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Hardware

Samsung Introduces 24-Inch LCD 139

Posted by timothy from the drool-flows-continuously dept.
floam (who got the info from MacUser UK )writes: "Samsung, in whom Apple invested $100 million to further expand Samsung?s TFT-LCD flat-panel display production capacity, is now offering a 24" digital LCD monitor. The Syncmaster 204T offers support for resolutions of up to 1920x1200 pixels, a dual monitor support to toggle between input from two different monitors, support for both DVI Compliant and Analog input, and a 16:10 aspect ratio. The $8,000 monitor also supports picture-in-picture, or multi-screen functionality, which can display multiple windows on the screen and offers 'True Color,' 16.7 million color support. Supporting two full-size A4 pages, it delivers more than 170 degrees of conic view and the company says that 'all images regardless of input resolution can be scaled to 1920x1200, 16:10 WUXGA mode with unsurpassed sharpness and vividness.'" Yes, please. Imagine when we'll be able to scoff at the "only" 24" LCD screen being bundled with the cheap system at CompUSA ... reason to dream, anyhow.
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Samsung Introduces 24-Inch LCD More

Samsung Introduces 24-Inch LCD

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  • dot pitch (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01, 2001 @11:49PM (#390078)
    samsung's website claims the 240T has a dot pitch of 0.27 mm. that's about the same pitch as a 14.1" XGA (1024x768) screen. so resolution-wise, it's not that great. compare this to sgi's 17.3" 1600sw [sgi.com] flat panel (1600x1024 at 0.23 mm dot pitch), or the screen's on those 15" uxga a21p [ibm.com] ibm thinkpads (1600x1200 at 0.19 mm dot pitch). for viewing text or graphics up close, smaller dot pitch is better (all else being equal:)
  • Correct, LCD/TFT are very different.
    Duff pixels are indeed "part of the deal".
    /However/, various companies set the acceptable quality levels at different ration/pixel-counts.

    On a standard 14" laptop display some big name manufacturers will ship up to 10 duff pixels. (Hewlett Packard in my experience not only set the approval level the highest, but also employ people who can't count to judge them, I've returned 2 laptops for screen problems in the last few years - both HP). However, this appears to be big-name complacency on their part. In my experience the _small_ manufacturers of laptops _seem_ to have a higher overall quality when it comes to the TFTs (and super-twists in the past) they use.
    One "bargain" that used to be available from SGI was the "reject shop" that they ran. They used to sell _really_ cheaply huge flat panel displays for about a quarter of what they would have been worth if they didn't have about 20 duff pixels.

    FatPhil
    --
  • It was running at full resolution - 1920 x 1200.

    This was on the Samsung stand and it was definitely analog. I can't stand analog - it looks terrible compared to a digitally connected TFT (like a laptop) or even a decent monitor. The blurred pixels are just too annoying.

    According to the specs the screen has a digital interface but I'll believe it when I see it.

  • My favorite sreen saver of all time was this collection of otical distortion effects. I mean, you would pick convex-lens, and the saver would apply that distortion to a adjustible area of the screen and randomely move it around. It had a bunch of effects, like black-hole, wich looked like everthing nearby was being sucked in. It was a very well executed example of a really good idea. Its been 5 or 4 years since I saw it though, anybody else seen anything like this?

  • *cough* lives under norwegian bridges *cough*

  • Whether the power companies "wanted" that bill back then is irrelevant to the fact that it is the government that passed it, imposing restrictions that prevented the power companies from more-rationally responding to the changing economies of power production and distribution.

    Your post suggests that you believe the purpose of government is fulfilled by it simply responding to what the people, or some corporations, claim to want (though it's obvious you realize that what they wanted got them into trouble down the road).

    That's not the purpose of government -- good government consists of saying NO loudly and clearly to most everyone most all of the time.

    Had the CA government not been populated with the usual mass of meddlesome beauracrats (probably, for all I know, forcing the power companies to choose between what you claim was what they "wanted", but might well have been a huge compromise, and a much-worse alternative previously imposed by government beauracracy), they would have known better than to impose half-fast regulation (yes, I choose that spelling on purpose -- sound it out ;-) then, or much in the way of regulation in the first place.

    That way, when the cozy assumptions of corporate fat-cats don't pan out, the market, and the wise fat-cats who tend to it properly, can respond quickly -- much more quickly than that same beauracratic government is likely to.

    Of course, the market will assert itself (it is continually doing so) -- various beauracracies serve as dikes against the flow of the market, for both good and ill, whether within businesses, families, or governments, but the biggest, slowest-to-tear-down, and often most stupidly placed dikes are usually the ones built by government beauracracies. Major dislocations of population, including extremes like mass starvation, can be the results of market forces acting to reconcile reality to long-term patterns of behavior. (Though, in this case, I certainly hope Californians don't move to other states in large numbers, bringing their penchant for electing meddlesome beauracrats with them. ;-)

    At least when the dikes built by other organizations (families/households, corporations, non-profits) prove to be poorly placed, too large, too small, etc., the rest of the market can quickly respond without having to relocate en masse to another nation or continent...

    ...that is, it's easier to "route around" bad household and corporate decisions, even those made in the aggregate, than around many government decisions, since those tend to be a) imposed arbitrarily on as large a land mass as possible and b) imposed by threat of forcible removal of one's personal property, imprisonment, and/or execution.

    As to whether businesses should "lie down" with the "lion" of government at all, or just ignore it (and leave it to the whims of those, such as socialists, who can't get through a day without contemplating all sorts of ways they'd like to impose their wills on others), that's a moral argument only in the extreme -- realistically, it's a strategic and/or tactical decision.

    IMO, we should resent the corporate fat-cats who grease the palms (in legal and illegal ways) of government officials less than we do the officials who are so easily greased. We didn't elect the former -- they're behaving out of self-interest, exactly "as intended" -- but the latter supposedly represent the interests of "we, the people", and thus should be able to "just say NO" even to well-meaning attempts by one group to impose its will on another via the iron fist of government.

  • You brought up some very interesting points. I wonder if anyone out there has been able to compare this display to other somewhat similar displays: Apple Cinema Display 22", scads of 20" 4:3 displays, etc...

  • The link is here. [macosrumors.com]

    Basically, once they can realistically sell them for what the 22" is going for now (currently it costs $5,000 just to manufacture one) it will replace the 22". Drop the price of the 15" to about $500 or, heaven forbid, even lower, and fill in the gap with a 17.4" and a 20" for $1200 and $2000, respectively.

    However, I have a feeling LEPs will be out before Apple accomplishes all this... it sure would be nice to cut all those prices in half. :)

  • What's the biggie - we all know this is possible it's the production yield/cost that's a bitch. That's why big flat TVs cost as much as a used car. That's why half of the cost of a laptop is the screen and the manufacturers have "an acceptable number of bad pixels" policy on returns. 24" woooeeee. I have an executive briefing center with half a dozen 48 inch flat high rez panels and one that's 72 inches with 200lpi.
  • No it doesn't y'jerk. It means it has a DVI connector.
  • At IBM PartnerWorld in Atlanta this past week, they showed off the most impressive display I've ever seen. Here are some of the specs from a card I picked up on it:

    Image size: 22" diagonal
    Aspect ratio: 16x10
    Resolution: 204 ppi (!!)
    Addressability: QUXGA-Wide (I think they're making this stuff up... [grin])
    Number of pixels: 9.2 Million (3840x2400)
    Contrast Ratio: 400:1

    This thing, as you might expect, is REALLY impressive. It's like having a fully virtual 11x17 (B-size) sheet of paper in front of you, since the pixel density is one that would be respectable for a printer, much less a screen.

    Tiny details and hairlines are sharply visible: they showed a street map of all of Manhatan, and every street was clear, if small. This sort of thing in a foldable, portable, low power form factor would finally give us a viable replacement for paper in some cases.

    I have no idea what kind of video card it used, or how much compute power is required to run the thing. It was quite snappy in the demos.

    Oh and it's not available yet (it will be targeted at CAD/CAM and medical imaging markets), but when it is, expect to pay around 30 kilobucks. Guess I won't be gettig one after all...
  • Sorry, I am NOT an american and I do not want to be one, so what is your point???? I would like to have one of those screens in my home for my hobby, but .....
  • They aren't going to either! This is the copy protected stuff the movie industry lobbied to get made manditory on the new digital TV content. (Anti Copy) This is NOT a computer monitor. It does not have SVGA inputs or the digital equivelant. It will never have it. This is the Copy Protected Digital TV and nothing else. It's useless except for digital cable TV that won't work with your VCR or TVIO. There will be no time shift recording!

    It's all Pay per Play! No subscription, no service. :-(

  • I have always wanted a 16x10 monitor. But, the price of the LCD is just too high. Does someone make a reasonably priced 16x10 boring old monitor?

  • Santa,
    There's one more thing I forgot to tell you...
  • Take a look into how environmentally destructive [rfu.org] paper production really is.

    "The pulp and paper industry is one of the largest and most polluting industries in the world; it is the third most polluting industry in North America."

    Asikaa

  • Well, I guess the other factor was that I think the price is WAY out of most people's league... and if it isn't, then I guess it's fine for them, but now that 19" CRT's are a little more affordable, it's easier to have the luxury of more screen space
  • This means that as you move away from directly in front of the LCD you can still see it, up to 170 degrees (out of a possible 180 naturally).

    This problem has pretty much been solved in LCDs. Now the remaining problem is colour quality.

  • Damn. You're right, that's not nice at all.

    Someone down below (tonywong?) claims that the DVI spec is only up to 1280x1024? Seems a bit short sighted, if true.

    Jules
  • In Sydney, we have reliable power. When I moved to California I was shocked at the frequency of blackouts and the general terrible state of the electrical infrastructure.

    The crisis in California clearly demonstrates that hippie attitudes - such as "conserve in all areas of life" - are totally divorced from reality.

    The solution for California is:

    1. Let companies build power stations

    2. Free the retail price of electricity

    Hasn't anyone over there got any idea of basic micro economics?

  • They claim to have dual interface : DVI Compliant(DVI-D), Analog(D-Sub)
    So I assume it would look much better if it were digital
  • A reasonable design has them row and column-addressed--which is one reason why you have the field-effect transistor there, to sample and hold the voltage until it is addressed again.

    So each row needs a wire, and each column needs a wire, and all the transistors share a ground and positive voltage reference. That makes for a few thousand wires, not a few million.

  • If there was a digital interface I'm sure Samsung would have displayed it. The stand was quite nice.

    So I presume at full resolution the only choice is analog. Which is just not good enough.

  • As happens all to often on display items, the monitor you saw probably wasn't configured correctly. It kills me when I go to the Wiz and see a beautiful 60" 16:9 HDTV hooked up to a DVD player configured for a 4:3 set.

    I'm using two 18" flat panels (Eizo L661) in a 2560x1024 DualHead display, and each character of text is pixel-perfect. It can take some time get an LCD configured correctly, but if the phase and clock are correct, even an analog connection shouldn't have any blurring.

    Now to try out the DVI out with my new 42" NEC PlasmaSync. :-)

    ---
  • Ok, Ya got me on the sub 15 Analog input. It doesn't have a non SMDI protected digital input. I guess analog is still permitted at this point. I guess it is an Analog computer monitor. Just watch however, that the new TV will require use of the DVI input forcing an upgrade and breaking the analog (via delibetly reduced resolution) making the protected digital a must have option. Sorry I didn't fully read it first. Moderators do your worst on the original post. I deserve it. I jumped the gun.
  • I hope they made this thing drool-proof...

  • $8000? (Score:1)

    by nedron ( 5294 )
    Why would anyone even care about this until it gets down to the 3-4k range?

    As it is, you can get a Sony 24" 16x10 (FW900) for under $2000 (US) now. I know, I'm sitting front of one writing this and it works perfectly at 1920x1200 under both X and on my Macintosh G4 cube (the monitor has a source switch on the front panel).

  • it's LCD, silly, it won't FLICKER.

    Pope

    Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
  • One to use... and another to carry around with me to get chicks.
  • > 1cm^2 of LCD might have 250 elements. 2cm^2 > will therefore have 1000. Basic mathematics. Wrong... you should be doubling the count, noy quadrupling it. 2 cm^2 would have 500 elements Peace

  • Yes! BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..... (Score:5)

    by TheOutlawTorn ( 192318 ) on Thursday March 01, 2001 @11:16PM (#390108)
    At last, now my mock up of the Nebuchanezzer's bridge will be complete! Twelve copies of the Matrix screen saver and I'm good to go!

    What's that Neo? Ah yes, "Whoah" indeed.
  • I'm wondering where this will end. I realize I have a long, long time yet before the following are affordable and available at CompUSA, but... AFA resolution, once they get it down below 300 ppi on the screen, I'll never be able to see any improvement with these middle-aged peepers. And with screen area, a 48" diagonal monitor sounds really sexy, but really, for anything much above 24", aren't we talking about having to redesign the computer furniture to accomodate the display device? That being said, I'm looking forward to the day I can pick up a 21" CRT display for dirt cheap at Computer Renaissance because everybody's gone to LCD (or whatever flat-panel technology wins out).
  • Sweet...
  • I would like to know what is the limiting factor in making LCD's giant-scale. Why haven't we seen them replace even Movie Screens? Obviously cost is a factor, but is there a limiting factor with the technology that prevents it from being scaled?
    • While the size and luminosity of the Samsung were nice, it wasn't nearly as sharp as Apple's Cinema Display. And for the Samsung's price you can buy a G4 Cube with the 24" panel!
    Ummm... Well... That's interesting because Apple's Cinema Display is built by Samsung!! Unless you've seen the Samsung 24" in action, I will guess your comparison is bullsh*t (it hasn't shipped yet). As to the price of the monitor, Pricewatch [pricewatch.com] lists the Samsung for $6600. I think the extra 50% price is worth the extra 60% resolution (do the math, 1920x1600 vs 1600x1024), don't you?
  • Samsung had a few at a trade show here in Sydney the other day. They're beautiful. The quality is fantastic. And the price....well I won't be getting one any time soon ($A14.5K).

  • Re:What's the point other than to brag? (Score:4)

    by fatphil ( 181876 ) on Friday March 02, 2001 @12:02AM (#390114) Homepage
    Garbage.
    I have a 21" Eizo CRT on my main home machine, and in order to have pinpoint convergence on the whole screen, it's about 24" deep! Likewise on the 21" Nokia monitor at work.
    So firstly the monitor is far too close to the end of my nose, as I can't position it far enough back on the desk. (I only want a couple of inches more, I'm really just absurdly close at the moment.)
    Also, in order for the CRT to be structurally sound with such large spans of glass, it needs to be quite think (in the same way dinosaur bones are relativelty thinker than crocodile bones which are relatively thicker than newt bones). /Ipso facto/ my Eizo weighs 38kg, and the Nokia about the same.
    I have had to DIY reinforce my crappy desk at home to support the weight! (technology stuff is higher priority than furniture stuff, obviously). A flat pane display would weigh about a third of that. I could put it anywhere. I could even stick it on the wall...

    Yes, these are just "convenience", but for some convenience is worth spending money on.

    FatPhil
    --
  • sorry how can I mistype "thick" twice?
    (too early in the bloody morning, that's how)
    FP.
    --
  • 1cm^2 of LCD might have 250 elements. 2cm^2 will therefore have 1000. Basic mathematics. That means that much more circuity, that much more engineering required, that many more places for an errant bit of particulate to glitch the screen.

    Now scale as needed. After awhile the materials become too unwieldy. Imagine trying to keep two very flat panes of material at extremely precise tolerences apart over large distances in a consumer product... This is exactly what the manufacturers must do. Furthermore the error rate becomes so numerous the product becomes economically impractical. They probably could be made but the manufacturer is better off making more smaller screens for greater profit.

    Even if someone does go for making them visualize the flexing in the front panel when the panel is moved around during manufacturing & shipping. You thougt the rainbows on a samaller screen were bad when you touched it consider trying to build a 24"+ pane that doesn't flex.

    As manufacturing technologies improve the yields do go up and the defect rates are kept under ontrol but it's still a difficult market. There's also the problem that the market is a moving target: your US$250 million plant that you built last year for 12" screen is a has-been in today's 13" world, gotta recoup that money fast.

    It used to be some manufacturers would only replace a screen if one had >2 defects within the radius of a US quarter coin.

    Finally we're eventually going to run into things like bandwidth problems. It'll require some impressive technology to control some enormous number of pixels by some enormous number of pixels all with some high number of possible color combinations at the speeds required.

    The more adventuresome will now want to jump in with predictions of distributed rendering and local processing etc.)

  • Actually I heard Dell will not replace a TFT screen that has less than 10 dead pixels... most laptop sold on the market today have at least one or two dead pixels.
  • Was that "blurring" or "Anti-aliasing"?
    Remember, anti-aliasing is blurring, after all.
    The other followup is also correct.

    FatPhil
    --
  • True, I couldn't afford one of these by any stretch of the imagination. OTOH, maybe this is something we should be negotiating when a new job offer comes along.

    Mr Manager, I'd love to work for your company, but I would need this monitor in order to do my work effectively. My previous company considered it a very reasonable request, honest!

    And while I'm at it, I'd like a pony too :)
  • what i want is a 7 foot wide screen that takes up a whole wall. no need for high resolutions, half-dollar-sized pixels are fine. then i could sit on the other side of my room and play unreal. sweet.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Um, actually the original poster is correct.

    5x5 pixel area = 25 elements
    10x10 pixel area = 100 elements
  • Currently Samsung (a leader in the field) creates LCD displays on a sheet. With today's manufacturing systems, they can create: 9x 14.1" displays, or 6x 17" displays, or 4x 21.3" displays on a single sheet. Presumably, the 24" monitor is produced in combination with other smaller sizes which fit within the sheet's dimensions, thus the new size announced. Others are correct with regards to the compexity factors; that (rather than display size itself) is the reason for the higher costs of larger monitors.
  • If you read the page, you'll see the monitor supports both digital and analog inputs. It may have been using analog, but it supports digital as well.
  • I think that has been done, to cover the walls at the NY Stock Exchange with displays a few years ago. If I remember right, 20-some inch LCD's cost $25,000 then, and they bought hundreds of them. Stockbroking must be a mighty lucrative business. These were considerably lower resolution than the ones described in this article, but they were intended to be read from across the room. This also helped with the dead zone that you are bound to have at the edge of any LCD display; at a minimum you have to seal the edges, so the liquid crystals can't go all the way to the edge. If you are going to be reading it from 10 feet away it isn't visible, but on your desktop it would be highly noticeable. Most displays also have a protective case around the edge so the glass doesn't get chipped, etc., so I assume the NYSE special-ordered their displays "bare".

  • HP Quality Control (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    It may not be that the people working in test can't count, it may be that they're managers are ignoring them. I used to test gas chromatograph capillary columns for HP, but I had to quit when I got tired of them shipping batches I had rejected. Lab managers, keep this in mind before buying HP columns; sometimes they will test five or six columns until they find one that gives a nice sample chromatogram. There are only sixteen in a batch for most column lengths; so that means that many batches only had three or four good columns; but all of the columns would ship if they could get one to pass. And I don't even want to get into how poorly the chromatographs themselves were maintained.

  • DVI = 1280x1024 max. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Somebody correct me if I'm wrong: DVI only supports up to 1280x1024. This is why high end LCDs all have analog or custom interfaces. So, what's up here?
  • I apologise for the slur.
    Phil
    --
  • It depends on how you read the post. 2cm^2 should be read as "2 square cm", that is 1 cm x 2 cm, or any equivalent area. "2 cm squared" (2cm x 2cm) is what was meant. Erroneous mathematical notation aside, what he was trying to say was that the area goes with the square of the display size. A 24" screen has twice the area of a 17" monitor, and more than three times that of a 14" screen.
  • Video and image editing, any kind of engineering, programming, and anything else where being able to see more information at the same time makes you more productive. And I think this would be lighter and take up less room than a 17" CRT monitor. The cost is a killer though -- if you are being paid $100K, maybe you can have a shot at convincing your employer that you'd get another $8,000 worth of work done. Where I work, though, we had a heck of a time convincing management to spend just $800 on bigger monitors for the guys doing CAD...
  • Calling what CA did "de-regulation" sounds like a leftie plot to destroy the meaning of the word. They forced the power companies to spin off their generation stations into separate companies, then buy their electricity on a "free" market -- but they weren't free to make long term contracts to ensure their supply. And then they capped the price of power to the consumers. Then there were all the environmental regulations, but given the regulations on distributors I don't know if they mattered much; who'd _want_ to build a power plant where you couldn't tell if anyone would be able to pay the fair market price for the power?
  • What's so guilt-free about dropping $8000 for an icon of conspicuous consumption when you know that 1/3 of the world goes hungry?


    blessings,

  • If they had really de-regulated, rising electrical rates would have persuaded people to be a bit more efficient in using electricity -- as well as making building plants more profitable. But if it's cheap by gov't decree, why conserve it?
  • DVI is a good thing. It is entirely unrelated to copy-protection.

    Ever look at the el-cheapo LCD monitors sold at CompUSA and wonder why they don't have the sharpness of a laptop display? It's the analog signal path.

    To my eyes, analog (VGA D-Sub-15) LCD monitors look pretty bad. Some of the least expensive models exhibit noticeable 'jitter', which makes them WORSE than a regular CRT display.

  • Is there a particular reason for them using a size ratio of 16:10, instead of just saying 8:5?

    Is this to make it sound bigger, or am I missing something? I mean, I know my maths is bad, but it's not that bad...

  • And sells for about HKD50,000 in Hong Kong. That is about US$6,400.

    So, how many should I ship over???? :-)

    JC
  • I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but I saw this monitor for sale here in Geneva, Switzerland... about 3 months ago. Big flat plama screens (for TV) have been around for a few years, but the prices will make you wish they didn't exist.

    While the size and luminosity of the Samsung were nice, it wasn't nearly as sharp as Apple's Cinema Display. And for the Samsung's price you can buy a G4 Cube with the 24" panel!

    If only flat panels were cheap enough, I could save lots of room in my tiny apartment and my electricity bill would nicely drop...

    .m

  • I lived up two flights of stairs, but the second flight was to an attic room. Anyone over 5' tall has to _duck_ to get up the stairs, which were also only about 30" wide. (screw fire regulations: according to the local council noone lived in that room, but hey, the rent was cheap).
    The stairs also had _3_ doglegs.
    The Eizo _was_ unpacked before I even tried to get it up that final flight. It also had to rest on 6" wide strips of all 6 possible sides during its journey up the stairs, as the only way to move it was to _roll_ it.
    Oh - what's this "delivery guy" nonsense?

    Never again...

    Phil
    --
  • I'm glad that LCD display maufacturers are finally able to overcome the resolution scaling problem that has been such a pain in the rear in the past.

    I was always disappointed with past LCD's being unable to properly cope with resolutions below their physical DPI. It always used to mess the picture up to the point of near unusability. (At least I couldn't stand it.)

    Sure, it doesn't SOUND hard to stretch and blur an image at 60Hz, but I've never seen it actually done until now.

    Maybe I'll be getting a flat panel monitor after all.... :)
  • There are two kinds of people in this world: Americans, and those who wish they were.
  • Although drastic, perhaps the only real option the government has is an outright ban on CRTs, accompanied with a system to confiscate existing units. Only then will superior display technologies such as Samsung's unit be able to gain wide usage.

    I hate to wreck your fascist little dream, but CRTs are likely to be with us for quite some time.

    One of the things that CRTs do very very well compared to LCDs is to present consistent colour balance across normal (and abnormal) viewing angles. Even though the stated viewing angle of this (and other) LCD panels is reasonably good, I've never seen an LCD panel that could/did maintain consistent colour across that viewing angle. My limited knowledge of the physics involved suggest that it might not be possible to match (or even approach) the performance of CRTs in this area. For a graphics artist or photographer, or anyone involved in visual arts where colour accuracy is important, LCDs suck.

    The prices for LCD panels are high, not because of some conspiracy by the manufacturers, but because the things remain difficult to manufacture. The failure rate of individual pixels is so high that entire displays have to be trashed. I don't have numbers handy @ the moment, but I seem to recall something like 30%-40% of manufactured displays don't meet acceptable standards. Apple, for instance, has been known to issue RMAs for Powerbooks that had 10 or more dead pixels (on a 1024x768 display). Considering the amount of waste, they've got to make up the costs somewhere. They'd be selling at an extreme loss trying to compete with CRT pricing right now. In other words, LCDs, from a QA perspective, suck. Oh, yes and the amount of resources that went into manufacturing and then recycling the defective displays, means that LCDs are not exactly guilt-free anyway.

    Congress should immediately move to reduce the cost of LCDs and other energy efficient display systems.

    Aside from the obvious "US != the world" comments, given the amount of power that the modern corporation has wielded in policy/lawmaking, do you honestly believe that such a measure would ever see the light of day? Especially with Dubya in office? I don't think so. And rightly so. I think the pure economics involved in LCD manufacture justify their prices. If I were the CEO of Samsung, and was ordered to lower the price of LCDs, I would either increase the pricing on CRTs to make up the losses (and take a loss on CRTs) or refuse to sell LCDs in the US market (and encourage the grey-market import of them instead).

  • `Imagine when we'll be able to scoff at the "only" 24" LCD screen being bundled with the cheap system at CompUSA`

    Old as semi trucks are, I've never been able to scoff at one, or fit one into my garage. Guess I'm just stuck with this plain'o 19" KDS Avitar @ 1600x1200.
  • In my experience, barring abuse, an LCD will last longer than a CRT.

    Tube based monitors have several problems that come with age. The phosphors can burn in, they can lose vacumn, the electron gun can lose accuracy and coherence (fuzz out), and all phosphor based monitors lose brightness over time.

    Generally, if an LCD doesn't go bad in the first six months, it will last until you break it, or until the backlighting burns out, which part can often be replaced seperately.

    LCD projectors tend to fail due to heat. LCD in laptops tend to fail due to the flexible connection in the hinged lid. LCD in handhelds tend to fail due to impact, flexing, and bad electrical connections. An LCD monitor should not be subject to any of these problems.

  • Once again: DVI is not copy protection.

    This is a computer monitor. It does include VGA D-sub-15 connection and DVI-D (the LCD computer monitor standard). The manual explicitly states VGA, SVGA, and WUXGA are supported. The monitor will also accept NTSC video- that is analog, unencrypted, unprotected movies.

    From their website:

    Digital Interface As SyncMaster 240T is a digital monitor, there is no problem combining it with other digital equipment. SyncMaster 240T has s dual Input feature, which allows convenient switching between two computer through an input selector.

  • If the pixel density of an LCD is quadrupled, then the effect of one bad pixel is 1/4 as noticeable. Meaning that if you have 4x as many bad pixels and they are distributed randomly across the screen, it will be harder to notice. Quadruple again, and a bad pixel is 1/16 as noticeable. At this point, error rates could be much higher, as you wouldn't be able to see an individual bad pixel.

    That is what I am waiting for; massively higher resolution.
  • "Samsung, with digital technology, re-created the world. It was no accident but the result of great effort and technology."

    I sure as hell hope that's not true. I *KNEW* I shoulda eaten the blue pill...
  • It's not interlaced. The "i" is apparently an attempt at abbreviating "inch".

    However, they do support interlace on NTSC and PAL sources.

  • In this case, it was a real app designed for the studio and adjusted accordingly.

    What's the big deal, anyway? There are better ideas for screensavers out there - why copy the Matrix?

    Do you *really* wanna be Keanu Reaves?

  • I haven't priced it out, but i imagine you could purchase four 15" lcd displays along with a four head video card you could have a display of 30"x30" for probably a fraction of 8,000$.

  • Ha, I'll do you one better (Score:3)

    by sjbe ( 173966 ) on Friday March 02, 2001 @03:26AM (#390156)
    Want a guilt free display? It's called a book. Doesn't require any power at all and is non-polluting. Only byproduct is that you learn something.

    :-)

  • Nitrozac says [slashdot.org] size DEFINITELY matters.

  • The problem was caused by the government-imposed rate-cap which prevented private electric companies from raising rates to keep supply and demand at equilibrium

    The "funny thing" is that was supported by the power companies, who thought it would be a great way to gouge their customers. I hate to burst your conspiratorial little bubble, but the power outages were caused by one simple thing: nobody had expected electricity usage to go that high. That's it. Plants and infrastructure take so long to build you have to plan years in advance. They planned incorrectly.
    --

  • Re:Limiting factor in LCD Size (Score:3)

    by Emil Brink ( 69213 ) on Thursday March 01, 2001 @11:24PM (#390166) Homepage
    One classic QA problem with TFTs (which, as far as I know, really aren't LCDs technically) is that there is one transistor per pixel. This means that if manufacturing fails for one of these transistors, you end up with a screen with a dead pixel. Obviously, this problem becomes greater as the screen size, and the number of pixels, increases. I've heard that laptop computers, which also use TFTs for their screens, are sometimes sold with a couple of broken pixels, and that is understood as being a normal and expected part of the deal.

  • Re:Yes! BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHA..... (Score:3)

    by MustardMan ( 52102 ) on Thursday March 01, 2001 @11:24PM (#390167)
    well ACTUALLY...

    the official windows screensaver at Whatisthematrix [whatisthematrix.com] runs in 800x600, if memory serves. On a larger, higher resolution monitor, it will be a little box of matrix goodness surrounded by black bars. Add that to the fact that flat panel monitors generally look like crap if not set to the resolution they are designed for, and you've got one basic choice... xmatrix on UN*X, which, while great fun and the screensaver I use, is a basic hacked version which is not at all like the actual matrix code from the movie. (for instance, notice the lack of the "explosion-like" bursts of bright expanding squares as seen in the movie.).

    Looks like its time for you to start coding up a newer better version of xmatrix, to be released for all us /. ers to enjoy, naturally :)
  • Aren't DVD and HDTV 16:9? I was pretty sure that they were, because I found it interesting (but meaningless) that they went from 4:3 to 16:9, squaring both of the numbers. So why are computer monitors going 16:10 and not 16:9? Won't this cause black top and bottom borders still when viewing DVDs and HDTV?

  • This just in.... (Score:5)

    by slashdoter ( 151641 ) on Thursday March 01, 2001 @11:27PM (#390169) Homepage
    This just in....

    insiders at Samsung have reported one problem relating to the quality of the screen image, pet cats have been found trying to pounce on and kill the microsoft office paper clip. Sadly now cat has yet to succeed


    ________

  • Do they mean that the screen can be seen from 85 degrees away from the normal in every direction?

    Yes. If you read the link, it says 85 degrees viewing left, right, top, and bottom.

  • IBM has a higher-resolution screen (Score:5)

    by mayoff ( 29924 ) on Thursday March 01, 2001 @11:28PM (#390173) Homepage
    IBM's T210, supposedly shipping in May, is 20.8 inches and 2058 x 1536, for about $6000. It's mentioned in this article: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-201-4963181-0.htm l?tag=mn_hd [cnet.com]
  • I've always really liked xJack. Nothing flashy in the effects department, but a great idea. Just leave it on at work and coworkers are bound to notice at some point that your computer is slowly going insane.

    --

  • I just realized. You're going to need at least 10MB on your vid card to run this at full-res full color! And if Carmack gets his way (64bit floating point color) then I couldn't even run this monitor on my computer!
  • > /Ipso facto/ my Eizo weighs 38kg, and the Nokia about the same.

    Get this: I have a Sony W900 (24" widescreen) but old style CRT :-). It's 50Kg, and almost killed us (the delivery guy plus myself) getting it up 3 flights of steps.

    Anyway, like you say, these monitors are *deep*, when we get it to my front door I find that there was less than 1cm space spare to get the enormous box through the door - I almost had to unpack the damn thing outside!

    Mike
  • > Oh - what's this "delivery guy" nonsense?

    Yeah I'm such a wimp - I couldn't manage to carry the monitor 300km from the distributers to my flat, so I got a guy with a car to do it for me :-)

    Mike.

  • First my monitor then my guns (Score:3)

    by jimlintott ( 317783 ) on Friday March 02, 2001 @04:14AM (#390187) Homepage

    If those stinking CRT cops come for my monitor I'll fight them to the death. If I throw my old monitors at them then I can say that they are actually weapons and therefore protected under the second ammendment.

  • The thing I always wonder about these LCD screens is whether they last fairly well. I've had phosphor-based monitors last as long as ten years; if LCDs last a whole lot less, that's decidedly not a good thing.

    I'd be reluctant to spend $600 on a lower end one to find it fuzzing out after two years. This would make them rather more like "renting" than like "buying"... :-(

  • saw one this week... not that good (Score:4)

    by eulevik ( 258261 ) on Thursday March 01, 2001 @11:35PM (#390190)
    They had one of these at Digital Media World in Sydney this week.

    On close examination, you could see that the vertical in the letter 'I' in Microsoft Word was blurred across two pixels. So clearly it was an analog connection.

    Digital interfaces are the solution. The Apple widescreen monitor, which uses a digital interface, was the most common monitor at the show.

  • The SI unit for "solid angle" is the steradian.
    What is "170 degrees of conic view"? Do they mean that the screen can be seen (distorted as fuck) from 85 degrees away from the normal in every direction? (That's about 1.8pi steradians - 4pi is the whole sphere, 2pi is a hemisphere.)

    FP.

    --
  • Getting all the wires in, I think.

    Each pixel on the screen needs to have its own wires (3, presumably), and as your screens get bigger, their circumference to area ratio gets worse, so it becomes more of a problem to squeeze all the wires in along the back...

    After all, 2000 x 1000 x 3 is about 6 million little conducting channels.

    I think this is one of the reasons people are so excited about transparent conductors..

    Jules
  • An environmentally-aware computer user faces a difficult conflict since the computer manufacturing industry has traditionally been insensitive to environmental concerns.

    LCD display panels are an excellent way to sharply decrease the power requirements of a computing system. It is unfortunate, though, that given this manufacturers and retailers artificially inflate prices far beyond their natural market equilibrium.

    As the crises in California plainly demonstrates, we can no longer hold irresponsible power consumption habits, but must try to conserve in all areas of life. Recognizing the critical role that computers fill in today's economy, Congress should immediately move to reduce the cost of LCDs and other energy efficient display systems. Manufacturers cannot be allowed to enjoy the luxury of high prices when archaic cathode ray tubes are wasting incredible amounts of energy.

    Although drastic, perhaps the only real option the government has is an outright ban on CRTs, accompanied with a system to confiscate existing units. Only then will superior display technologies such as Samsung's unit be able to gain wide usage.
  • You're sure that was because of an analog connection? And not because the thing was running at a different resolution to its native resolution, and scaling?

    With a high resolution like that, scaling would look just-about-OK (compared to how horrible scaling 640x480 onto 800x600 used to look on the first generation ones, anyhow!), and maybe they were demoing the scaling.

    If this screen really doesn't have a digital interface, then I agree with your concerns..

    Jules
  • Congress should immediately move to reduce the cost of LCDs and other energy efficient display systems.

    Gee, you seem to be aware of California's electricity problems, and yet you don't know enough about the situation to avoid doing the same thing with monitors!

    The problem was that California government told the California companies how much they could charge for power, but de-regulated their suppliers, meaning their costs could go up, but their profits would go down because they couldn't charge consumers more when the prices went up. End result? The two biggest power companies in California filed for bankruptcy.

    And now you want to do the same thing with monitor manufacturers. When will you liberals learn? Keep the frigging government OUT of commerce! Let the market decide.

    Manufacturers cannot be allowed to enjoy the luxury of high prices when archaic cathode ray tubes are wasting incredible amounts of energy.

    Ummm... so your solution is put these companies out of business?

    Although drastic, perhaps the only real option the government has is an outright ban on CRTs, accompanied with a system to confiscate existing units. Only then will superior display technologies such as Samsung's unit be able to gain wide usage.

    Oh Christ I wasted all this time on a TROLL!!
  • A colleague of mine drives his SGI 1600SW [sgi.com] at 1600x1024 using DVI from his Nvidia and Matrox g400 cards (using XFree 4.0.2 and drivers downloaded from the manufacturers). The flat panel itself uses a proprietary SGI digital interface, however, the panel he bought (circa $1400) came with a multilink adapter [sgi.com] allowing DVI or analog input. The analog didn't look all that great, but the DVI was excellent.

    So, in short, 1600x1024 works perfectly, meaning that while there may be a 1024 limit on the vertical resolution DVI can drive, there is not a 1280 limitation on the horizontal resolution.

    Still, the standard is already showing its age now that even higher res monitors are shipping.

  • 16:10 (Score:4)

    by GypC ( 7592 ) on Friday March 02, 2001 @04:55AM (#390207) Homepage Journal

    Remember folks, that's a 16:10 aspect ratio, not 8:5. That's twice as big!

    :^)

    I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature.

  • But my girlfriend said size doesn't matter!

    Are you saying she lied to me?
  • Finally a monitor that's more expensive than the Apple Cinema Display [apple.com]!


  • You can have all my base, but touch my monitor and you'll really be on the path to destruction!
  • It would be nice!

    I hadn't thought that LCD displays were artificially inflated, though. I assumed it was just market economics --- the volumes haven't brought the prices down yet. And the technology is still new and expensive. I'd be interested to know if you have reason to think the price is artificial.

    I'm just assuming that they will gradually get more-and-more popular (already flatscreens are a fairly common sight in banks and so forth, the succesful European internet cafe 'EasyEverything' uses them exclusively, I think), and prices will come down.

    I'm hoping my next monitor will be flat-screen, one way or the other. We haven't heard much of plasma screens recently; I was hoping they'd be a nice competitor technology to push prices down.

    Jules

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