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Displays Hardware Technology

ViewSonic VP2290b Super High-Res Monitor 408

Posted by timothy from the creative-rationalization dept.
Svenne writes "Ok, TrustedReviews have put up a review of the amazing ViewSonic VP2290b TFT display which has a massive 9.2Mpixel resolution. Check it out here. I'll take two ;-)" Pricewatch lists vendors selling this monitor starting at a bit more than $6,000 -- video card is extra.
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ViewSonic VP2290b Super High-Res Monitor More

ViewSonic VP2290b Super High-Res Monitor

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  • Toys for the rich (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @11:57AM (#9572301) Homepage Journal
    At $6000, what a deal. Just hook that baby up with your Blue Light Special [pcworld.com] and you'll rule your block with an iron fist.

    Now, if there were only something worth watching on TV... Oh, the TdF is coming up, but usually the resolution is on par with VHS, unless they do something vastly different this year.

    I'm still happy with my 1.3 megapixel 500:1 contrast 17" LCD. Anything wider and I get some weird feeling my head needs to be stretched. Has anyone else noticed something like that? There was something about a big convex display that didn't cause that sort of sensation.

    And that 3840x2400 resolution should give your graphics card a workout trying to render your FPS games at biggie frame rates. At what pixel density do you fail to notice a difference in image quality, anyway? I turned on one pixel on my monitor and can hardly even see it!

    • Re:Toys for the rich (Score:5, Funny)

      by Noose For A Neck ( 610324 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:05PM (#9572410)
      You find anything wider than a 17" display too wide to comfortably view all at once?

      Perhaps you should view your monitor for farther away than 3 inches.

      • Interesting you say this. I have an HP L2335 23" LCD, and I find it big to the point where I had to rearrange some of my home office furniture so as to create more space between the keyboard the the LCD. I can only imagine what Apple's 30" and this monster Viewsonic must be like.

    • Re:Toys for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)

      by X_Caffeine ( 451624 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:17PM (#9572582)
      FPS's? TV? dude: this display isn't made for you.

      Read the Viewsonic [viewsonic.com] product page: ideal for satellite imaging and digital content creation. Says nothing about a playable framerate (with a friggin Matrox Parhelia!) or watching bootleg anime DiVX movies.

      This is a problem common to Slashdot readers -- "if it doesn't work for me, it's obviously not good for anybody."

      P.S. after a year on a 23" CRT I can't imagine downgrading to anything less; a friend of mine uses two of them!

      • Re:Toys for the rich (Score:2, Insightful)

        by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
        FPS's? TV? dude: this display isn't made for you.

        That never stops anyone from using any technology or the latest and greatest for other than its intended use.

        Read the Viewsonic product page: ideal for satellite imaging and digital content creation. Says nothing about a playable framerate (with a friggin Matrox Parhelia!) or watching bootleg anime DiVX movies.

        And a few of them will find their way into those jobs. The rest will be bought by or for people who don't absolutely need them but absolutely

        • Re:Toys for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)

          by PhoenixFlare ( 319467 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:42PM (#9572887) Journal
          No, it's an insight into the behaviour of people in general. Who actually buys "good enough"? If you do, you find in about 3 years time that it isn't. It was only good enough for then, but eveything else moved on.

          Maybe you've just been lucky or are choosing to ignore it, but what he mentioned does happen quite often, actually.

          One good example would be the constant disbelief by many Linux zealots here that there's any reason to use Windows, forgetting the whole gaming aspect.

          Or maybe when a new version of KDE or something comes out, and the whining begins about how there's too much eye candy, everyone should just stick to bare-bones or the command line, etc.

          Heck, just read the comments on the recent story about standardized plugins - more than a few "I don't want any animation or rich content, therefore this project is a waste of time" comments from more people that can't understand why anyone would want more than a simple and/or bare-bones experience.

          • Re:Toys for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)

            by dasmegabyte ( 267018 ) <das@OHNOWHATSTHISdasmegabyte.org> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @01:50PM (#9573631) Homepage Journal
            What I think is appalling is the assumption that because a person does not personally need a thing, that it is unneccessary and worthy of contempt. Come on, you guys -- you don't REALLY think that the whole of the economy is built around your personal needs, do you?

            I mean, as a man, I personally have no use for tampons, but I can understand where some people might find them rather helpful.

            Incidentally, an 8 megapixel display would be very useful for those of us who like digital photography. Right now, I have a choice of seeing my shots at actual resolution, or being able to see the whole shot. A monitor like this would make it much easier, and much faster, to detect things like distracting moire effects, JPEG noise and spot blemishes.

      • Re:Toys for the rich (Score:5, Funny)

        by ryanvm ( 247662 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:40PM (#9572874)
        After a year on a 23" CRT I can't imagine downgrading to anything less; a friend of mine uses two of them!

        Guys, I wouldn't recommend doing that. Look what it's done to
        his friend [schlocktoberfest.com].
      • I still want one. I'm a geek so I'm sure I could find something cool (geeky) to do with it.

    • You aren't really going to want to run your FPS games on this monitor. Even if you had some insane video card that could pump out a decent # of frames per second at that resolution.

      Look at the response time in the specs: 50 ms. EEK. usually 'slow' LCD's have ~30 ms response times. Good gaming ones have 16 ms times. Expect to see a bit of ghosting on that monitor when playing FP Shooters.

    • Nvidia's coming out with a tech that allows you to setup multiple graphics cards that paralell process your games; you can have 2 or 3 cards in a machine with PCI-X and they'll all work together to render a picture together. I can definatly see each card working on 1/3 of the screen or something.

      I'd bet graphical artists would love that kind of a moniter though. With something like that, you'd almost never see the pixels.

    • Re:Toys for the rich (Score:5, Interesting)

      by chefmonkey ( 140671 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:31PM (#9572782)
      At what pixel density do you fail to notice a difference in image quality, anyway?

      The number that I've found is that the resolution of a human eye (for an individual with 20/20 vision) is about 60 pixels per degree, or about 140 pixels per inch for a screen 2 feet away from your eyes. (Reference: buried in this article [da-lite.com]. So, thinking about your 17" monitor: 17" diagonal with a 4:3 width-to-height ratio... oh, that's a 3-4-5 triangle. Never noticed that before. Anyway, that's 13.6 inches across, or 94 pixels per inch. So, you'd need to either sit further away than 2 feet for the monitor to exceed the average human eye resolution. On the other hand, if you could run it at 1904x1428 (not exactly a standard resolution, but still...) then you'd be there.

      Working out the numbers for the megamonitor is left as an excercise for the reader, once the site that lists specs recovers from the slashdotting.

    • Toys for the rich? I thought most slashdotters were smart enough to know that it rarely remains that way.

      I remember a time when people said that about the original Pentium. Nobody ever needed that amount of power. /sarcasm

      And that 3840x2400 resolution should give your graphics card a workout trying to render your FPS games at biggie frame rates.

      Fine. These are supposed to be for high end professional use, not gaming. Gaming will be eventually.

      I don't have the money, but I want to see a 300dpi disp

    • Re:Toys for the rich (Score:3, Interesting)

      by severoon ( 536737 )

      At what pixel density do you fail to notice a difference in image quality, anyway?

      Ah, a subject that to answer properly requires a foray into many frontiers: physical, biological, psychological, mathematical...a true opportunity for /.ing geek-speaking fun.

      You're right, though, at some point the human eye can no longer discern a "real" difference between two screen resolutions, though it's apparently higher than we thought before digital cameras came along. Now that the professional photographers ha

  • Product link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Karamchand ( 607798 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @11:58AM (#9572304)
    ViewSonic's Product Info [viewsonic.com] about the VP2290b.

    • VGA, SVGA, XGA, ... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bfields ( 66644 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:18PM (#9572596) Homepage
      "QUXGA-W"? Who comes up with these names? I mean, is there really anyone for whom that makes more sense than just "3840x2400"? --Bruce Fields

      • Re:VGA, SVGA, XGA, ... (Score:5, Informative)

        by devnull17 ( 592326 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @01:07PM (#9573174) Homepage Journal

        XGA is 1024x768. It's pretty much standard on (lower-end) laptops these days (and probably desktops, too, for that matter).

        Ultra XGA, or UXGA, is 1600x1200. That's about as good as consumer-level equipment gets at the moment.

        Then there's Wide Ultra XGA, or UXGA-W (although I usually see it written as "WUXGA"). Essentially the same as UXGA, but with a wider aspect ratio (1920x1200).

        The "Q" most likely stands for "quad."

        So yeah, it does make a little sense. That being said, if I mention this to someone, I'll probably go with "3840x2400," myself.

    • All I can think to do is compare this to the recently announced, equally outlandish Apple 30" monitor specs [apple.com].

      It's vaguely interesting, even if I'll never be able to afford either. A few highlights :

      ViewSonic : 22.2" 3840x2400 $6,000
      Apple : 29.7" 2560 x 1600 $3,300

      The ViewSonic page is completely devoid of response time stats... any ideas why?

      What application requires that kind of pixel density, by the way?

  • Tell me (Score:4, Funny)

    by harley_frog ( 650488 ) <harley_frog&yahoo,com> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @11:59AM (#9572330) Journal
    Why should I shell out money for a monitor that costs more than my Harley?
    • because it's super high res?

      obviously the product isn't for you though.
      or me.

      it's still something to drool at.

    • Re:Tell me (Score:5, Funny)

      by garcia ( 6573 ) * on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:03PM (#9572385)
      Because LCD panels don't kill you when your machine crashes.

    • Re:Tell me (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *
      Why should I shell out money for a monitor that costs more than my Harley?

      You bought a cheap Harley.

      At least there's an option for you to be buried [cnn.com] with it.

      Maybe you could have one of these great monitors put in place of your headstone, showing you smiling away in your heyday as you cruised the american road. I wonder when we'll get like that.

    • ...so don't buy it.

      I don't think Viewsonic would have made it if they didn't think they could sell it.

      I sure wouldn't want to live somewhere where a commitee decides what products people need.

      A Four HD picture-in-picture display!


    • the monitor won't leak oil everywhere and wake up all the neighbors with its loud exhaust? :o)

      /has a 1981 GPz550 in storage

    • Re:Tell me (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Sique ( 173459 )
      YOU don't need to buy this monitor. But for instance computer tomographic pictures come in a resolution of 3840x2400 pixel. So if you wonder why this display has exactly this specification: Now you know. IBM's T220/T221 with the same resolution and the same panel was marketed to exactly this target group: medical picture analysis.

  • Seriously.. (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    who needs 9.2Mpixel resolution for porn?


    Me!

  • for that price (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bunburyist ( 664958 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:00PM (#9572338)
    For that price you can get several decent quality LCD TFT monitors and a Dual-view Nvidia card going, which is pretty nice. Movies on one screen and work on the other ;). Linux support is sketchy for dual-view in my experience, but it'd probably work if you follow the instructions! either way, this is likely only cool if you're doing some sort of digital photo/movie editing.
    • Linux support may take a bit of work to get going for multiple monitors, but X applications handle multiple displays much better than Windows apps.
      • A couple of years ago I'd have agreed with you. But Mandrake (no idea about others, I'd hope much the same holds true) have done some wonderful work in making their X configuration tools xinerama capable - to the point where minimal tweaking is needed.

        I have hand-hacked an xinerama-capable XF86Config and can offer this advice if you really want to do it the hard way - don't.
    • This is for pro graphic artists, and serious photo/movie editing.

      You want to be able to manipulate that raw image from a 5 megapixel camera, have it all onscreen at once (no scaling).. Have it look closer to the printed output, etc..

      Sheesh, I wonder how many more "all i do is write perl scripts, jerk off, and read slashdot, why should I buy this" posts are going to be made.

      • Re:for that price (Score:4, Funny)

        by j-turkey ( 187775 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:22PM (#9572677) Homepage
        All i do is write perl scripts, jerk off, and read slashdot, why should I buy this? ;P
        • All i do is write perl scripts, jerk off, and read slashdot, why should I buy this?

          I just thought of a good reason to buy it! First, I can pack more porn onto a single screen. Not only that, but I'd have enough screen real estate to write perl scripts, read slashdot, and jerk off to internet porn at the same time!

          Tecnology roolz!

      • Sheesh, I wonder how many more "all i do is write perl scripts, jerk off, and read slashdot, why should I buy this" posts are going to be made.

        Six and a half.

    • Linux support is sketchy for dual-view in my experience

      No doubt. I had a Matrox Parhelia triple-head card with 3 LCD monitors. (Screenshot/Photo [blixel.com] Screenshot/Photo [blixel.com]) [MS Flight Simulator 2004 under WinXP Pro]

      Linux support for the Matrox card was deplorable, so I sold it and bought an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro. The ATI card's dual monitor capabilities were very quirky. Too much B.S. to explain. Plus the UT2K4-demo ran like crap under Linux (low framre rate) and looked like ass compared to Windows.

      I was told
    • It isn't the size, it's the DPI and sheer number of pixels.

      Also the IBM T221 [ibm.com] or the Iiyama AQU5611DTBK [iiyama-bg.com] displays are (worthy) competition. I'd go for the IBM display myself.

      Take a look at IBM's list of potential uses: ...
      * Engineering--view and rotate large 3D models e.g. automobiles and aircraft
      * Gas & oil industry--seismic imaging for exploration, production and reservoir management
      * Geographic Information Systems (GIS)--mapping, satellite imaging, asset management
      * Medical assessment--radiography, c
  • Is there any point to posting a picture for me view on my lowly monitor? ;)

  • Viewsonic support sucks (Score:3, Informative)

    by cloudmaster ( 10662 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:01PM (#9572353) Homepage Journal
    Better hope you don't need to make a warranty claim on that - it'll take weeks to get your monitor back (they don't cross-ship big monitors), and they'll promise you'll get a new replacement *this* time but send another refurb that'll blow up within a few months, *again*. Not that I'm bitter or anything... :)

  • Definitely cool ... but not too practical (Score:5, Informative)

    by daviddennis ( 10926 ) * <david@amazing.com> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:02PM (#9572376) Homepage
    The reviewer noted that text was too small to read, and you would have to use another monitor for pallettes and the like. I would think that would be a little clumsy - I know I feel that way with my current dual monitor setup (one 23" Cinema Display, one NEC 17" LCD). I would think you could increase the size of the text - I know that's pretty easy with MacOS X since icons and so on are designed to size proportionately.

    It needs the same two DVI channels as the new Apple Cinema Display 30" but it's much higher resolution. The higher refresh rate of the 30" should make that the sounder buy for people like me who are more interested in video than image editing. That makes this an awfully specialized tool even for those who have the bucks.

    Still, being able to see an entire image at full resolution on a screen is quite the cool trick. I'd be envious of its owner but wouldn't buy it for myself - and I will buy the 30" Cinema Display once my finances are in better shape.

    D

    • Re:Definitely cool ... but not too practical (Score:5, Informative)

      by notsoclever ( 748131 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:18PM (#9572611) Journal
      I know that's pretty easy with MacOS X since icons and so on are designed to size proportionately.
      Unfortunately, that's a myth. OSX does not use vector graphics for the UI itself, and the various UI elements are definitely pixel-based, even icons they're provided in a number of resolutions all the way up to 128x128, giving them the illusion of being scalable, which can be used for some cute tricks like having an icon which actually changes to different images based on how large it is. But icons are basically just MIPmapped polygons, and that's as close as anything in the OSX UI gets to DPI-independence.

      Also, there's no built-in way to change the system font sizes, and using things like TinkerTool to do it can mess things up (since pretty much all of the UI elements are fixed pixel-size still).

      To make matters worse, for the few things which are DPI-aware (such as viewing PDFs in Preview.app, and for display-oriented font sizing and so on), there's no way to actually specify your display's DPI OSX insists that all monitors are 72dpi (the old Mac standard) even though pretty much every Apple display sold today is around 100dpi (the only exception being the 14" iBook which is still around 72dpi), so when it tries to display things at "actual size" they're actually shrunk down quite a bit.

      With the way that Cocoa works, they could conceivably make the UI truly DPI-independent in the future, but AFAICT Carbon is a lost cause.

      • One of my pet peeves with OSX is the hard coded 72dpi display output. Both X and Windows are more flexible in this regard. I was shocked. For an OS that is supposed to have excellent font and graphic capability I had assumed that changeing the display's dpi would be basic functionality.

  • No thanks (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Quasar1999 ( 520073 )
    One monitor that does less than the 10 monitors I could buy for the same price? Why? I can get 10 17" LCD monitors for the same price. I could arrange them in any sort of grid pattern I want, even factoring in the extra cost of video cards to drive them all, I still end up with WAY more screen realestate. So why would anyone need a single monitor that does this resolution, and not use multiple smaller, cheaper ones to acheive the same, if not better, resolution?

    • Re:No thanks (Score:2, Informative)

      by stratjakt ( 596332 )
      Not the same thing, at all.

      It's not about size or real estate, it's about pixel density and picture clarity.

      Graphic artists would kill for a monitor with pixel density closely matching that of a printer (2400dpi or so).. That's not here yet, but this is closer.

      Think WYSIWYG.... to the X-treme!
    • why would anyone need a single monitor that does this resolution, and not use multiple smaller, cheaper ones to acheive the same, if not better, resolution?

      I'm not saying your wrong or that there is anything bad about using multiple monitors but there are reasons to want a single screen, such as:
      • Desktop space. Multiple monitors take up more space than one.
      • Power consumption. This thing might be a power hog (I have no idea if it actually is), but 5 smaller monitors will almost certainly consume more p
      • While I'd say 10 monitors is a bit nuts, as a user of a duel monitor system under linux, I can confidently say that it's awesome.

        1. Duel monitors is a cince to setup under linux.
        2. Once you get used to 2048x768 (or whatever 2x your current workspace is) it'll be hard for you to go back to one monitor.

        Just doing stuff like having the docs/spec open on one monitor while you code on the other is worth it.

        The one drawback is the space. Two 17" CRT monitors side by side take up a fair ammount of table space.

    • Re:No thanks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by protohiro1 ( 590732 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:19PM (#9572619) Homepage Journal
      Specialized usage. It is not priced for consumers. This is probably going to be marketed to the medical field, where very high resolution monitors are very useful for view medical imaging. In fact, the low resolution of most LCDs is what is preventing hospitals from switching to an all digital solution for xRays. Your 10 17" LCD solution would not be useful in a hospital setting (or for view satallite images or any number of other special usage).
    • Take a look at the IBM T221 [ibm.com] and look at the listed example applications.

      These things are meant for scientists and doctors, not consumers like you and I.

  • My goodness (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Noose For A Neck ( 610324 )
    That certainly blows away Apple's new offerings.

    It's good to see that manufacturers are finally shipping higher resolution stand-alone LCD displays - until now, most high res displays were limited to laptops. For example, my roommate's Dell laptop had a 16:9 screen (something else you won't see in desktop monitors) and a ridiculously sharp screen, something on the order of 1400 horizontal pixels on a 17" screen.

    What I'm really wondering, though, is what the refresh rate on these monitors is. I've seen s

    • Re:My goodness (Score:3, Informative)

      by mcg1969 ( 237263 )
      That certainly blows away Apple's new offerings.

      Hardly. This is only a 22" screen, so all the extra resolution is going into detail, not screen real estate. It seems to me that you really wouldn't want to fit much more on this screen than you would, say, a 1920x1200 22" screen. You won't want to make the fonts any smaller than they already are! So instead, you'll probably just use larger fonts so the result is a smoother picture. But is that really necessary for most practical work?

      So I would say that Ap

  • High quality 3D displays (Score:5, Interesting)

    by GillBates0 ( 664202 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:03PM (#9572392) Homepage Journal
    I hope they combine this technology with 3D [slashdot.org] displays [slashdot.org]. The main concern with the glass-less Sharp 3D display is that the resolution reduces by half in 3D mode, because only half the total pixels are viewed by each eye.

    With 9Mpixels at their disposal, they could develop some very high quality 3D displays. Ofcourse, the total number of pixels is an arbitrary measure without mention of the display size. If they're spread over a large area, resolution will still remain low (and no, I couldn't RTFA though I wanted to).

  • dead pixel warranty? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rexguo ( 555504 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:05PM (#9572407) Homepage
    At 9.2M pixels, what are the chances of dead pixels? How do I even spot one??

  • Pricewatch (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wireless Joe ( 604314 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:12PM (#9572526) Homepage
    I notice one Pricewatch vendor is offering these for $10*





    *$5990 s/h charge applies.
  • The gross weight of this thing is nearly 40 pounds. But did you realise that it's a 23" monitor with a 200ish ppi resoution. So it's not the biggest, just the highest resolution. Still very cool, but not my bag of chips. And for $6000, i could almost get 20 new Apple 30" Oh to dream... oh to be a viking...

  • Comparison to Apple (Score:5, Interesting)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:12PM (#9572533)
    The 30" monitor Apple announced the other day [apple.com] measures 2560x1600 pixels, which comes to 4.1 megapixel resolution -- although it does require a graphics card with two ports, so connecting two such monitors gives you an ultra-widescreen 8.2 MP display.

    ViewSonic's specs says theirs offers 3840x2400 pixels, quite a bit higher than Apple's -- but it's only 22.2" diagonal compared to Apple's 30". Whether higher resolution or larger workspace is more important depends on the individual, of course, but I personally would prefer fewer pixels in a larger screen -- that kind of ultra-high-density DPI isn't the sort of thing I can imagine needing if I were a graphics pro.

  • No improvement (Score:5, Funny)

    by fijimf ( 676893 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:13PM (#9572536)

    I checked out the screen shots, and they didn't look any better than my current display.

  • Human eye? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Black Parrot ( 19622 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:13PM (#9572546)


    Does anyone know at what point the resolution becomes finer than the human eye can perceive? Is this monitor there yet?

  • You'll know its time to upgrade… (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:14PM (#9572552)
    ...when the number of dead pixels allowed by the new display's warranty approaches the total number of pixels in your current display.
  • Pricewatch lists vendors selling this monitor starting at a bit more than $6,000 -- video card is extra.

    Sounds kinda like those advertisements for the latest kids toy...batteries not included. Mind you, for most kids toys the batteries are too much more of an expense, especially compared this this monitor. The idea that they would sell the monitor for 6K and no video card is insane IMHO. Like most tech things, I think I'll wait several months before even considering to buy it.

    Interesting thing about

  • I was amused to note on the product page, that it includes free software to magnify things by 200% so that they are large enough so that you can see them, thus emulating monitors that are 1/4 the price. I could buy one of those 1/4-price monitors and do the same without the software. :-)

    Yes, I'm aware that I've stated it with a bit of a slant. Still. Heck, I find the usual fonts a bit small at 100dpi - probably just my old eyes, but they are the only ones I have.

  • Monitor Issues (Score:4, Funny)

    by karniv0re ( 746499 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:20PM (#9572642) Journal
    Their website must be made to only be viewed on their moniter, because I'm not seeing anything on mine.

  • Higher Resolution than Reality (Score:5, Funny)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:22PM (#9572676) Homepage Journal
    Finally monitors have higher resolution than reality. As we all know, reality is only 8 megapixels. I think that's worth a measly 6 grand...

  • Monitors exceeding software limitations (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:24PM (#9572696) Homepage
    We are quickly reaching the point where the resolution of the display is going to experience bottlenecks from other components.

    1) LCD panels with high resolutions (>1600x1200) need 2 or more DVI connectors. Yuck!

    Programmers need to be aware of these or their applications will not function in the near future.

    2) Many software assumes a specific DPI
    A program that is meant to run at 1024x768 at 96dpi will look like a postage stamp when you get a 300dpi display device (coming soon). A 16x16 icon will be the width of a human hair. Software needs to know that pixels aren't a valid measurement -- You need pixels and DPI.

    Mac's got this right from the start. Applications don't display based on RESOLUTION, they use the monitor's SIZE. From there, you can increase or decrease the zoom level (by changing the resolution). PC users scoffed at this, but they will be the ones needing a magnifying glass to use their applications.

    3) Much software assumes a specific aspect ratio (4:3 and square pixels)
    Open up Microsoft Word or Photoshop or Paint and draw a circle. It assumes a circle is the same number of pixels wide as it is tall. Well, that's great if your display has square pixels. That wasn't true at the old 320x200 or 640x400 resolutions of the old days. It has been a safe assumption for about 10 years now, but it isn't always true anymore. For example, if you use an LCD with a 5:4 aspect ratio (like 1200x1024) but run it in a 4:3 resolution (like 1024x768) things will be squished.

    (I find it amusing when someone tells me how great a DVD looks on their LCD display, when Windows Media Player is stretching the image to the wrong size because it places black-bars on a screen that doesn't need them).
    • 2) Many software assumes a specific DPI A program that is meant to run at 1024x768 at 96dpi will look like a postage stamp when you get a 300dpi display device (coming soon). A 16x16 icon will be the width of a human hair. Software needs to know that pixels aren't a valid measurement -- You need pixels and DPI.

      Icons, toolbars, and other gui widgets will just move to vector graphics and instead of using pixels to define size, you'll use some other unit that represents actual viewable size.

  • Mirror (Score:2, Informative)

    by Shachaf ( 781326 )
    The website was getting slow, so here's a mirror:

    Page 1 [spymac.net]
    Page 2 [spymac.net]
    Page 3 [spymac.net]
  • I'm pretty sure these panels are made by IBM and were first sold as the IBM T220/T221, introduced back in 2001. I had the pleasure of working with the prototypes well before that, and they're truly amazing displays. They're sized to be able to mimic two 8.5 x 11 sheets of paper side-by-side at a jaw-dropping 200+ pixel-per-inch resolution. Color, contrast, brightness, viewing angle, and especially black level were all better than anything I had seen at the time (but that was 2000, 2001). They do stretch

  • Not new, not the only 9MP one either... (Score:5, Informative)

    by csirac ( 574795 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:30PM (#9572773)
    The IBM T221 [ibm.com] has a resolution of 3840x2400 in 22.2".

    Whilst its RRP from IBM is $8,399 USD you can find some resellers advertising them for $3,999 USD on froogle such as this [google.com].

    The Iiyama AQU5611DTBK [iiyama-bg.com] is also a 22" 9.2 Megapixel device.

    You need two DVI cables to run these things at a decent screen update rate (no screen flicker, it just takes lots of digital bandwidth to pump that many pixels) when using all those pixels. The cards required are around $1,000 and I've seen Matrox and Nvidia configurations mentioned with the IBM display, though I'm sure ATI's FireGL cards could do the job, software willing.

    So, are we going to get a news post about the IBM and Iiyama displays too?

    Check this article [d-digest.com] which talks about the Matrox Parhelia 256HR for use with all three. It's from September 2003.
  • Their reputation precedes and urinates on any product that they create. If you have a Viewsonic monitor you know of what I speak.

    They are cheap, flimsy, dim, hard to calibrate, and go out quickly.

    I know if I was spending six grand on something, it wouldn't have Viewsonic's name on it.

    • Re:Viewsonic (Score:5, Insightful)

      by W2k ( 540424 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:41PM (#9572882) Journal
      That's news to me. I'm not a Viewsonic owner, but I was under the impression that Viewsonic bought out Nokia's computer display segment. Nokia's monitors were always awesome (I own a 446XS, best CRT I ever used) so I would expect Viewsonic's monitors to be among the best, as well.

      Do you have any actual evidence, even subjective (links?) to back up your statement that Viewsonic monitors are bad?
  • I bought a Viewsonic PF790 and it looked great. Then it died. I sent it in and they sent me back a monitor that died one year out of warranty. My next monitor will be whatever's cheap, since I know buying the expensive display doesn't mean it'll last, either.

  • A resolution gripe (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ToadMan8 ( 521480 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @12:56PM (#9573052)
    Two things:
    First of all why can't one find a 19 inch LCD that does 1600 x 1200 for a reasonable price? They barely exist at all and consumers of menial computers keep buying dumb 17 inch ones that run at 1024 x 768 and 19 inchers that are plugging away at 1280 x 1024. I have no interest in giving up my SyncMaster 950p until I can get a comparably sided LCD for 400 or 450 or so that runs at least 1600 x 1200.

    Next gripe, why do people never post high resolution images of anything online? Jump on Google image search and try to find a 1600 x 1200 or even 1280 x 1024 of basically anything (cityscapes, famous people, logos, whatever). The only thing that big is geek vacation photo gallerys and NASA photos. And they are nerds. Does everyone else not appreciate high resoultions or is their equipment so crappy a 1024 pixel wide image scrolling two pages over. Maybe those fucking IE toolbars have taken over their shit so much they only have a 800 pixel wide view. Gaaa.

  • My perfect display (Score:3, Informative)

    by Omnifarious ( 11933 ) * <eric-slash AT omnifarious DOT org> on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @01:08PM (#9573184) Homepage Journal

    This is exactly the display I want for coding work. I can't understand why people complain about text size! That's an OS defficiency, not a display problem. More resolution is never bad. The OS should let you scale all the fonts on the display.

    I would love to have this display and work with all anti-aliased fonts, even in my editor windows, even if I had to give up emacs (perish the thought) to do it.

  • Here's what I want... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bgarcia ( 33222 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @01:44PM (#9573549) Homepage Journal
    At 204 pixels per inch this display has pretty much matched the quality you'd expect from a standard photographic print viewed at normal distances.
    Ok LCD monitor manufacturers, here's what I want:

    A 10 inch monitor with this pixel density.

    I don't care so much about have a big monitor. What I really want are lots of pixels. A 10" monitor with 200ppi would give me a 1600x1200 display! I would be very happy to have this in a nice, compact laptop! Or even as a desktop display!

  • We have a few of these... except... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by GC ( 19160 ) on Wednesday June 30, 2004 @06:25PM (#9576768)
    they're called IBM T221's [theinquirer.net], and we've had them for about 2 years now.

    These are probably re-badged, re-assembled models of exactly the same technology.

    Incredibly though, I think the IBM T221's are cheaper...

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