back to article Ultra-high resolution laptop, tablet screens to revive display biz

Market success is a product of two factors: supply and demand. Only when both are growing and, at the same time, closely matched will a market perform well. The production of flat-panel displays for everything from tablets to televisions has been suffering from a period in which supply has far outstripped demand. Together, …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Excellent...

    I look forward to the first laptop with the 2048 x 1536 panel (credit card in hand). About time some sense returned. 16:9 is for home movie theatres, not work laptops.

  2. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge

    About time too

    Over the last decade we have seen CPU speeds increase dramatically.

    We have seen 64bit CPU's with multiple cores

    4Gb of RAM is commonplace

    SSD's have improved storage access.

    Displays have IMHO lagged behind. Ok so some tech changes like LED and IPS have improved the quality but the resolution, the actual amount of stuff you can put on a screen has lagged behind.

    Years ago we had 1600x1200 screens. Why do the majority of laptops come with such poxy screens?

    1. Robert E A Harvey

      Hear Hear.

      I have postponed a laptop upgrade for some years now because I didn't want a worse screen.

    2. df76

      Re: About time too

      Moore law does not apply to screen obviously ;-)

      You are right though, screens seems to be the number 1 left behind part in laptops. I ordered my MP pro with the high resolution option and still think it'S not that great, if I look at some cheaper Sony / Acer laptops I always ask myself how people can actually work with that, just horrible.

  3. Neill Mitchell

    Isn't the world running out of Indium?

    I thought we were running out quickly due to the big increase in touch screens which use it. Now the manufacturing of these new displays is going to burn thorough what's left even faster. If nothing else this is going to drive the price up.

    http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/027ns_005.htm

  4. Graham Wilson
    Thumb Up

    I can't wait....

    But where are the long-promised large OLED displays?

    Pixels that can't be seen by the human eye have been a long time coming. It means that we can start doing things on screen that, until now, have been exclusively in the realm of print (proper scaling of small fonts etc.)

    Remember, newsprint can easily be 600-800dpi, offset 1200dpi or higher and ancient old letterpress double that again. These figures make standard screen resolutions of 72, 96 or 120dpi look a bit pathetic. Even the latest iPhone at 326dpi looks measly against print's figures.

    Will be great to see screens catch up.

    1. JC_

      Can't Wait Either

      But keep in mind that no matter how high the dpi of newsprint is, it'll still bleed and have a lower 'effective' resolution.

      And that iPhone resolution would be excessive at any distance beyond arms length. Looking at your 40" telly from 5 metres, 1080p / 1440p / 2160p are all indistinguishable.

      1. Will Godfrey Silver badge

        Indeed. I was about to ask if there was any chance of getting some high resolution eyes - the default set aren't too good these days.

      2. Graham Wilson

        @JC_ -- Yeah, right.

        I've anticipated that soon we'll see users with normal vision with magnifying glasses to get the most out of their iPhone/smartphones. Then you'll have your cake and eat it too--both portability and high res. simultaneously.

        (BTW, in good letterpress the bleed effect has the opposite effect. The indented type impression contains the 'bleed' ink which runs/wells into the edges of the impression, thus it's thicker there. This produces an effect similar to putting a transient on the edge of a square wave or using unsharp mask sharpening, thus the printing looks sharper than it really is.)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "see screens catch up." or the DPI myth

      Newsprint and offset use such high DPIs because you can either print a (C, M, Y or Black) dot or not, you can't change the intensities of them.

      So, mostly for photos, they use a dithering technique called halftone, which essentially trades off it's DPIs for grey levels. The final result is measured in lines per inch or LPI.

      For example, to achieve a LPI frequency of 100 you can print at:

      600 dpi with 37 grey levels or

      1200 dpi with 145 tray levels

      Computer displays on the other CAN vary the intensity of each pixel, and most LCDs on the market can achieve 18 bits of colour depth, with good ones achieving a full 24 bits (a 16 million pallete)

      So they're completely different things and one doesn't really make the other look any more pathetic.

      1. Graham Wilson

        @Probing Analyst -- Was only referring to type.

        Images are a different matter when printed, even gravure has this problem. Good type however can be remarkably sharp and looks it too. I've worked in digital imaging for years and I've never seen any electronic display image (with the same scale) come close to matching the work of a master printer.

        Those who work in ergonomics agree too, good printing is less tiring than a screen. Not only has this to do with reflective/absorption surface verses a primary RGB source but also the contrast can't easily be held on B/W transients on small fonts (it drops too much).

        I would be interested to know what LCD monitors you've found that will hold a full 24 bits, using calibrated staircases/photometers etc, I can get only about 20 bits, beyond that bleed-through is noticeable and the transfer function noticeably compresses (but using good CRT monitors I can do it--just)!

    3. jubtastic1

      Offset dpi

      1200 & 2400 dpi only applies to line art, like solid colour text, everything else is screened to a range between 75 and 200, so images on a retina display are substantially higher res than even fine art quality print.

      300dpi text on a laptop doesn't sound very good compared to thousands of dpi but I think it will be welcome all the same and won't require a barnacle of a graphics card grafted onto the laptop, or a two inch battery to feed said barnacle.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    smaller is bigger?

    Was anyone else confused by this statement?

    "Smaller pixels also mean that more light can pass through them"

    Isn't that like saying you can get more water through a smaller pipe?

    I don't get it.

    1. Graham Wilson

      @A.C. Yes I was

      Normally, the smaller pixels the less throughput. I read this to mean with less power (higher efficiency) the smaller masked areas etc. would be.

  6. Lusty
    Go

    Party like it's 1999

    It'll be nice to get back to pre-HD resolutions on computers.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      Re: Party like it's 1999

      yup, i'm still using a lacie electron blue iv crt @ 2046 x 1536, with the added bonus of proper 24bit colour too (no banding on gradients), and talking of cheap, I picked up 3 of them for 60 quid on ebay because nobody wants crts any more. I find that strange because I genuinely think these things are great. And crucially,they are still operational, which is more than I can say for the 4 lcd monitors we've had in 5 years (out of 7) that have self destructed.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Panel makers losing money...

    Shame... wasn't so long ago they got done for running a cartel IIRC.

  8. popper

    "At the same time, production capacity has never been higher. Competition is consequently at a peak, and that has driven down prices beyond the point where sales can cover the cost of production."

    anyone that thinks it costs more that they can sell them for today is not being realistic, they make less profit per item sure, but make Profit non the less, not to the point it costs them actual money and cant cover costs, and if that really where the case thats their fault for taking out industrial loans they cant cover in the time frame, its not the end users problem, end users are covering the high profit and mark up costs etc already.

    as for the so hyped "Apple's eagerly anticipated 2048 x 1536 iPad 3." you can keep that lesser screen, and ill settle for a real Samsung WQXGA panel at 2560 x 1600 plus a potential Samsung Mobile Memory with "Wide" I/O Interface at The new 12.8GB/s

    1Gb wide I/O mobile DRAM can transmit data at 12.8GB/s, which increases the bandwidth of mobile DDR DRAM (1.6GB/s) eightfold, while reducing power consumption by approximately 87%. The bandwidth is also four times that of LPDDR2 DRAM (which is approximately 3.2GB/s).

    http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/memory/display/20110222201121_Samsung_Develops_Mobile_Memory_with_Wide_I_O_Interface_Extreme_Bandwidth.html

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