Japan Display Squeezes 8K Resolution Into 17-inch LCD, Cracks 510 PPI At 120Hz

MojoKid writes: By any metric, 8K is an incredibly high resolution. In fact, given that most HD content is still published in 1080p, the same could be said about 4K. 4K packs in four times the pixels of 1080p, while 8K takes that and multiplies it by four once again; we're talking 33,177,600 pixels. We've become accustomed to our smartphones having super-high ppi (pixels-per-inch); 5.5-inch 1080p phones are 401 ppi, which is well past the point that humans are able to differentiate individual pixels. Understanding that highlights just how impressive Japan Display's (JDI) monitor is, as it clocks in at 510 ppi in a 17-inch panel. Other specs include a 2000:1 contrast ratio, a brightness of 500cd/m2, and a 176 degree viewing angle. While the fact that the company achieved 8K resolution in such a small form-factor is impressive in itself, also impressive is the fact that it has a refresh rate of 120Hz.

Comments

Re:What applications?

[gweilo8888]

Applications like "viewing with your eyeball actually pressed to the cover glass." You know, real critical ones.

Nothing at all to do with getting the biggest feel-good number on the spec sheet, No sir, not at all.

What interface ?

[x0ra]

4k already needs DisplayPort 1.2 to be able to push data at 60Hz. What interface can conveniently push 8k at 120Hz ??

Re:What interface ?

[AmiMoJo]

Consumer 8k is still a few years out. NHK, who invented it, are planning to start broadcasts in time for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. To that end they are ignoring 4k completely so they can concentrate on 8k.

It's a big project. As well as 8k capable interconnects for consumer products, they need to develop new cameras (manual focus is far too difficult to be practical at that resolution, and current auto-focus is inadequate), new editing equipment, new make-up and sets, and of course a new broadcasting system that can compress ~100Gb/sec+ of data in real time and send it over existing channel bandwidth, for reception on a basic wideband antenna.

Oh, and it supports 22 channel sound, but it's not clear if that will be used for broadcast.

I saw a demo of it years ago and it was amazing. Really something else, incredibly life-like.

Re:What applications?

[AmiMoJo]

Panasonic sells 4k monitors of this size in volume to the medical industry, and for engineering work (CAD). It's likely that they will upgrade to 8k soon and use that to spur development of the technology. Those industries will pay 5x as much for a GPU because it is guaranteed to produce correct output (gamers won't notice a single pixel being slightly the wrong shade of green now and then), so it's clear that there is demand from them. They basically want to eliminate any visible aliasing issues entirely, which is also why they pay for very high end printers.

Re:What applications?

[Alioth]

In other words, virtual reality. The problem with the current VR headsets like the DK2, is you have effectively a 1080p display that fills most of your field of vision, in other words, yes - you can see the pixels and they are pretty big. The screen door effect is also pretty bad. Text is very difficult to read using the Rift DK2 unless the text is very large.

Developing very high PPI displays will be a real benefit for VR headsets. Tne next crop (the Vive/SteamVR and Oculus CV1) have better resolution (IIRC it's something like 1200 pixels vertical) and probably will have much less of a screen door effect, but the resolution really needs doubling at least for a VR headset to truly feel HD.