an eyeball isn't a pinhole either.

Re:Holograms

[iggymanz]

the rods and cones of the eye are on a surface, we only need concern ourselves with paths that terminate on that surface, they can originate from a surface

Re:Holograms

[bobbied]

It's pretty darn close. Although, I think your point should be that this only assumes there is ONE observation point and ONE observer. Often this is not true, because there may be multiple people. Also, a standard 3D representation using 2 x 2D images also will assume a fixed distance between the eyes, while actual distance may vary between people and the orientation of their head. Plenty of room for innovation here.

seems like...

[buddyglass]

It's a matter of PPI and typical viewing distance. Phones are often held about a foot from your face. Computer monitors are usually two or three feet away from your face. TVs are significantly further away. Greater distance = eye is more tolerant of lower PPI. That's why the iPhone 5 is ~326 PPI, a Macbook Pro with Retina is ~220 PPI, an Apple 27" Thunderbolt Display is ~110 PPI and a 65" 1080p TV is ~35 PPI.

Re:seems like...

[Anubis IV]

Exactly. The common measurement that's cited is that the 20/20 (or 6/6 for Metric folks) eye can discern an individual object if it's taking up one arcminute or more of their vision. As it turns out, for 1080p TVs, the individual pixels are already smaller than an arcminute when viewed from typical viewing distances. And since recommended viewing distances are based on how much of your vision the display is occupying, the screen should occupy the same amount of your vision whether you're looking at a 40" TV or a 70" TV (i.e. you'll be moving nearer or further, depending on the size), meaning that each of the 1920 pixels across the screen will continue to take up the same amount of your vision.

Getting back to the question at hand regarding screen resolution, the answer is, "Maybe or maybe not." I'd think that there is still room for pixel density improvements with devices that are designed to be viewed from close up (e.g. VR sets, Google Glasses, etc.), as well as for displays that are designed to occupy a greater amount of the field of vision (e.g. IMAX), but for displays that are intended to be used from distances beyond the point where the pixels take up an arcminute or more, 1080p should already be sufficient in most cases.

There is an argument to be made regarding vernier acuity and some other similar factors that might allow perception below the one arcminute threshold, but whether or not they're worthwhile is an open question.

100Hz screens

[Reliable Windmill]

What I'm really waiting for is 100Hz screens without ghosting, and perhaps a yellow pixel element as well for higher color definition. The "60Hz" screens we have today are more like 16Hz screens.

Anyone who has seen 50 or 60Hz progressive TV, often seen in news casts and soap operas for some reason, know just how alive and vivid everything looks compared to the 24-25 or 30 FPS usually seen on TV, Internet and in movies.

Re:100Hz screens

[UnknownSoldier]

> What I'm really waiting for is 100Hz screens without ghosting,

They exist already.

* Asus VG248QE 144Hz http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236313
* Asus VG278HE 144 Hz http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236293

The real breakthrough is nVidia's LightBoost mode which forces a black frame after ever rendered frame.
http://www.blurbusters.com/zero-motion-blur/lightboost/

The brightness is decreased by 50% but that's why the 248 and 278 are twice as bright as regular TN LCDs.

The Apple Cinema has slightly better colors (since it is an IPS panel) but I prefer the Asus 248 for 120 Hz gaming.

Smallest pixel

[jones_supa]

What is the size of the smallest pixel that can currently be made using LCD technology?

Re:Smallest pixel

[Firethorn]

My first thought was that they make FHD (1920x1080) LCD projectors that have a LCD screen of about 1" providing their display.

Well, the AC said 39 microns, unsourced. I found a source. Then found another that says 15.

Making it bigger while keeping the panel that small(IE increasing overall resolution) might eventually be a problem, but given what I'm seeing going 'retina' even with desktop/laptop monitors(my biggest remaining resolution gripe) should be readily possible.

Re:Hype

[AvitarX]

I can immediately tell the difference, it's quite stark IMO.

I do not know that going past the retina iPad would have payback for me.

What I'd rather have on my phone

[DigitAl56K]

For my phone, screen resolution is good enough(tm). Screen power consumption is in drastic need of improvement. It's consistently the biggest drain on the battery.

Almost there...

[gatzke]

If we are getting 1080p on 5" phones you hold 10" from your eyes, I want similar resolution on my 30" desktop that I sit 20" from.

Maybe my math is wrong, but 2x distance should require 1/2 the pixel density. But 6x the size would be something around 6000x3000 on my desktop I think. I am happy with 2650x1600, but it could use 4x the pixels I guess.

I am happy with 52" 1080p in my den at 8' but 4k would be better...

I have been craving more pixels since I found I could make my 486 33 run some games in xga mode, getting 1024x768 amazing pixels.

Re:Almost there...

[Overzeetop]

Question is - can you tell the difference between 720 and 1080 at 10" on your 5" phone if they're not side by side? Sometimes higher pixel density is just wasted.

Your phone puts 1000 pixels into a 2.3" space. To actually fill that with information (say, a spreadsheet, or a CAD document) would be impossible to read. I know because my old 15", 1920x1200 laptop was brutal to read at 25" doing CAD work -and that's 1/3 the resolution. Minimally compressed video on my iPhone at 1/2 the max resolution is almost undetectable unless it's side by side or special program material which takes advantage of the resolution. Maps look better at the higher res, but I can't really imagine actually being able to *read* more information with higher density - and I have 20/10 corrected vision.

I'm considering a 4k monitor for work, but I won't go smaller than 30-40" or it will be wasted pixels. Sitting at my desk, I can barely distinguish pixels on my 30" 2560x1600 monitor if I look for them - and that's just 100ppi. I can't see them in a photograph where the adjacent pixels are close in color.

Re:Almost there...

[jon3k]

Here's the calculator you're looking for: http://isthisretina.com/

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[Anonymous Coward]

Because 1/2 of the population is above average.

Half the population is above (or below) the median.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[Anonymous Coward]

Because 1/2 of the population is above average.

AVERAGES DO NOT WORK THAT WAY! GOOD NIGHT!

Hasn't stopped manufacturers

[HangingChad]

Have we reached the limit of resolution improvements that people with average vision can actually notice?

Hasn't really slowed the push toward 4K in video production. While it's sometimes handy to have the frame real estate in production, it takes up a crapton more space, requires more power to edit and it's mostly useless to consumers. Even theater projection systems can't resolve much over 2K.

But if the industry doesn't go to 4K, then who will buy new cameras, editing software and storage hardware? And consumers might never upgrade their "old" HDTVs. Think of the children!

Re:Hasn't stopped manufacturers

[bill_mcgonigle]

requires more power to edit and it's mostly useless to consumers.

who cares about consumers? Give me a 16K video sensor and then I can zoom or re-crop the video in post and still deliver a nice 4k product. It's simply a matter of the cost of hardware.

Re:Hasn't stopped manufacturers

[Russ1642]

The video sensor has nothing to do with it. The size and quality of the lens is what determines image quality and resolution. Image sensors far outdo the lenses they're paired with right now.

Re:Hasn't stopped manufacturers

[UnknowingFool]

Well manufacturers who want to make money probably do. Consumers barely care about DVD vs Bluray.

Re:Hasn't stopped manufacturers

[Anonymous Coward]

As a consumer, I would say consumers care, but don't like paying the exorbitant (IMHO) premium, and even more, don't like the additional 'price' of having to sit through 10 or 20 minutes of crap advertising and FBI warnings in 14 languages. At least that's why I returned the Blu-Ray system and disks I bought a while back. I returned them all to the store as defective, since (by design) they are impossible to watch.

And that's not to mention the region locking, which means that the DVDs I bought while in India (of shows that are not available in the US) can be viewed on my old DVD player but were not viewable on the Blu-Ray player.

The only way I'll do Blu-Ray again is if I get ambitious and set up a good burn-to-disk system so I can eliminate all the crapola and just watch from XBMC or whatever. I'm not the sort to download pirated copies, even though they've already done that work. So the price, for me, to do Blu-Ray would then still be to spend an additional amount of time prepping the video before I even watch it.

Re:Hasn't stopped manufacturers

[dwightk]

Think of the children!

... climbing on those piles of trashed electronics in China.

Except when I move close...

[canadiannomad]

I agree "at normal viewing distances" I don't have perfect vision, but when I want to see a detail, guess what I do? I zoom in, and move closer. This is where high resolution on those devices becomes important. Not at the standard "laboratory condition" distances, but when I want to inspect something closer.
Am I abnormal in this?

Re:Except when I move close...

[canadiannomad]

Zooming in often has dumb limits where the programmer decided "no one needs to zoom that much" just like youtube often feels like someone put in the restriction "no one needs the volume that high" From the programming point of view, there is no reason it couldn't be unlimited(aside from HW limitations), except someone decided the UI would be easier if they didn't give that ability.

Moving my head closer to a screen with a good resolution does make a difference in how sharp I can see a detail in a photo, not so much with a poor resolution screen.

Human eye

[the eric conspiracy]

Wikipedia says:

Angular resolution: about 4 arcminutes, or approximately 0.07Â

Field of view (FOV): simultaneous visual perception in an area of about 160Â Ã-- 175Â.

So that's about 2200 x 2400 if the screen is at the correct distance. Further away and you need less resolution. Closer and you won't see the whole image.

Re:Human eye

[a whoabot]

Completely ridiculous. You've taken "angular resolution" to mean "angular pixel spacing". You would need more than one pixel for every 4 arcminutes in order to have an angular resolution of 4 arcminutes.

http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html has a review of material which shows that the pixel spacing required would be around 0.3 to 0.4 arcminutes, a far cry from 4.

Re:Human eye

[the eric conspiracy]

The number you quote is for a sinusoidal grating viewed under ideal lighting conditions in a laboratory. It is very close to the Nyquist limit and like you say applies to the fovea only.

I don't think you can expect anything like this for an actual image.

Re:Human eye

[the eric conspiracy]

This is analysis of the image by the brain, and would not be impacted in any way once the display resolution matches the physiological limits.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[medv4380]

You're assuming Normal distribution. If it is logarithmic distribution, which I'd put more money on, then you're wrong. Only a small number of people can see better than average, 20/20. Many see far worse, and some, like myself for a time, have vision like 20/15. It doesn't last, and "half" the population isn't any where near it.

Re:Sure

[Jason Levine]

That might have been a laughable statement now because more memory (as well as faster processors and other advances) allowed for computing applications that we couldn't foresee at the time, but the limitation on displays isn't "what are we using it for" but "what can the human eye see." Perhaps we'll wind up implanting devices in our eyes to increase our eye's resolution limit (and somehow get around the fact that our brains might not be able to deal with ultra-HD reality), but short of that there's a hard limit on what the average person can see. Put a 600dpi tablet screen and a 1200dpi tablet screen in front of 100 people and 99 won't be able to see the difference.

Re:Definitely

[topologicalanomaly47]

Not to mention that they still add 16Gb of (sometimes unexpandable) storage to those devices basically forcing you to watch low resolution/bitrate content on a high-end screen.

VR

[Guspaz]

Devices like the Oculus Rift need resolution to go way higher. I once calculated (perhaps completely incorrectly) that an 11K display was the threshold of "retina" for the Rift, although I'd imagine 8K would be close enough. This is a 5-7" display we're talking about here.

Re:VR

[Knutsi]

I was about to say the same. I own a development kit, and the pixels are really visible at today's 720p in a 7 inch panel. People call this the "screen-door effect as the space between the pixels resembles the wires in a screen door). For this tech to be as crisp as we all would like, what you suggest sounds about right. Even though they are showing off the HD prototype (1080p), they are very careful not to say the problem is gone with that model. And even if the pixels dissipated, it's in VR that you really want to seek out that retina resolution (:

I have no doubt VR-devices will drive not just screen tech, but also 3D-graphics in the years to come, and take over as the pushing force that mobiles provide today. (The 3D has to improve since the level of detail you desire is much higher with the Rift than on a flat panel - you get closer, see more - also it must run at a higher resolution eventually).

I feel that consumer VR is becoming a reality because of cellphone evolution, but future cellphones (whatever form they might take - AR, anyone?) will be a reality because of VR evolution.

Re:VR

[Guspaz]

The optical distance of the display with the default lenses is very large (enough that myopic people like myself just see a big blur), so that's not causing your headache...

Re:VR

[Guspaz]

My calculation was basically just to take the horizontal FoV of the Rift (90 per eye) and multiply it by the generally accepted human eye resolution (1 arcminute), which gives 90 * 60 = 5400 per eye. The screen is divided in two, so that 5400 needs to be doubled for the full panel resolution, which gives you 10,800 pixels wide.

The reason why this figure may not be accurate is because of the way the rift warps things. In effect, it's zooming stuff at the center of the lens, so even the pixel density I described might not be enough at the exact center of vision.

Re:VR

[jon3k]

A 1080p 4" display becomes "retina" at 6 inches. A 4K display is retina at 3 inches. How close to the eye are the displays on the Oculus Rift?

Souce: http://isthisretina.com/

Re:VR

[Guspaz]

It's a 7" display, maybe two or three inches from your face; the calculator you link to reports an 8K display is retina at 3 inches, but the lenses likely throw typical calculations off anyhow; pixels in some areas will appear bigger than others, and since displays can't have variable pixel density, the whole density has to go up to match.

The Rift is a 16:10 display. My previous calculation of 10,800 (which ignores lens distortion issues) would be a 10800x6750 display, which the calculator reports is retina at 2 inches... So it seems that (ignoring lens distortion), 8k+ is required for retina on the rift.

Re:VR

[Guspaz]

If you get a headache looking at something a couple of metres away, you've got more serious issues to worry about than how comfortable the rift is. The control over convergence is based on the fact that the content is being generated dynamically, allowing the camera positions to be adjusted to match the user's Interpupillary distance.

I own a rift, and I can tell you that while it's an amazing experience, there are much bigger problems with it than headaches. I've never gotten a headache. I have gotten motion sick, and there is no combination of glasses and lenses that lets me see through the thing without either the center being optically too close for my eyes to focus, or everything but the center being a blurry mess from myopia. But then, it's a dev kit, not a consumer product.

um no

[slashmydots]

Everyone at my work over 40 can't see a damn thing so their 1920x1080 monitors are at 1280x800. That awful pixel shrink ratio results in blurry crap which is almost as difficult to read. If the resolution was 10x higher, it would be a lot less noticeable because larger resolution pixel blurs would be possible. So no, they should keep increasing it.

Re:um no

[Novogrudok]

> Everyone at my work over 40 ..their 1920x1080 monitors are at 1280x800

Are they dumb in addition to being blind?

Right click on Windows desktop -> Personalize -> Display -> Larger

Re:um no

[colinrichardday]

Can you set it to 1280x720?

Multiple Screens?

[LifesABeach]

Multiple screens can turn data into information when applied.

Re:Multiple Screens?

[mlosh]

Of course! For teh win!

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[bill_mcgonigle]

Basic stats fail.

I can't believe there are five posts on here that declare 'average' to be 'mean' and then go on to criticize the GP's lack of statistical knowledge.

I think the very first thing on the very first day of my first statistics class was a discussion of mean, median, and mode, and how all three are referred to as 'average' in common parlance, depending on context.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[bill_mcgonigle]

have vision like 20/15. It doesn't last, and "half" the population isn't any where near it.

hrm, I've been contact-lens corrected to 20/15 for the past 28 years.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[Cid Highwind]

Wait, we're talking about digital movie projection, as in machines that will be used to show "Transformers 7: Incomprehensible Jump-Cut Explosiongasm!" and you're worried about it being commercial failure because too many people are above average?

...

(Oh god, when did I get so old?)

Printers and resolution

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Didn't laser printers show us that 300dpi is still a bit jaggy, and 600dpi is perfectly smooth at arm's length? When screen resolution is around 400dpi then we are probably done.

300dpi didn't cut it for dithered images - 600dpi was close, but not quite enough. The winner was the 1200dpi laser printers.

When you have a grayscale image you want to print on a single-color device, you use dithering to create the illusion of gray shades. A 1-to-1 mapping of pixels to printer dots gives you 2 colors - black and white. Photos look horrible. Double the printer resolution so you have a 2x2 dot array for each pixel and you have 16 possible shades. Double it again for a 4x4 dot array per pixel and you have 256 possible shades. So if you want a 300 pixel-per-inch gray scale image to look good, you need a printer resolution of 1200dpi.

Now, all this changes for RGB displays, since each pixel can be from 16 to 256 shades each. But less depth per pixel might be compensated for by smaller pixels and a higher density.

I remember in the early days of computer graphics, it was believed that 24-bit color (8-bit each Red, Green and Blue pixels) was the pinnacle. But once 24-bit color became widely available, we discovered it wasn't enough. When edited in Photoshop, often a 24-bit image would show banding in the sky, due to rounding errors in the math involved. Adobe added 48-bit color (16-bits per RGB channel) the rounding errors became much less visible. Today cameras capture 8, 12,14 or 16 bits per RGB channel, and using HDR software we get 96-bit color.

My point is we have a history of thinking we know where the limit is, but when the technology arrives, we discover we need a little bit more....

Re:Printers and resolution

[gnasher719]

When you have a grayscale image you want to print on a single-color device, you use dithering to create the illusion of gray shades. A 1-to-1 mapping of pixels to printer dots gives you 2 colors - black and white. Photos look horrible. Double the printer resolution so you have a 2x2 dot array for each pixel and you have 16 possible shades. Double it again for a 4x4 dot array per pixel and you have 256 possible shades. So if you want a 300 pixel-per-inch gray scale image to look good, you need a printer resolution of 1200dpi.

Not quite. In a 2x2 array, the number of black pixels can be 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4, that is 5 different values. In a 4x4 array, you have 17 different values. However, if each dot is actually larger than a 1x1 pixel square you could overlap them, and depending on the pattern you could have different areas covered.

Re:Printers and resolution

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Not quite. In a 2x2 array, the number of black pixels can be 0, 1, 2, 3 or 4, that is 5 different values. In a 4x4 array, you have 17 different values.

In a way, we are both correct. My example shows the maximum number of combinations, while your example groups them by the number of black dots possible. Yes, in a 4x4 array there are six possible arrangements of 2-black and 2-white "dots". But those six arrangements may give you the appearance of different shades of gray - depending on the surrounding dots.

As an example - a 4x4 array with the two left dots black and the right side white. Imagine what that would look like if the same array is repeated vs. surrounded by black dots. Or if the arrays to the left are one color and the arrays to the right are a different color. Remember - you are looking at a group of 4x4 arrays, not just a single 4x4 array.

Re:Printers and resolution

[Common Joe]

640K of pixels should be enough for anyone.

Re:Printers and resolution

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

2x2 gives 5 possible shades (between 0 and 4 out of 4 dots covered) and 4x4 gives you 17 possible shades (between 0 and 16 out of 16 dots covered). In many cases (such as photographic images), image processing can give an effect that appears better than this, but for sharp edges your subpixel count needs to equal the number of shades of gray that you want to reproduce. But even that only gives you a linear shading scale. The eye is more sensitive to relative intensity differences than absolute differences so you would need even more subpixels in this method than actual gray scales that you want distinguishable by the viewer.

Sorry, but you are making the mistake of assuming that the quantity of black dots dictates the "shade" and the position of the black dots don't matter. But they do.

Remember, in my example I'm talking about a monochrome laser printer. A array of black dots on paper can create the ILLUSION of shades of gray, and the pixels around it alter our perception.

Re:Printers and resolution

[MasterOfGoingFaster]

Bullshit. I've never seen any banding on CRT.

You must have missed this sentence:

"When edited in Photoshop, often a 24-bit image would show banding in the sky, due to rounding errors in the math involved."

Google "photoshop banding in sky" to see examples.

Re:Printers and resolution

[thegarbz]

300dpi didn't cut it for dithered images - 600dpi was close, but not quite enough. The winner was the 1200dpi laser printers.

Well the parent was right but his units were wrong. 400ppi (pixels per inch) are indeed somewhat of a gold standard for being unable to see any pixels in the resulting image. This is completely unrelated to how many dots are actually put on the paper to make this image.

Re:Printers and resolution

[nbritton]

I remember in the early days of computer graphics, it was believed that 24-bit color (8-bit each Red, Green and Blue pixels) was the pinnacle. But once 24-bit color became widely available, we discovered it wasn't enough. When edited in Photoshop, often a 24-bit image would show banding in the sky, due to rounding errors in the math involved. Adobe added 48-bit color (16-bits per RGB channel) the rounding errors became much less visible. Today cameras capture 8, 12,14 or 16 bits per RGB channel, and using HDR software we get 96-bit color.

You mean for input devices, such as scanners. For all intents and purposes, everything I've read says the human eye can't tell a difference between 24-bits (16,777,216 colors), 30 bits (1.073 billion colors), 36 bits (68.71 billion colors), or 48 bits (281.5 trillion colors). A few years back manufactures were selling 18-bit displays (262,144 color combinations), this was the upper threshold that my eyes could tell a difference. I recall getting along just fine with 16-bit color for years, which was a mere 65,536 color combinations.

Your remarks about dpi / ppi are spot on and will be the deciding factor. I just don't see R & D purposefully dedicating resources to anything beyond 600 ppi, due to the natural limitations of our optic system.

Re:Printers and resolution

[smash]

I have.

Intel vs. AMD MHz race all over again

[rodrigoandrade]

This is the MHz was all over again. After a certain point, 99% of users stop caring because it's "good enough."

I once ran a test on my Note 2 with different screen brightness and lighting conditions, with different people. I asked them to guess the screen resolution between (a) 720p and (b) 1080p, playing a movie in 720p (the actual screen resolution).

The ones who said they could tell the difference actually got it wrong, claiming it was 1080p.

Most just didn't care one way or the other.

Let the engineers leave the dpi race aside and work on more pressing matters, like creating cheaper screens that are not battery hogs, with correct color warmth and bigger than OLEDs.

Re:Intel vs. AMD MHz race all over again

[Novogrudok]

I do not agree. "99% of users stop caring" because no real increases in CPU frequency were forthcoming. I would buy a 10GHz CPU for the same price I bought 3GHz CPU 5 years ago.And I would buy a 27" gaming monitor with say, 4000x2500 pixel count.

Re:Intel vs. AMD MHz race all over again

[dwightk]

I once ran a test on my Note 2 with different screen brightness and lighting conditions, with different people. I asked them to guess the screen resolution between (a) 720p and (b) 1080p, playing a movie in 720p (the actual screen resolution).

The ones who said they could tell the difference actually got it wrong, claiming it was 1080p.

that sounds solid enough to publish

Resolution Independent GUIs Needed

[Russ1642]

Until we move to resolution independent GUIs and software I really don't care about insanely high res screens.

Re:Resolution Independent GUIs Needed

[oji-sama]

New software usually is pretty much resolution independent... Old stuff less so. (For example basic units in XAML are device independent and QT also allows using device independent pixels as units.)

Re:Resolution Independent GUIs Needed

[Russ1642]

I have yet to see any commonly used windows app that's resolution independent. That's because, yes, even in the latest incarnation of windows they haven't even bothered to address the issue in the slightest.

Re:Resolution Independent GUIs Needed

[oji-sama]

Not sure if a serious question (especially considering the next comment by Russ1642), but in WPF images get scaled as well. For better results it may be a good idea to provide higher resolution bitmaps to be used in high dpi cases. Alternatively you could override the scaling, but that might not make sense as the images/icons would stay a bit small...

On QT-side there is the possibility to use @2x images (double res images, which will be scaled down as required).

Projectors need as much resolution as you have wal

[Quantus347]

I have a friend that is a huge fan of a projector for his primary display. When you take even high end resolution and project it out to 12 feet across, there is no such thing as too much resolution.

No

[neminem]

I mean, I'm not sure I'd ever have any reason to care personally about a laptop screen better than 1920x1200... but on the other hand, I can't actually *buy* a laptop screen with 1920x1200, so no, we clearly aren't, until I can (again).

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[dos1]

1/2 of the population is above average? Since when an average is equal to a median?

Dead Ends

[SuperKendall]

What we should be/are concentrating on is better reflow and text to speech.

Ask me how I can tell you don't go out in crowds much.

Re:Dead Ends

[malignant_minded]

Ask me how I can tell you don't ride the subway to work with earbuds

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One Megapixel Per Fist

[Speare]

I once did the back-of-napkin calculations to make a scale-independent metric. Astronomers know that if you hold your fist at arm's length, your fist occludes roughly ten arc degrees in whatever direction you measure across your fist. My search found that someone's 20/20 eyes can generally resolve details to about 1 arc minute (didn't read Wikipedia's rationale). If that much screen area contains one megapixel or more, then the screen is well within the definition of a "Retina" display (at the given viewing range).

Re:One Megapixel Per Fist

[Overzeetop]

Black and white or variation of 1/60 in luminosity? Could you actually USE that additional data, or would it really just be used for better anti-aliasing?

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Deader Ends

[SuperKendall]

Ask me how I can tell you've never noticed how few people use earphones all the time.

Just keep refining that selection criteria until you reach one.

Re:Deader Ends

[malignant_minded]

I don't understand your point. If someone is blind or visually impaired or just cant look at a screen atm you feel they shouldn't have an option of text on a webpage being read to them?

Re:Deader Ends

[Iniamyen]

Pretty much everyone that I see DRIVING THEIR CARS TO WORK in the morning would disagree with you. So even though it's incredibly dangerous, everyone I see does it.

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Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[PingSpike]

I don't know, when was the first version of Microsoft Office released?

Re:Depends on screen size & typical viewing di

[wiredlogic]

192kHz 24-bit audio, or DSD streams, exceed the hearing limits of most people

It exceeds the hearing limits of all people. Anyone saying otherwise is either an audiophool or the recording, mastering, or playback has been botched in someway that dramatically reduces the quality of the audio.

You can always improve the price

[Sla$hPot]

Right?

3D and beyond

[John Sokol]

Moore's law has allows us to double display densities nearly as fast as CPU and memory had been improving.

The addition of a simple lenticular or image mask can turn any LCD in to a glasses free display.
An additional increase in resolution will then turn this in to a multiview display.

A bit more resolution and a micro lens array can then create a light field display.
Beyond that is digital holography.

It's all fairly cut and dry, standards are already falling in place to accommodate and stream this level of video and even capture live video like this.

So any software developer that assumes we've hit the limit will looks as foolish as Bill Gates saying no one would ever need more then 640k of memory.

http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/search?q=Lenticular
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/search/label/3D
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/search?q=Multiview
http://videotechnology.blogspot.com/search/label/Digital%20Holography

Re:3D and beyond

[John Sokol]

Displays and sensors are exponentially improving. The curves may not be 18 months to double like Moore's law, but it's still exponential.

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore's_law#Other_formulations_and_similar_laws
"Pixels per dollar. Similarly, Barry Hendy of Kodak Australia has plotted the "pixels per dollar" as a basic measure of value for a digital camera, demonstrating the historical linearity (on a log scale) of this market and the opportunity to predict the future trend of digital camera price, LCD and LED screens and resolution."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hendys_Law.jpg

http://www.zdnet.com/moores-law-and-the-exponential-growth-in-surveillance-systems-7000017356/

NO!!!!!!

[sootman]

More like this, please. We had 22" monitors @ 200 dpi TEN FREAKING YEARS ago. I understand they were pricey at the time, but then again most technology is like that -- I don't understand why they didn't keep making them and wait for them to get cheaper. Apple introduced the multi-thousand-dollar 30" LCD around the same time and it stayed in production for years and the price dropped over 50% in that time. I'd pay $2-3,000 today for a 24-30", 200 dpi monitor. (Assuming it used standard connectors and I could use it for 5-10 years, as I tend to do with good monitors.)

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In a word...

[fredgiblet]

Yes.

For what size screen? How far away?

[Alejux]

We're no remotely close to the maximum resolution we will need. If you want your entire living room wall be a TV, how many pixels would it be enough for you to have maximum crispiness? Probably in the 10's of thousands horizontal ones. What if you're using an HMD like the Oculus Rift, which covers your entire vision with a display? How much would be enough in order for it to as detailed as real life? We have a long way to go before we start talking about end of the resolution race. FYI. Most networks are planning the adoption of 8K transmitions by 2020.

I dont need a higher res.

[Twiggeh]

Well personally im satisfied with 720p on a cellphone, going up to 1080 (or more) just doesnt give enough of an noticable improvement to justify the increased battery drain.

No math in the press ?

[ze_jua]

TFA is in response to this article ?

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Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[kwolf22]

Actually, history has proven just the opposite... When you build for the average person, you maximize the selling potential of your product. That's why everything from ramen noodles to cars are designed for an "average" person. Moreover, in many situations you're required to design & build products to conform to some regulation designed for an average person. Not meeting those requirements immediately dooms your product to failure.

Sure there's some variability to what is considered average, depending on your country and/or market, and even level of technology, but the point being, that by not designing products for the average person, you're designing for a niche or specialty market, or experimenting with new or novel technology.

Obligatory car analogy: That's why there's a whole lot more people driving Toyota Corollas then there are driving Bugatti Veyrons - even though side by side, most people would probably notice a clear difference and prefer a Veyron. /Obligatory car analogy

Re:4k monitors

[jon3k]

You'd have to sit closer than 17" to discern an individual pixel. That's probably an unnecessarily high PPI. No one sits that close to a monitor.

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It's all about the use case

[grumbel]

For phones, sure, we are reasonably close at hitting diminishing returns. But when it comes to Google Glass, the Oculus Rift or augmented and virtual reality in general we are nowhere near at hitting it. It will probably take 20K screens 2 inch in size before we hit diminishing returns there. Nvidia also just demoed a few nifty light field displays that would need even more resolution then a classical 2D display, so that's out even further.

Also lets not forget about our good old monitors at home, 4K monitors are finally back on the market, but still far from having any kind of mass market penetration and when it comes to big curved monitors, you'd probably need 8K or 16K before you are done.

Phone Screen Resolution for Old Fogies

[billstewart]

At $DAYJOB, we're always getting lots of company propaganda about "Don't Text While Driving". Not a problem for me - I can't do texting without my reading glasses, and I can't drive with my reading glasses on. And the [expletive-deleted] HTC-flavored Android texting application may look pretty, but it doesn't let me change the font size, and doesn't let me do the two-finger stretch thing, and doesn't even do a decent job of adapting to landscape-more screen orientation. Yes, the Google-provided keyboard thing with it has a little button you can press to do speech-to-text, if you've got your reading glasses on so you can not only press the [expletive-deleted] little button and then read the results it got back to be sure they're not hopelessly garbled, but that doesn't really help.

Yes, a higher resolution screen helps make the text clearer. But what I really want is a phone that can be controlled entirely by voice for most common applications, like texting. The Bluetooth connection to my car supports voice dialing; why can't the phone support at least voice-controlled reception of text messages?

Re:Phone Screen Resolution for Old Fogies

[steveg]

Google makes apps (like Maps!) for the car that are not suitable for use in cars. In response to a voice command to the navigation system it will pop up a picklist in a tiny box in flyspeck font that you must choose from the screen.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[voidphoenix]

Thank you. I thought i was going to have to post "The median is an average, as are the mean and mode." five times. :)

Looking as good as paper

[billstewart]

Yeah, for a 24" monitor I'd be happy to have 300dpi, because I want to be able to read my computer as easily as I read paper. 200x200 is a standard-mode Group 3 Fax machine resolution, and while it's a lot less ugly than the 100x200 mode, it's still ugly (though of course your monitor doesn't have the vertical sloppiness that mechanically-driven paper printer rollers have and the fuzzy pixels of thermal paper.)

If you're watching movies, or even still pictures, resolution doesn't matter as much, because your eyes will fix that stuff. But when I'm using a computer monitor, I usually want to read lots of text. For that you need actual pixels, even if most of them are running in 1-bit color, or 4-bit color so you can do better navigation clues.

My aunt's husband

[tepples]

So what do you recommend for people who don't want black bars at the sides ("I wanna use all the inches I paid for"), don't want the score cut off on sport programs (ergo no "zoom"), and either don't want to pay an additional recurring fee for HD service on top of what they already pay for TV or don't want to relearn the numbers or order of channels?

Re:My aunt's husband

[smash]

I recommend they buy a crappy 4:3 CRT off ebay.

4K Resolution - TVs driving PC Monitor Market

[billstewart]

Until we see a lot of 4K TVs out there, we aren't going to get cheap 4K PC monitors. As far as high enough quality for work goes, color resolution doesn't matter to me; pixel count and size do. (And as for responsiveness for gaming goes, as long as the screen isn't actually flickering, Nethack isn't bothered by 50ms latency.)

Having finally acquired an HDTV this year, I've found that it's nice to have a monitor that is in the same aspect ratio as movies so I don't need to black-box or have the sides cut off, but there aren't that many movies that really need the extra resolution as opposed to the correct aspect ratio. Regular TV programming cares even less about resolution; either the writing's good or it's not, and HDTV won't fix bad writing, and talking heads are either saying something sensible or blathering. Sports and nature programming are exceptions to that - being able to see a moving hockey puck or tennis ball better helps a lot, and wildlife pictures on National Geographic do look a lot better if you've got hi-def.

Early laser printers

[billstewart]

My first laser printer was an Imagen wet-process printer (based on the printer mechanism of a Canon copier engine.) 240dpi, with a liquid toner that was pretty much carbon black dissolved in kerosene. It didn't need anti-aliasing to smooth out jaggies :-)

Re:Printer resolution, text vs. photo

[billstewart]

My guess is the opposite - you'll probably notice the difference in resolution more for black on white text than for photos.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[colinrichardday]

I believe Excel 2007 uses AVERAGE for MEAN.

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Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[felipou]

I don't know if this is the case, but it may have something to do with translation. I always thought "average" was equal to "mean", because they both translate to the same word in portuguese, which has the meaning of "mean". Thanks for the clarifying post! :)

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[Skrapion]

When people say "average", they usually mean "arithmetic mean", but medians and modes are also considered averages. The OP may have chosen an ambiguous word, but they weren't wrong.

not reading tfa

[KingBenny]

does it matter since its obviously not about scientific research and just about selling to homes, retail as they say, i sometimes suspect slashdot of being abused as an intricate way of advertising for the future because of its renown as a hive of ultrageeks.
does it matter for home use? or was it about scientific research and did i get it wrong
i just read the title

Re:not reading tfa

[KingBenny]

so yea i meant you're wasting the greatest source of crowdsource if you can filter out the emotional statements
you're wasting it for marketing purpose and being right
this place has potential
you're wasting it, just remember the average geek has severe ego (which is not a bad thing since they got that by being right) and like to reside in their own habitat
a bit like
everyone, but not quite pointwelltakenornot

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Who moved my cheese, erm, channels?

[tepples]

It's a CRT HDTV that he bought along with the house. He pays for a cable TV tier that happens to include HD service but doesn't use HD much himself. Instead, he leaves the TV set on stretch because he's used to stretch, or at least dislikes stretch less than he dislikes having to relearn the channel order.

for phones maybe

[TheSkepticalOptimist]

but NOT for monitors.

Basically monitors stopped pushing density once the magic "Full HD" number was reached, and then few manufacturers bothered to do more than that. But considering you sit within 2 - 3 feet in front of a 24"+ monitor, higher densities would be beneficial. I say this after trying to make some tiny UI component look better at 16x16 resolution, with a higher DPI monitor I could put more clarity in to the same physical size that 16 pixel currently consume today.

But for phones, yes, even holding something a few inches from your face you are not going to see individual pixels, making text smaller or more UI refinement is not going to benefit from the engineering effort required to increase pixel density past 500 dpi. Also for TV's sitting back 8 - 10 ft the high pixel density isn't going to offer much in the way of the wow factor.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[smash]

Even if they mean "arithmetic mean", mean is more often than not NOT the 50%-50% dividing point of the sample.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[smash]

In reality, you're probably better off building high end gear for people covered within 2-3 standard deviations of the mean.

Re:Hype

[smash]

It's like the circa 2005 10 megapixel point and shoot camera race all over again.

Re:Definitely

[smash]

There's this new invention called streaming (be it from your NAS, internet source, etc).

Re:Definitely

[topologicalanomaly47]

Sure, because streaming high bitrate 1080p video works no matter where you are.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[kwolf22]

Standard deviations go both ways; above & below the mean. "High end" on the other hand, is synonymous with "above average" - i.e. better than what most people use/need.

I'd say, IDEALLY it's better to build high end, but in reality we build according to requirements, financial constraints, time to market, return on investment, etc. Using the original topic as an example, you could build high end 4K Ultra High Definition monitors that would certainly work almost everyone. However, at this time, to make a profit you're probably going to have to sell your monitors at a price point that 2-3 standard deviations of the mean population can't afford.

Re:Digital Movie Projection... and "Average People

[Trogre]

No, the median is.