IBM Ships First 22" 200dpi Displays 138
wonko writes: "IBM has
begun shipping new monitors that are as much as 12 times sharper than current displays, and 4.5 times sharper than HDTV. These new 22-inch active matrix liquid crystal displays use aluminum-based technology and have over 9 million pixels. IBM will soon be licensing the technology to other display makers, so you could soon see these screens in laptops, PDAs, cellphones, etc. Pardon me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard ..." This is the same high-definition display you read about here earlier. They are not yet in CompUSA, to put it lightly -- first examples are going to Lawrence Livermore -- but the trickle-down effect in a couple of years is promising.
In cellphones? (Score:4)
22-inch display on a cellphone? Damn!
Re:Ok... IT IS Paper quality (Score:2)
Actually for photographs, it is newspaper/magazine quality. According to agfaphoto [agfaphoto.com] and kodak magazine quality is 150-175 lpi and for art quality books/magazine it its 175-250 lpi. [kodak.com]
Re:Bertha is awesome, but expensive (Score:1)
I would be very, very suprised if these were as cheap as $30K each. I expect these things are expensive. They're shipping them to Lawrence Livermore, for christ's sake -- not some little $20 million dollar dot com where a VC might blanche at the bill.
Of course, since they're being used with ASIC White, I'd have to imagine that however many millions of dollars these 10 displays are going for, they make up only a small part of the total rental and service contract bill for any given month. Heck, IBM may have even just tossed 'em in as a promotional item, like the toy in a crackerjack box. "FREE! With every $100,000,000.00 purchase, a 22" super display! Offer available only for US government (and Batman)."
Re:Error in article (Score:2)
<p>Why?
Re:Ok... (Score:1)
But yeah, I mentioned about the anti-aliasing, I think that would make up for most of it. Not true color printing at 600dpi or greater, but on a lit screen I'm sure it would look amazing, much like HDTV's do.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Yes sir, it's time! (Score:1)
It's been nearly 15 years and it's time to move on. Copper should not be imposible now that we have been shown the way. Copper Windows should be heavier but flexible stable and lasting. Let's do it!
Re:Throw out your bitmaps (Score:1)
The only thing that remains bitmapped about the Windows GUI is the icons, and I'm betting that 32x32 would make a droolingly good small icon on this display.
Must.. get.. a loan..
Re:Colour vs resolution (Score:1)
Once you switch to TFTs you can never go back
.
Yeah, great idea... (Score:1)
That's strange, I thought you were a "be fan."
"Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
Re:Effect on software, and the visually impaired. (Score:2)
To give you an idea. Right now, I'm holding a ruler and your post in netscape measures as a bit more than 1/4 inch for the caps. a little more than 0.7 a cm. This is acceptable to most people. When I zoom in to the lowest resolution, each capped character measures 0.7 inch.
X is much better for people with eye problems compared to Windows. XFree lets you change resolution with one keystroke. Windows? at least 0.5 minute to change resolution. This allows you navigate with slightly higher resolutions, and zoom in when you need to read something.
If you got eye problems, you simply cannot use any low end displays and you must change monitor every 3 years. Don't be a cheap bastard, make sacrifice on your hard drive, CPU, and buy the best monitor/video card you can afford.
And Geeez! If you got an eye problem, maybe you should stop playing computer games and go out some more. You need your eyes to do something more productive on the screen.
What you need is a good XF86Config file, fine tuned, and a very fast pointing device (mine is a Logitech trackmanFX) that moves super fast across the desktop. Or put in a second 21 inches monitor for a dual head. If the monitor becomes a little blured, THROW IT AWAY, or get the manufacturere to replace it like I do.
And don't whine about desktop publishing, either. I used to be a graphics designer. graphics designers do not demand as crisp the monitor as programmers, and CAD operators. They don't need to look hard.
Aluminum (Score:3)
You know like the CPU manufacturers did. Coppermine liquid crystal displays will rock.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Cost (Score:1)
"The good thing about Alzheimer's is that you can hide your own Easter eggs."
Re:Throw out your bitmaps (Score:2)
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Video Cards... (Score:1)
You don't want to be pushing that through the system at 60 fps. So none of that "but can you play quake on it" stuff.
Expensive (Score:1)
Re:Aluminum (Score:1)
So I guess I wonder if there is much application for copper in these things. Not sure.
Throw out your HTML, too (Score:2)
bad pixels? (Score:4)
If they use the same standards as for the T86D [ibm.com] you would have up to 68 bright pixels or 102 dark pixels... ouch! i hope they improved thier manufacturing yields by the time this thing hits consumers.
My big monitors are obsolete? (Score:1)
I thought that these monitors could be a long-term (5 yrs) investment. Unlike a processor that must be upgraded AT LEAST every 2-3 years.
At least my Palm will have a better screen someday...
Re:Radiation. (Score:1)
>EMITTED STRONGLY'.
I've never seen an LCD with an emissions sticker on it.
-LjM
Stocking Stuffer (Score:1)
Bah. Five years from retail, they say! (Score:2)
From the MSNBC article (which is really just a blurb):
Shipping, sure, but to various famous scientific laboratories only.
Re:The only problem is... (Score:1)
default-point-size
damn... (Score:1)
i want a cool TV (Score:1)
A great day for sysadmins everywere! (Score:5)
Yes! 22 inch laptops that can finally cover the average lap of the sysadmin!
Tim, you spot the trend before everyone else....
Re:Error in article (Score:1)
Suppose there were already monitors with 10 mln pixels, then this news would not have been newsorthy at all.
Ok... (Score:1)
And even though these aren't available to the public yet... How much do they cost, and when can we expect to see these in the home? The answer had better not be "2010" still.
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate [ncsu.edu].
Re:Error in article (Score:1)
Re:Yes sir, it's time! (Score:1)
MMMM games... (Score:1)
+++++++++++++++++++++
Re: (Score:1)
What graphics card? (Score:2)
Re:The only problem is... (Score:1)
Re:Expensive (Score:2)
Who is Lawrence Livermore? (Score:1)
Re:Video Cards... (Score:2)
Re:Error in article (Score:2)
Re:bad pixels? (Score:2)
Re:Expensive (Score:1)
Re:Throw out your bitmaps (Score:3)
Re:Video Cards... (Score:1)
Re:Obligatory Porn Post (Score:2)
:)
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Re:MMMM games... (Score:2)
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Uninformed X Window System bashing (Score:1)
So, unless the GUI developer was moron and specified absolute dimensions for widgets, there is resolution indipendence. Just specify the size of your fonts in tenths of typographic points (the 8th field): the layout manager of the toolkit then will make your app equally usable at 640x400 and 1600x1200.
The real problem here is only with bitmaps: they have a hinerent size in pixels. Buttons containing only a bitmap won't scale (unless the developer arranges things specifically, i.e. scaling the bitmap to be n rows of text high).
Re:Whatever happened to the Swinging Mirrors Monit (Score:1)
Re:damn... (Score:1)
Re:Ok... IT IS Paper quality (Score:1)
The classic photoshop rule of thumb was to have a image DPI 3x to 5x the LPI of the press.
Actually, that will just give your imagesetter a headache from the extraneous data you're downloading. 2xLPI is almost always an adequate resolution, and 2.2 is the absolute maximum you'll ever need. See http://www.adobe.com/support/tech doc s/c29e.htm [adobe.com] or Ch. 3 of the Photoshop manual.
Danny
Re:Error in article (Score:1)
Methinks yes.
Um... (Score:1)
CompUSA? (Score:2)
Ever since then, when a friend wants a computer part I go to another store or get it from an online source.
Re:Some more specific specifications... (Score:2)
What ever happened to metric?
Didn't we learn from that nasa flub last year? The future is not in miles or feet or inches.
Re:What graphics card? (Score:1)
12 times sharper? (Score:1)
The resolution is something like 3500x2500. Best commercially available displays have something like 2000x1500. 3 or 4 times sharper is more like it.
Re:Error in article (Score:1)
GTK+ still does this to some extent (Score:2)
I haven't done any Windows GUI programming so I can't really compare, but GTK+ still has many distances measured in pixels. Getting resolution dependance out of our applications will take quite a long time.
The other question I have is whether scalable graphics for the GUI is really feasible on existing 72 dpi displays with all the aliasing effects that implies. Does the new Mac interface really use vector graphics for *all* its icons and such? If we've all got 22" 200dpi displays, sure, but that's not going to happen for a long time yet.
Re:Ok... (Score:1)
Here's a snippet from a DCA/Intel spec for an early API:
"
1 1 Transfer type:
0 - 200x200 dpi, fax mode.
1 - 100x200 dpi, fax mode.
2 - File transfer mode.
"
which included the new (at the time) high resolution fax mode.
Incidentally, it wasn't even 100*200, the original ITU spec (T.4 I think) specified 196*98 dpi.
However, you're right, after that it evolved even further.
Best bit of code I ever wrote was a T6 (group 4 Fax) decoder.
FP
Very big problem! (Score:2)
Re:Throw out your bitmaps (Score:2)
I don't know how dpi settings work in X, but I can imagine that X could be made to use 3x3 pixels for a single pixel from a 75dpi bitmap (200 dpi is almost 3 times as high as 75 dpi).
So, all you have to do to be ready for such a display is alter X. At a later stage you could rebuild/enhance your wm to use high-res bitmaps. Or you could scale them, etc..
Thimo
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Re:Bertha is awesome, but expensive (Score:1)
Wouldn't 10! a year be 3,628,800 per year?
Yes folks, that was a joke.
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Re:Error in article (Score:2)
Re:Ok... IT IS Paper quality (Score:5)
The classic photoshop rule of thumb was to have a image DPI 3x to 5x the LPI of the press.
Re:Error in article (Score:1)
Not even 4 times sharper as a matter of fact!
People who write these articles need to take some remedial math classes.
Re:Video Cards... (Score:2)
On the other hand, not all of the stuff that appears on the screen are games. Any non-accelerated fullscreen app will most likely suffer.
Re:Who is Lawrence Livermore? (Score:1)
Re:Error in article (Score:2)
<p>3840 x 2480 = 9,216,000
<p>1024 x 768 = 786,432
<p>9,216,000 / 786,432 = 11.7
Re:Expensive (Score:1)
DEW YEW KEEP A TROSHIN
I want my TFT (?) (Score:1)
Effect on software, and the visually impaired. (Score:5)
Then, I went to a LAN party, and saw all the 20/20 people doing Windows at 1600x1200, on 15-inch monitors, and complaining that "It starts to get a little blurry on my monitor when I try that..." Then I tried installing Linux and X-Windows on my own machine, and found that X-Windows was meant to never ever NEVER run in 640x480, because all the applications I found seemed to be designed for 1024x768 -- even though they had 7-pixel-high fonts.
This new era of high-resolution displays struck fear into my heart, that in ten years all computer applications will run at 3000x2000 resolution, with 10-pixel-high fonts. And do you seriously believe that people won't design web pages to be "best viewed at 5000x4000"? Or that they aren't already?
But, in the short term, while a 640x480 or 800x600 large-fonts display is still a realistic option, a display like that might actually be a good thing. See, most LCD screens only work at a certain resolution -- 800x600, 1024x768, etc. If you try to decrease the resolution, you get either a big black border of wasted space, or you get random patterns of thick and thin pixel rows and columns. Either way, it's ugly. But if you start at 3000x2000, it becomes less ugly, because you're not alternating single rows and double rows of pixels anymore; you're alternating quadruple and quintuple rows of pixels. This would be good, not just for me, but for gamers who might want to play different games at different resolutions. Starcraft, for example, still plays only at 640x480 if I'm not mistaken.
Of course, the best option would be if people designed everything to be actually scalable for a change. MS Windows has some support for scalability; you can set 800x600 for "Small Fonts" or "Large Fonts" and it works fine with most, but not all, apps. Other objects change size too, such as icons. Bitmaps, however, will always be bitmaps, and that affects web pages. Have you ever played Sissyfight [sissyfight.com]? A 200-pixel-high window, but 6-pixel-high fonts abound. Or Pixeltime [pixeltime.com] -- only usable because the pics can be zoomed and the text is largely inconsequential. Hopefully, when people think in inches instead of pixels, we'll see fewer sites like those. I just hope the backlash doesn't create pages that say "Optimized for a 22-inch display," though such a thing would better expose the inherent arrogance of such a design choice.
Now, I imagine some of you are drooling over this display for the reason my friends always give for their insanely-high resolution: "Just think of how many more windows I can have open at once!" Of course, after a certain point, it would be easier on the eyes and wallet to just use two displays. Break that down into cost-per-pixel, cost-per-square-inch, etc. Perhaps dual displays might even have organizational advantages: "The 17-inch display is for code, the 15-inch display is for man pages and instant messages."
Of course, none of this applies to desktop publishing, where the situation demands something as close to paper as humanly possible. Or video production, in which having a pixel-perfect HDTV display window would be very useful. But for mortals, well, we'll just see whether we use this power for good or evil.
Screenshot (Score:3)
<IMG src="22inch.png">
<DISPLAY WARNING> If you can read this message your monitor is not high enough resolution to view this picture.
</DISPLAY WARNING>
</IMG>
Re:Local CompUSA is just as dumb, at least. (Score:1)
Re:Ummm. (Score:1)
Nah, the Apple II lowres mode was more like 5 or 6 dpi. You're thinking of double-lowres.
Bertha is awesome, but expensive (Score:3)
Unfortunately, they are going for $30K a peice and are only making a few (10!) per year. The seller seemed confident that the price/availability would be going down/up very soon.
pr0n jokes aside, I know more than a few graphic artists who would rip out the liver of their best friends for one of these.
As for scalable graphics, this will be really interesting to see. One of Windows greater failings (IMHO) has always been its lack of geometry management. Most Windows apps basically nail things to specific X,Y positions in a dialog, rather than having a fluid layout which specifies relative attachments. (This is one area where Motif does something better than Windows). Geometry management scales with resolution or font size, where absoulte positioning doesn't.
Re:Ok... IT IS Paper quality (Score:1)
There were some cases when we had to go up to x4+ in the old days to fix certain output issues. Too many years and too many jobs ago to remember why exactly.
Re:Error in article (Score:1)
b) but there aren't, so it is.
Re:Throw out your bitmaps (Score:1)
I don't have a Windows machine anymore but as I recall this just expanded the bitmaps it did use for the widgets, so you get blocky widgets.
Things may have changed in the three years since I stopped using it.
TWW
Re:Throw out your bitmaps (Score:1)
I do not agree; I think this just looks crap. I assume you mean that you would make each pixel a 2x2 square. Uggh!
At a later stage you could rebuild/enhance your wm to use high-res bitmaps.
This is just a kludge, the real issue is trying to come up with a solution which is portable to less well-endowed displays. Scaling is the only way to go.
TWW
Re:Error in article (Score:1)
240dpi! Holy moly! Now I know what I want for Christmas (2001?).
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Re:Aluminum (Score:1)
---------------
Re:Aluminum (Score:1)
Re:Error in article (Score:1)
Assuming that the diagonal is exactly 22", the actual dimensions of the display are 18.66" x 11.66". This works out to 205.8dpi, which is more or less consistent with the article.
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Re:Error in article (Score:1)
"easy on the eyes" (Score:2)
As an example they were showing X rays. If you got your face right up next to the screen, you still couldn't identify individual pixels. In fact, it looked just like a piece of paper. The difference between this setup and a normal hi-res monitor is simply indescribable.
Windows is res-independent (Score:2)
We don't have a resolution independent operating systems/applications
Under Windows 9x, right-click on the desktop (unless you are using a web page with Active Desktop and a JavaScript [right-click trap] [everything2.com]) and choose Properties. In the Settings tab, click Advanced. In the General tab, choose Font Size: Other... and crank the res up to 192 dpi.
Oh god (Score:2)
Colour vs resolution (Score:2)
I just acquired an 18" LCD at work, a Philips. It's impressive at 1280x1024 so the IBM must be awesome. However, with all the emphasis on high resolution, what do we know about the IBM's ability to display colours? I ask because my LCD seems not to do greens very well, they look a little washed-out.
For use with ASCI White (Score:3)
The Register [theregister.co.uk] has a little article [theregister.co.uk] about this also. They say that it will be used along side ASCI White.. so the worlds fastest compnuter gets the worlds best display... droool... Dear Mr. Bank Manager...
Re:Ok... (Score:2)
Anti aliasing is partly to credit (esp with the 600dpi subpixel arrangement), but more importantly is that a 200dpi pixel is 1/200 inch in size. A 300 dpi laser printer has dots significantly larger than 1/300 inch, so the display will be much crisper. I think. I don't know why I know this, but am pretty sure about it.
Re:Hmmm. (Score:2)
Re:Throw out your bitmaps (Score:4)
OSX runs all classic MacOS software, runs Carbon/Cocoa-based apps, and can also compile most unix apps, including X-windows packages (I have XFree running in OSX, for instance, and run Apache/PHP/PostGreSQL/sshd on the same box.
That's hardly a limited number of programs.
Re:Error in article (Score:2)
Re:Video Cards... (Score:2)
Re:Ok... (Score:2)
So this is not just twice that, but with 3 independent colours, you can use sub-pixel antialiasing and it appears substantially better than fax resolution-wise. Even ordinary greyscale antialiasing makes it appear higher quality than a fax.
I can wait 5 years. But everything already looks a blur to me anyway!
FatPhil
The only problem is... (Score:4)
I might be wrong though, I think OS X with it's display PDF engine could actually make very good use of these displays.
-josh
Obligatory Porn Post (Score:2)
Ok, maybe not MORE real.. most of them have implants.
Not that I know, or anything!
------------
CitizenC
Throw out your bitmaps (Score:5)
Making them into bigger bitmaps will just make them non-portable to older/cheaper machines.
Time to get scalable icons working, whether you're Windows or X. There should be just enought time before these start hitting the market in bulk, although print and design houses will want these displays sooner than most and will pay for them.
TWW
High resolution is GOOD for visually impaired. (Score:2)
I recently setup a MAC for a gentleman who can only read text that is about 1.5inches high. I setup his 19" monitor to run at 1024x768. I then jacked up the font size. He and I tested various modes and it was found that the higher resolution was best. The reason was that the useless windowing crap was small enough that it did not take up huge ammounts of screen space, but the important text information was still readable.
Not all was perfect though. While MacOS was very good at scalling the fonts and icons some of the applications were not. Word in particular is very bad at scaleing fonts. The zoom feature seems to be pixel based. If the document is zoomed to 400% the fonts looked awfull as the fonts were very blocky. Instead of taking a 12pt font and scaleing it to 400%, the pixels of the 12pt font are expanded 400%. The hack was simple two macro keys were programmed to switch the font between 12pt and 60pt (or 48pt can't remember).
The problem is not the high resolution monitors, but rather the software that does not scale its fonts. I am very disapointed with how most software treats fonts. The user should be able to control the size of all fonts. If software was designed properly it would not care what font size was used.
Web pages are a whole other matter. There is no need for a web page to dictate what font and font size is used. Web designers that need to do that generally make ugly, hard to read pages that don't have anything content.
Re:Effect on software, and the visually impaired. (Score:4)
I'm afraid I'm thinking of this in almost exactly the opposite way you are. My vision is reasonably good -- slightly better than 20/20 without glasses, even better with glasses. But text is difficult to read from a standard computer display for me, too. Guess what -- it's difficult for anyone to read. Why? In part, because standard displays have awful, awful, awful resolution. And with the standard, antiquated software that comes on nearly every computer made, the size of the text on the display is dependent on the resolution. The better I make the resolution, the smaller the text gets -- it unbelievable to me that I'm still using software shitty enough to demand that. But hey, what can you do? Its not like its a new millenium yet (wait another month and a half for that).
I guarantee that as high resolution displays become available, the idea that the size of the text on the monitor is somehow tied to the resolution of the monitor will go away. Think, for example, of printers -- imagine if someone said to you today, "I only buy the lowest resolution printers I can find. In fact, I prefer the old 120 dpi bubble jets. That way, the text looks bigger when I print, and its easier to read." You'd look at them as if they had a huge screw loose inside their head. "Why," you'd think, "would anyone on earth believe the resolution of the printer would affect the size of the text? The text is always scaled to be the same size -- the lower the resolution, the blockier the letters get. Lower resolution makes it harder to read -- not easier."
With any luck at all, in 10 years resolution independent display drivers will exist, and the idea that higher resolution is somehow "harder" to read will go away. Unless, of course, you're still using X windows. Bleh.
Ummm. (Score:2)
Re:Throw out your bitmaps (Score:2)