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Hardware

The Ultimate Flat Panel Monitor Solution 46

Posted by CmdrTaco from the you-gotta-be-kidding dept.
Reeses wrote in to send us linkage to a monitor that makes my SGI Screen look a little less sparkly. Mass Engineered Design Inc has screens that can be configured with 16 flat panels in on desktop. The Horizontal Triple has an aggregate resolution of 3072 x 768 and costs a mere (cough) $6500. They say solutions are available for various UNIXs but that don't specify. And then again, with all the multi-head stuff coming in XF86, it might not matter as much.
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The Ultimate Flat Panel Monitor Solution More

The Ultimate Flat Panel Monitor Solution

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  • (Note: may experiance is with the Silicon Graphics 1600SW flatpanel, YMMV)

    Flatpanels aren't for everybody, at least not yet. There are many advantages, however there are also several disadvatages to flatpanels. I'm going to list them so you can make an informed decision by yourself.
    Advantages
    • Super crisp display -- Pictures displayes on the Flatpanel look REAL, whereas they look like pictures displayed on a CRT on my monitor.
    • Small size -- Just look how much of your desk is consumed by a regular monitor
    • Lower emissions -- Less worry about being slowly irradiated by your own personal xray cannon
    • Less heat output -- Less energy consumption for lower monthy electricy bills (at least in the summer)
    • Immune to magnetic fields -- No more worrying about your speakers distorting your monitor, and vice versa
    • 100% digital interface -- No more digital->analog conversion mean no more lossiness.

    But there are some disadvatages
    • Expensive -- Although this will change if they become popular, flatpanels are still pretty expensive
    • Narrow viewing angle -- You can only view about 60 degrees to any angle, and less if its from the top
    • You can't change the resolutions, this includes things like fullscreen VESA modes, so a vast majority of games simply won't work with a flatpanel.
    • Younger technology -- Flatpanels (other than Laptop displays) are a relativly new technology and are going to have more problems than your tried and true CRT, especially w.r.t. manufacturing defects.
    I hope this is enough information for you to get started on an informed decision.
  • Silicon Graphics does. Check out The Silicon Graphics webpage [sgi.com] for the 1600SW. I've got one sitting right next to my CRT and people just marvel at the clarity of the screen. I should point out that the 1600SW has a 110dpi resolution, which largely accounts for its incredible crispness.

    Disclaimer: I work for Silicon Graphics.
  • Don't get me wrong, I love the 1600SW, but depending on what you do, it may not be right for you.

    Warning: once you try the 1600SW for a while, you will never want to go back to regular CRTs.
  • Try a more modern flatpanel. There is a world of difference between looking at photos on a CRT and looking at photos on a flatpanel. On the flatpanel they look like you can just reach in a grab them, while on CRTs, they tend to look, well...projected. As an added bonus, SGI ships a color-balancing utility with all of its flatpanels (the "ColorLock").

    Of course all of the opinions expressed above are my own.
  • Hmmm. Maybe I'm misreading you here (apologies if so), but I think you're comparing apples and oranges.

    Hate to burst your bubble, but any TFT display is *analog* -- that's right... how do you think they get those bazillions of sparlky tantalizing colours? you're driving the electronics with analog RGB signals and in most cases, standard sync pulses.

    You're right that in most cases the LCD monitors are using the same RGB signal as the CRT monitors (and convert them back to digital at the monitor), but as noted above the SGI monitors don't do that. Those bazillions of sparkly colors are generated with 24/32 bit numbers (as in all PC video these days) but unlike in the normal case, they're not converted to an analog RGB signal. They're sent directly to the monitor which uses them to control the transistor switches that make up the display.

    Now, I suppose you could mean that there are no digital signals, only analog representations of digital signals, but that is mostly a semantic game played by first year engineering students, and has no real practical significance outside the design labs.

    Analog does *not* mean lossy or lousy or unclear. Analog makes the world go 'round, my friend. Digital makes it easy to convey the info, but ultimately you're dealing with analog.

    Again, right in theory, (somewhat) wrong in practice. As noted in your rant, digital these days uses speeds that make it necessary to treat the signal paths as transmission lines, but this only matters to the people making the hardware. As far as practical significance, consider this. I am sending an analog signal down a line. Any rounding of edges, any attenuation of signal levels, any noise picked up, degrades my signal. And you cannot avoid these things in the real world. Period. What I receive may be very close to what I sent, but it is not exactly the same. I have lost some information.

    Now let's say I send a digital representation of that analog signal. Unless the noise, attenuation, etc. is bad enough for me to not be able to distinguish between a high and a low, I receive an exact copy of the signal sent. No loss of information has occured. Now, usually there's a tradeoff, because there is always loss involved in the a->d and/or d->a conversion, but in the case of PC video, it's generated digitally to begin with so that problem doesn't exist. So with the displays themselves being equal, a digital signal will beat an analog signal in quality every time.

  • Posted by CanSmegWillSmeg:

    You can do basicly the same thing by slapping 4+ G100 Multimonitor cards in any pc. I currently have clients with 16 Flat panel off of 1 Wintel box.( And yes the do Have more money than brains)

    L8r Days & Waves
  • Theoretically the more suckers who buy into flat panel displays the lower CRTs are going to cost. For the first time ever, we're seeing CRTs dropping below $150. Now that my ValueColor is dying, we need to get more people buying flat panels. Drive those CRT prices down.
  • My Micron laptop here is normal at 1024X768 it will go as low as 640X480. It also keeps it full screen unlike most other laptops I've seen that just reduce size of the screen. I won't claim that it looks good at these lower res's. In fact it looks kind of jaggy but it will do it.
  • I don't think it was the Mac. The Xerox Star came with a crisp and clear 21" B&W monitor in 1983. The idea then was to have a large desktop that you could put two documents side by side.

    You may give the Mac credit for bringing someone else's idea to the massess and thats about all. Not that I don't love 'em. I just bought a Mac SE onepiece at a yard sale for $10. Great little computer for WP and such.
  • If you have a Hitachi SuperScan Elite 751, like I do, then the .22 dot pitch is actually the *horizontal* dot pitch. The true dot pitch is close to .25 or .26
  • 100% digital interface -- No more digital->analog conversion mean no more lossiness

    Hate to burst your bubble, but any TFT display is *analog* -- that's right... how do you think they get those bazillions of sparlky tantalizing colours? you're driving the electronics with analog RGB signals and in most cases, standard sync pulses.

    Analog does *not* mean lossy or lousy or unclear. Analog makes the world go 'round, my friend. Digital makes it easy to convey the info, but ultimately you're dealing with analog.

    (rant)
    ... and people wonder why I embrace analog circuit design over digital... the faster you get, the smaller you get... all those digital signals start acting as ... you got it: analog signals. That's where ECL, ABT, BCT, LVDS and whatever the buzzword du jour happens to be come in. You need to start terminating your transmission lines (data/address/control busses to you digital folk) and paying attention to all those horrible ugly analog artifacts you were so keen on throwing out in digital design class.

    It's harder to learn but in the end you'll come out ahead and a far wiser engineer. And if you're lucky, you'll run away from the spice programs until you can picture the electron flow in your head and know when the damn program is lying to you.
    (/rant)
  • You're right that in most cases the LCD monitors are using the same RGB signal as the CRT monitors (and convert them back to digital at the monitor), but as noted above the SGI monitors don't do that. Those bazillions of sparkly colors are generated with 24/32 bit numbers (as in all PC video these days) but unlike in the normal case, they're not converted to an analog RGB signal. They're sent directly to the monitor which uses them to control the transistor switches that make up the display.

    I was under the impression that there was only a single transistor for each color pixel (well three, but a single red, green and blue) -- this would imply that the digital signal has to hit a D/A somewhere along the line to get converted to either a representing voltage or current (not sure if TFTs are FETs or bipolar) which in turn controls the intensity of the subpixel. Less conversion than standard I would imagine, and I would also suspect that the quality of the D/As would be incredible since this is a high-end display. In the end though, those signals still gotta hit an analog world somewhere.

    I'm not trying to come off as left-wing (or is it right? I can never keep which is which straight) but those transistors still need to be biased by an analog representation of the digital signal of the colour you want it to be. :-)

    Regarding first-year semantics -- I'm not aiming for that either. Perhaps I was just kind of touchy on the whole subject today. :-)

    consider this. I am sending an analog signal down a line. Any rounding of edges, any attenuation of signal levels, any noise picked up, degrades my signal. And you cannot avoid these things in the real world. Period. Now let's say I send a digital representation of that analog signal. Unless the noise, attenuation, etc. is bad enough for me to not be able to distinguish between a high and a low, I receive an exact copy of the signal sent.

    Very true. Each has their place, analog being the ultimate representer of information and digital being the ultimate in transmission of said information. Until we can get infinite resolution converters there will always be distortion and loss, but it's not the signal being analog which makes this a problem; it's a combination of factors.
  • but according to their custom configurations page,
    "If panel size is your primary concern, MASS will build your monitor with any combination of 14.1, 15 or 18 inch panels"
    price will go up accordingly i'm sure
  • One single large monitor is NOT the same as using multiple monitors with a single desktop. The Xerox machines had no multiple monitor support. Starting with the Mac II (and the SE, for that matter), setting up several monitors with a common desktop has been a cinch. For example, the machine I'm working on is a dual-monitor one, and I've worked with up to SEVEN on one machine (five through video cards in slots, and two through the old "SCSI monitor" adapters that used to be available). Each with a different combination of color depth and resolution, for that matter...
  • I haven't seen any LCD screens that come close to a good CRT for color accuracy and contrast ratio, and I've seen all of the current releases from all of the major LCD makers.

    LCDs are pretty keen, but I'd rather have a CRT that costs 1/3 as much with a better picture.

    Now, when they finally get the DLP projection monitors down to low prices, we'll see some interesting things.
  • I saw a tri-LCD monitor setup at the Infocomm show that did just this sort of thing. The gap between the LCDs was less than 3/4".

    Unfortunately, due to the way they make LCD panels, there's enough stuff hanging out around the edges to keep them from butting up against one another.

  • I know it's been reshashed a couple of times, but here's the real number:

    Silicon Graphincs 1600 SW has a .237 dot pitch.

    That beats a .25 Trinitron (which is what the Sony has) with no wire lines in the screen... it comes darn close to beating my .22 Hitachi, except for the fact that it only weighs 8lbs vs. my Hitachi's 38....

    One of the guys here just got one of the SGI's for some document work he's doing. I haven't seen it yet, but he says it's _Really_ cool...

  • Never knew that tasty factoid abt the STAR. I got to "play" with a STAR/Mesa system once, but it only had the single-monitor config. I stand (sit?) corrected.

    The STAR "imitation by flattery" is well known, but a single 21" monitor is not quite the same thing as multiple-monitor arrangements. When you have three monitors, you can arrange them around your work area port, stbd and center so it's more natural to just turn your eyes/head as you mouse laterally. That's why I keep wishing for a really large concave "flat" display.
  • Each with a different combination of color depth and resolution, for that matter...

    ...and the beauty of this kind of setup was/is that for Mac users, it's nice to have a horkin' big monitor for DTP or image editing while using an old, cheap monitor on the side for holding palattes, "tear-off" menus if you've got tear-off support, email window, etc.

    I'm obliged to use NT and one lousy 17" monitor here, and I'm jealous as hell. :)
  • Granted, it was with CRTs, but early on it became obvious to many Mac users that, in a windowed environment, your productivity could improve if you could increase the usable desktop area.

    I bet a bunch of "normal"-sized LCDs refresh much faster than One Horking Big LCD would. Once you get the LCD panels aligned to counteract the fact that they're separate monitors, scrolling from one to another is no big thing -- you hardly notice the frame edges between.
  • That's a good one...

    the more suckers who buy into flat panel displays the lower CRTs are going to cost.

    Um, no. In the short term, perhaps CRT manufacturers will lower prices to keep people buying CRT's, but at some point in the near future the switch will be made -- LCD's will become the norm and the CRT the oddity. At that time, CRT prices will go up as sales dwindle and factories are converted.

    10gig IDE hard drives are easily had for a hundred bucks, but if you needed a new Widespread LCD acceptance will only serve to increase the price of CRT's. Sorry.

    Now that my ValueColor is dying, we need to get more people buying flat panels.

    Once the price of LCD's really start to fall, there will, of course, be a glut of used monitors on the market -- if you don't mind that purpley-look.

    Personally, I look forward to the death of the last vacuum tube!

  • Every flat panel I seen in person couldn't come close to crispness of my Sony CRT monitor. Does anyone make a flat panel display that can compare with .25dot CRT?
  • Based on that review, I'd be more than happy to take yours off your hands - I never play games or change resolutions. :-)

    But flat panel buyers should beware - the SGI flat panel is apparently the Ferrari of monitors. Even the 1280x1024 flat panel on the newest IBM ThinkPad 770X series systems supports only 65535 colours. I doubt that it's nearly as vivid as a CRT, much less the SGI flat panel.

    Concerning the current product, if I were Rob, I wouldn't give up my SGI flat panel - your vertical resolution is still much better, unless you went with the four monitor solution, which I assume is horribly expensive.

    D

    ----
  • I had an O2 for a while and now have an Indigo2, and all the keyboards I've used have been really nice, almost as good as the classic IBM "clicky" keyboard.

    But if you don't like the SGI-provided keyboard, you could always get another PS/2 compatible unit.

    This buzz on the SGI flat panel display certainly makes me want one. Pity the only support is on the O2, since I really prefer the Indigo2 - it's a lot better made, and - alas - I can't afford an Octane :-(.

    I suppose I'll have to look into their new PC line when they get Linux fully operational on it (i.e. accelerated X drivers).

    D

    ----

  • If you're thinking of the same thing that I am, that would be the One (that's the name of the laptop - One. Great, huh?). It had, for the time, a really big LCD screen (monochrome, of course), but with a viewing angle that could be measured on the fingers of one hand. So much as twitch your head, and you'd lose the display among the general murkiness of the LCD. This would be a while ago - 1985 or thereabouts???

  • Chances are, the ones you were looking at took an analogue signal from the host adapter and reconverted it to digital for the display. Check out the SGI monitors (digital signal, no D->A->D conversion). Fonts which are unusable in 1600x1200 on a regular CRT (such as xterm's "tiny" font) because of fuzziness are crisp, clear, and readable on the SGIs at 1600x1024.

    However, a couple of cheap analogue flatpanels we have do have some fuzziness, both due to the lower resolution of the device (1024x768, 15") and because of electromagnetic artifacts in a noisy environment (they were deployed on the floor of one of the options exchanges). Even so, they are much easier on the eyes than the CRTs -- so much so that the other clerks and traders are screaming for them.
  • Flat Panel has discrete number of pixels. Let say you have 1280x1024 pixels on your flat panel. To simulate 1024x768, only a portion is used. To simulate 640x480, each 1x1 pix maps to 2x2 pix, so to use up 1280x960 pixels on your panel. You can't map it to 1.5x1.5 pix because the placing of pixels are fixed on the grid.

    In the case of CRT, the size and number of pixels can be changes by adjusting the focus and size of the electron beam. A lower resolution requires a 'fatter' electron beam. A higher resolution requires a 'thinner' electron beam. The beam is swept from one corner of the monitor to the other.

    In short, this about discrete vs continous. Get it?

    Hasdi
  • Please. I use dual 17's in NT with my Imagine128 cards (two of them). Matrox has done the same thing with their Millenium series (G100, G200, G400, ect.). In fact, W98 and Win2K go even further: with a fairly late model video card and at least a W98 driver, you can add as many video cards and monitors as you have PCI slots open for. The size of each monitor, the resolution settings, frequencies, ect can all be set differently for each card. You can also tile the monitors any way you like -not just side-by-side. There is nothing new here except a nifty rack system to hold the panels. This site is for nothing more than the brain-dead corporate managers that don't know any better and don't have any competent staff to tell them otherwise.
  • Couple of weeks ago in NY I saw a presentation by David Small (http://www.davidsmall.com) who built an 8000x6000 display as part of his PhD.

    His point? As with bandwidth, a bigger screen allows you to do not just more stuff, but qualitatively different stuff. Like look at the thumbnail structure of Shakespeare's plays and pick out structural details (length of last lines? Size of scenes?) large and small.

    This screen is a step towards that increasing of visual bandwidth that took my breath away. Can't wait for the day I can create web pages the way I write ads - pasting big sheets to a wall and writing in foot-tall letters everyone, just everyone, can comment on.
  • A consequence of narrow viewing angle (methinks) is poor color balance/rendition with viewing angle. Orange xterms on my TP600 change color from top to bottom of the screen, even at the best possible tilt. Full-screen photo images leave a lot to be desired, too. For this reason, I can see graphic design and publishing houses staying with CRTs for a while longer. Too bad, 'cause those multiscreen displays look just the thing...
  • But there are some disadvatages
    • Expensive -- Although this will change if they become popular, flatpanels are still pretty expensive

    True. The gap is certainly narrowing though. Would you agree that it's like a factor of two difference these days? And of course, for that premium you're getting all of the pluses you listed above

    • Narrow viewing angle -- You can only view about 60 degrees to any angle, and less if its from the top

    My Apple Studio Display does much better than that from the side. It's pretty amazing, really.

    • You can't change the resolutions, this includes things like fullscreen VESA modes, so a vast majority of games simply won't work with a flatpanel.

    Untrue! At least with Apple's, you can scale down the resolution from max to 640x480, with a few stops along the way, all full screen. That may be proprietary Apple tech., but if they can do it surely others will follow.

    • Younger technology -- Flatpanels (other than Laptop displays) are a relativly new technology and are going to have more problems than your tried and true CRT, especially w.r.t. manufacturing defects.

    Hmm. I've typically seen CRTs get old and tired in too few years, though. I wonder if LCD will suffer from this less.

  • to comment on something I know more than the average bear about

    you know it
  • They are still only 15" monitors with a post inbetween, each only capable of doing 1024x768. Using those big flat monitors from toshiba(?) seen here reciently would make this something to really drool over.

    6000+ us for 3 15" monitors ??? I could get three laptops for about the same...

    But If I had the money I'd order it because they just look damm cool !

  • There's a company called PixelVision (www.pixelvision.com) which has a similar technology. Their version only requires one video card (a Matrox). The card's signal goes through a hub box which actually splits the signal and feeds it to multiple monitors, for a real video-wall approach. The nice thing about this is that you can run multiple panels off a single AGP card.

    The Mass Engineered Design approach looks like it requires multiple cards.
  • Don't get me wrong, I love flat panels. But my 19 in. .22 pitch CRT looks great!

    I know flats are the wave of the future, but I think CRT's still have a place.

    Has anyone ever tried to change the resolution on a Flat Panel? Yeah, right...
  • In short: no. They aren't that great, if you ask me. Give me (please?) a Viewsonic VP150 or three.

    The VP150 has a 400:1 contrast ratio and a 250cd/m^2 brightness compared to theMASS units' 200:1 contrast ratio and 200cd/m^2 brightness.

    Neither has a DFP connector, but at least there's a digital version of the VP150 (the VPD150).

    The VP150 and the MASS screens have the same physical size and resolution (1024x768). However, the VP150 has a notably wider horizontal viewing angel of 140 degrees.

    Now the big question: How much does a Twin cost? A pair of VP150s go for under US$2000.

    A Triple was quoted at $6500. A trio of VP150s would be less than half that including shipping. Yes, that would mean three stands on the desk. But it also means a wrap-around screen, instead of a wide flat one (raising issue with the Triple's viewing angle).
  • Has anyone ever tried to change the resolution on a Flat Panel? Yeah, right...

    Um, maybe I am missing something, but I can change resolutions on my flat panel any time just by hitting ctrl+alt+'+' or ctrl+alt+'-'. Under X-windows I can go from 640x480 to 1024x768. I also can run in "full screen mode" running VMware.

    Am I missing something here?

    Marv
  • Ok, the idea of having multiple flat panels combined to increase aggregate resolution is interesting. But I must say that I am not impressed by what this company has done. I could just as easily go out and buy four flat panel displays and weld em together.

    If they really wanted to provide something unique, why didn't they create a new frame to contain all the LCDs, and place the LCDs with the frame with a minimal gap between frames. From the picture it looks like there might be as much as two inches whereas with a solution such as the one I suggest that might be reduced to under 1/2 or even 1/4 inch (less than 1.27 or 0.64 cm).

    Oh, and while everyone is on the topic of bashing LCDs, when are more of them going to be touch sensitive?! (especially one laptops! :)

    Marv
  • Reminds me of an HMD I got to play with a few years ago. Called FIHMD (Full Immersion HMD) made by Kaiser for ARPA, it had a total of 12 LCDs (3x2 tiling for each eye) for a 150x50deg FOV with 40deg stereo overlap. In my virtual cockpit, it was awesome to look straight ahead and still see the wingtips in your peripheral vision. Beautiful piece of work.

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