Nano-Pixels Hold Potential For Screens Far Denser Than Today's Best

Zothecula (1870348) writes "The Retina displays featured on Apple's iPhone 4 and 5 models pack a pixel density of 326 ppi, with individual pixels measuring 78 micrometers. That might seem plenty good enough given the average human eye is unable to differentiate between the individual pixels, but scientists in the UK have now developed technology that could lead to extremely high-resolution displays that put such pixel densities to shame."

Re:What's the point?

[Anonymous Coward]

Small point: If they keep making the pixels smaller, holographic displays could be possible.

Re:What's the point?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Less exciting; but sufficiently dense pixels might also make subpixel defects less obnoxious, even if the actual resolution requirements are low enough that multiple physical pixels are driven as a single logical pixel to reduce computational costs or display link bandwidth. And more acceptable defects means fewer scrapped panels.

1.2 arcminute per line pair

[Anonymous Coward]

The human visual system is good for at most a resolution of around 1.2 arcminute per line pair. That's an outstanding eye, with outstanding conditions. Granted, looking at a light source like an iPhone screen is in general what I would call excellent conditions, except in the shadow detail areas. If they go OLED, even that will improve.

But the bottom line is, do the math. It's pretty simple geometry. If you exceed what the human visual system can perceive, all you're doing is making marketing hype.

Same thing applies to movie theaters -- where the hype is now 4k. Even Sony admits unless you are sitting in the first few rows of the theater, 4k is overkill and 2k is plenty. If you like the back row, a 4k projection won't give you any improvement over a 720p HDTV signal.

I'm just sayin'... Do the math.

Can I have an indigo pixel?

[jfengel]

One possibility would be improving the color range, even if the resolution isn't improved. Rather than cramming in three phosophors per pixel, perhaps we could have four, or more. There's a considerable chunk of color space not well represented by RGB color.

I don't know how much of a difference it would make to TV viewers or gamers, but I know that artists would be grateful for a better color range. The conversion from RGB to CMYK is always a bit of a crapshoot; things that look great on your screen don't look as good when they come back from the printers, and there's a whole range of stuff it doesn't occur to you to try because you can't see it.

I could even imagine that it might be handy for medical imaging and other applications where you want to cram as much information onto the screen as possible: more pixels may not improve things but more colors might. Though more pixels could achieve that as well: it would be nice to be able to zoom in by bringing your face closer to the screen without simply seeing bigger pixels. Head motion is kinaesthetically appealing: you can move in and out without losing your sense of overall place.

Sharp already makes a four-pixel TV, with an added yellow (which is especially helpful in skin tones). I think it would be neat to be able to produce true indigo, violent, and cyan. If this lets you add more phosphors without costing resolution, it might not be a killer app, but it could be a desirable thing.