New 20" iMac Screens Show 98% Fewer Colors

Trintech points us to an AppleInsider article about another class-action lawsuit directed against Apple Inc. This one claims that the displays on new 20" iMacs are only capable of 6-bit-per-pixel color, 98% fewer colors than Apple advertises. Rather than the 8-bit, in-plane switching (IPS) screens used in 24" iMacs and earlier 20" models, "[t]he new 20-inch iMac features a 6-bit twisted nematic film (TN) LCD screen," according to the article, "which the [law] firm claims is the 'least expensive of its type,' sporting a narrower viewing angle than the display of the 24-inch model, less color depth, less color accuracy, and greater susceptibility to washout." Apple recently settled a very similar class-action suit about the displays on MacBook and MacBook Pro models.

No April Fools articles this year.

Good job slashdot, I think you successfully managed to show that reality is stranger than fiction by holding back on the fake articles this year. And you've thoroughly confused everyone.

Re:No April Fools articles this year.

OMG PONIES!!

Re:No April Fools articles this year.

You called?

Re:No April Fools articles this year.

It's 6 bit per color in a rgb scheme, making it 18 bit or 262,144 total.

Re:No April Fools articles this year.

Thanks for the clarification. I was sitting here and thinking to myself, "That can't bee right. 6-bits of color is how much my RGB Amiga 500 used in 1987 (64 colors)."

So it's 6 bits per color (red, green, or blue) to achieve 18 bits total (thousands of colors). Versus a "real" monitor that can do 24 bits total, aka millions of colors.

Yeah. Definitely false advertising.
Lousy Apple.
Starting to act like Microscrew.

Re:No April Fools articles this year.

Technically, you could only define 32 colours of those 64 (from a total palette of 4096!), the other 32 were actually the same colour but at half the brightness, hence the name of the display mode: EHB - Extra Half-Brite. This was very useful since you could use that extra bit-plane as a shadow-plane, and most palettes had dark and bright versions of the colours anyway.

Of course, this doesn't make it any less superior, just saying...

Re:No April Fools articles this year.

No, the article just wasn't clear. It actually means 6-bits per color channel per pixel. In other words, 18-bits per pixel instead of full 24-bits per pixel. And the reduction from 2^24 to 2^18 does indeed reduce the number of colors from about 16 million to 262,144 - a reduction of about 98% of the entire color space.

And as someone who owns a 18-bits per pixel monitor, trust me, you can tell when working with static imagery. Maybe not when playing games or playing movies, but you can tell. The little gradients on Slashdot look terrible on that monitor. It helps that it doesn't do any form of dithering, but even on my cheap Acer laptop that also only does 18bpp, you can clearly see the dithering.

Since Apples are frequently used for photo work and print work, using only 6 bits per color channel is simply unacceptable. Coders probably won't care, but graphic artists most certainly will.

Re:No April Fools articles this year.

It may be weird, but it's also remarkably common. About half the LCDs on Newegg are reported as showing 16m or 16.2m colors, rather than 16.7m (2^24). A far cry from the 280k-odd colors of a 6-bit-per-channel display, but the number they're reporting is based off of the results of a 6-bit panel using dithering. Many cheaper screens from all manufacturers follow this trend, especially those advertised towards gamers. They sacrifice color reproduction in order to get the pixels to twist faster - all of the reported 2ms panels are 6-bit dithered displays, which gives awful color reproduction (not critical for games most of the time, but a big problem for photo/video work). Of course, anything faster than 16ms is absolutely pointless since you're dealing with a 60Hz signal, but that's aside the point. More notably, the 6-bit panels are quite a bit cheaper, as one would expect.

I'm almost positive that my Macbook Pro does this as well; honestly, quite unacceptable for a "pro" machine. It's especially noticeable at the brighter edge of a gradient (ex. the Photoshop color palette).

Most people aren't going to really notice. Dithering is reasonably effective, and it still manages to give the illusion of most of the spectrum (certainly far more than 6-bit/64 levels per channel, rather than 8-bit/256). But at the end of the day it's still an illusion, and the difference IS there.

If anything...

...the new OSX interface has shown us that we don't need so many colours. Colours in a computer eat up the memory bits and distract us from our reverence. Personally, I'm going to take Steve's advice and go get my eyes chromed.

Re:If anything...

You're absolutely right. I hate colours myself. I much prefer the American colors, thay're much brighter and prettier than the British colours. Damn that Jobs and his British colours! And he calls himself an American!

Can't say I'm surprised.

I work at an Apple shop, I love Apple products, but I'd be happy to tell you how shitty the 20" Aluminum iMac screens are. They really, really suck, and here's hoping Apple finally gets their head out of their ass and puts a quality screen on what should be a quality product.

I know what they're doing

Apple is just trying to bring back the glory days of black and white screens.

That's OK

640 colors ought to be enough for anyone.

Apple monitors give o1000000 colors

Apple uses octal.

Great for the environment

I'd call this 98% color reduction a healthy, green approach, great for the environment... except that green was one of the colors that was removed...

The same as 90%+ of LCDs sold.

90%+ LCD monitors are TN screens like the low end iMacs. They all claim 16+Million colors. The Panel itself is a LG.Philips LM201WE3(teardowns online). The manufacture web says it is 16.7million colors with FRC.

This would only affect the clueless. It was widely complained about that apple switched to TN panel on the 20" as soon as the Aluminum iMacs came out. It is not a hidden fact, you can tell by the viewing angle specs.

Apple will probably fight this one, because there is a chance the laptops did not have FRC dithering (many laptop screens don't) and thus did not have millions of colors, OTOH the FRC dithering panels are classed as having millions of colors industry wide, and the viewing angles were quoted to industry standards in the spec that would make it clear to anyone who knew or cared about display or even asked anyone for advice that these were TN panels.

In fact you would have to be living under a rock to not know, but that won't stop some people for trying for a small cash grab and lawyers from trying for a big one.

This is not as big of a travesty as it seems

I'm the guy that you'd find arguing over how much LCDs suck and how much better CRTs are a couple years ago. But my CRT died last month (Mitsubishi 19" Aperture Grille, it was about the best monitor you could get short of the 22" version of the same), and I picked up a Samsung 226CW. There are only two things it doesn't do as well as the CRT:

Absolute black level.
Off-axis viewing degradation.

The color is actually BETTER, DESPITE the 6 bit panel. The reason why 6 bit is not a big deal is because the panel response is so fast that it can temporally dither two colors into one, and you don't even notice that its doing it. For photography, its actually better color reproduction because its more consistent than CRT. On top of that, the "C" model in particular (as opposed to the 226BW) has a 95 CRI backlight, which means the spectrum the backlight produces is much less peaky and closer to natural sunlight. Altogether, the result is more accurate color than I'd get on a CRT. Plus I get 2ms response time so gaming is fine too.

The 226CW may be TN, but its one of the best panels out there. I thought I was going to be more disappointed than I actually was. In fact, I wasn't disappointed at all because it turned out better in most regards, not just "almost as good." It can produce smooth color because spatial and temporal dithering on fast monitors is surprisingly effective, and its actually more accurate because of the better quality back light.

Not that this was an article about CRT vs LCD, but I'm saying that TN panels have become common not just BECAUSE they're cheap but because the good ones (as cheap as they are) are SURPRISINGLY good. Apple may have used a shitty 6 bit panel instead of, say, Samsung's 6 bit panel, but the number of native colors is surprisingly not that big a deal, even if you're a picture-accuracy freak.

(It doesn't excuse them from not clarifying whether it was TN or IPS though, and in fact it pisses me off that no manufacturers are clear on what overall technology goes into their LCDs)

Re:How can you judge colour quality?

But do manufacturers publish specs on what colour depth is supported? Is there some quantitative measure of how well a display shows different colours and how wide the gamut is? How can I avoid getting caught out like these hapless iMac buyers?

Yes, of course. The LCD manufacturers will spec 6-, 8-. or 10-bit color for their panels. Then Apple will buy the 6-bit and claim it's an 8-bit. Then you sue Apple and get your money back and lunch with Steve, or something like that.

But seriously, yes, LCD (and any decent LCD mfgr) will spec the color bit depth of a panel. A really good mfgr (NEC, LG, Samsung) will have gamut charts available to OEMs and possibly end users. But if Apple chooses not to share, or worse just lies about it, there's not much you can do other than try to do some independent research to figure out what panels Apple uses, then contact the panel mfgr to (try to) get some specs.

Re:How can you judge colour quality?

Pretty much any monitor advertised as 16.2 million colors is using a 6 bit panel with hardware dithering. Those advertised as 16.7 million colors tend to be 8 bit.

Re:MOD PARENT UP

Mod parent up. This is absolutely true. I'd estimate that the vast majority of LCD panels on the market are 6-bit screens. Whether you are buying Benq, LG, Dell, Viewsonic, it doesn't matter. Most of them are 6 bit.

They are cheaper, and they have faster response times.

8-bit LCD panels are almost a niche specialty 'pro product' in today's market, and unless you went out of your way to buy an 8 bit screen odds are you took home a 6-bit TN panel, advertised as showing "16.2 million colours" without even knowing it.

Its not just Apple. Although they seem to have gone beyond marketing deceptiveness to outright lies and deserve to be taken to task about it.

But don't for a minute think all those free Dell monitors bundled with low end PCs are anything better. Hell, even the ones you can pay to upgrade to aren't often anything better than 6-bit.

Re:If only...

the Windows Guy could retaliate in one of those commercials.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of Windows PCs (including pretty much every laptop ever made) also use these "inferior" screens, and nobody's tried to sue Dell yet.

The fact is that most people can't tell the difference, and aren't interested in paying four times as much to get a product that isn't noticably better unless you make your living working with colour.

This is a storm in a teacup.

Re:If only...

This isn't about the MacBook suit, this is about 20" iMac desktops.

I realize that. I was responding specifically to the inaccuracy in the parent post.

Incidentally a guy (Mac user) on our forums ran some tests on his Thinkpad and found that it does indeed have an IPS display. So although TN screens may be common on laptops they're not ubiquitous.

IBM made several ThinkPads with IPS panels 2-4 years ago, although none were produced in large numbers. The 14" and 15" IPS screens are no longer being made. The only one I know of still being sold is the X-series tablet, which has a 1440x900 12" IPS screen that I believe is also now out of production.

TN was just too big and cheap for IPS to survive. There was no money for the panel makers in producing a tiny quantity of $100 more expensive laptop screens for the few buyers with enough basic perceptivity to tell the difference.

Re:No, because quality was obvious

In this instance (not the previous one), the issue is did Apple advertise them as supporting 8 bit per plane or did they not? If they tried selling them as 8 bit and they were really 6, then there is a problem. It's called false advertising.

Re:Class Action?

The CLUT supports 24bpp color, so they advertise millions of colors. If the display dithers down to 262k, it could be argued that the display is still being sent 24bpp info - and thee iMac does have an external video out port, so I think Apple has some wiggle room here...

From this link http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html [apple.com]

Display

* Built-in 20-inch (viewable) or 24-inch (viewable) glossy widescreen TFT active-matrix liquid crystal display
* Resolution
o 20-inch: 1680 by 1050 pixels
o 24-inch: 1920 by 1200 pixels
* Millions of colors at all resolutions
* Typical viewing angle
o 20-inch models
+ 160° horizontal 20- and 24-inch
+ 160° vertical
o 24-inch model
+ 178° horizontal
+ 178° vertical
* Typical brightness: 290 cd/m2 (20-inch models); 385 cd/m2 (24-inch model)
* Typical contrast ratio: 800:1 (20-inch models); 750:1 (24-inch model)

(apologies for slashdot's mangling of the unicode above)

They make the claim that the "display" supports "millions of colors". And by display, they mean something that has 290 cd/m2 brightness and a 160 degree viewing angle -- which could hardly be referring to the GPU/video card.

Re:Only 766 colours anyway.

Even a screen with an 8-bit DAC is only capable of displaying 766 colours - each subpixel can show 255 brightnesses of three distinct wavelengths of light (as each subpixel can show the same black this makes 766, not 768)

Let's start with, it's multiplicative, not additive. That's 255^3, not 255*3. This is because, as you mentition later, the eye combines all three subpixels into a new color.

And if you want to get really picky, you can only display three colours

If you interpert color as a wavelenght of light as opposed to relative excitment of the three colored cones in your eye, then yes. But no one thinks of that definition. Instead, the obvious usage is 'colors preceived'. Even when you talk about color of a pure wavelength, you can only interpert it as combinations of your three cones.

Whether an individual subpixel can display 256 levels is quite irrelevant since dithering is capable of producing a higher colour depth at the expense of colour resolution

So, even if one were to concede all your points, these aren't really 1920x1280x24 displays are they then. Because that 1920x1280 resolution has to get shortchanged for the dithering. So you can say that Apple lied about the resolution instead of the color if you like, but it's awful pedantic.

Yes, it is possible to build CCDs where the R, G and B are cosited, nobody actually uses the Foveon sensor because the difference in the capture picture is not discernable.

I know people who paid a lot more to get a camera with a Foveon sensor, actually. While I might be unable to notice the quality, they (and their clients) can. And you better believe they would be pissed if they ended up with a Bayer filter instead.

If you want to say that the difference is small, and unnoticible to most people, so that is the optimal thing to make, fine. I respect that, and agree with you. But this is flagrant false advertising. A 1920x1280x24 screen was advertised and not delivered. Bitch about Apple's behavior just like any other major company's.