People talk about Retina displays etc ... but back in 2003 (yes, 10 years ago) ViewSonic had even higher resolution display called the "ViewSonic VP2290b" [1]
It was 3840x2400 in just a 22" display. It has a 204dpi and again, that was 10 years ago.
Any for the nay sayers, yes - this was mass produced to the point that IBM was selling them as the T220 display [2]
These monitors use IPS panels, run upwards of 5MP, and have better color depth than consumer-grade monitors. Often times they are grayscale (most of these images are not colored).
These monitors are extremely expensive (~$20K), but they are FDA approved for diagnostic use. And yes, radiologists do need them.
Interestingly, as digital imaging proliferates across other medical disciplines (such as pathology), the costs of these high resolution displays and appropriate GPUs have been cited as a barrier to digitization. It seems that now prices are falling fast enough to make that excuse go away.
Radiologists and pathologists seem to love retina iPad displays...
Technology has come a long way, though - the VP2290b was a thick and heavy behemoth that was extremely difficult to drive using the signaling technology of the time.
Plus, even the final revision of the T221 required being driven as either two monitors using one dual-link DVI and one single-link DVI or as four monitors by using four single DVI links. Even then, the internal refresh rate was a slightly annoying 48Hz.
The T220/T221 really were ahead of their time but convenience and standard size of the new generation of "retina" displays shows how far we've come.
Agreed...I'm a bit disappointed that my 4.7" smartphone screen is 1080p but "that's all" they can squeeze into a full sized, full powered 31.5" display? zzz
I have been waiting for this for years [1]. I am salivating at the thought and I'm eager to know the price. Will I be able to afford to retire my 30" monitors that were first manufactured eight years ago?
ASUS, if you're reading this: I'd say add an option to drop the integrated speakers because I still want a very thin bezel so that I can orient two or three side-by-side.
They are using Sharp's 4K IGZO panel. The MSRP for Sharp's own monitor is $5500, the street price is closer to $4800. ASUS will be in the same ballpark most likely. If you can just order 3 of them to put side by side in portrait mode, I envy you :)
BTW - one nasty thing about the Sharp display is that it's LED edge-lit, and the ASUS is most likely the same (the press release says "backlit" but they don't mention local dimming so I'm guessing edge-lit as well). Perhaps I am being an unreasonable purist, but I don't like such corner-cutting on premium displays.
Apple has at least also being using 16:10. This ASUS monitor is 16:9 so you lose 11% of useful vertical resolution which is what matters a lot to us techie folk.
> I'm surprised ASUS was the one to take the initiative though
I agree, it seems unlikely that they would create a new panel size all by themselves foregoing the benefit of scale. Perhaps there is another client for that same panel. Perhaps a well-known brand that does not reveal its products until they are ready to hit the market and the product can be presented with much fanfare during a keynote speech.
It's disappointing that every new display I see is still stuck with the archaic 16:9 resolution.
Sure, humans may have more periphery side-to-side. This is great for television. But, when you read a book, I doubt you read it horizontally.
So, if we do a lot of text manipulation with our computers, why not use a taller aspect ratio, like 3:2 or 4:3?
It makes no sense why this display still has less resolution than some ThinkCentre monitors from the early 00's. It makes no sense why there's still that crap 1366x768 being sold now.
We went from 1280x800 to 1366x768 (fewer vertical pixels), from 1440x900 to 1600x900 (same vertical), from 1680x1050 to 1600x900 (far fewer vertical pixels), from 1920x1200 to 1920x1080 (fewer), from 2560x1600 to 2560x1440 (far fewer).
You could keep the vertical resolutions the same, and simply increase the width, but that would be more expensive to produce, and for the same cost, you'd get a more proportional 8:5 display, so why would you bother?
I can't wait to see all the broken applications/unreadable small fonts on my Linux.
I've been excited for a high density display since Apple announced the retina display, but I have a gut feeling that it will take a lot of time for the Linux desktop to support it properly, if ever.
Linux has always handled font scaling better than windows in my experience. Windows has a tradition/culture/tendency toward building user interfaces by positioning UI elements in absolute pixel coordinates. But linux UI toolkits put much more of an emphasis on automatic/scalable layout.
Both dwm and xfce have worked just fine on my chromebook pixel. This is on debian 7. The only two applications that have given me issues are ones that do their own custom rendering - Chromium and Sublime text. Both of them have some UI text that cannot be resized and does not appear to respect system dpi settings.
It's almost perfect. There's some descender clipping on the tab label and the subheadings in the Command Palette are tiny.
Most apps I've tried work well using the DPI flag in xserverrc. Ones that use custom ui, like HipChat, are unusable though. Linux really needs a better UI toolkit story.
My screen is 166dpi (1920x1080, 13"), I run Ubuntu and have minor problem only with Intellij. They use their own font scaling, and it interferes with button placement on some windows.
Going to add to what others are saying, this has not been a problem for me with my chromebook pixel. I set my default scaling in chromium to 125%, and have urxvt rendering a nice freetype font that I adjust the size to on the fly depending on the task (I have opted to let Xft believe that the display is 96ppi. I tried both ways and prefer it that way.)
Hopefully compositors will be able to auto-scale windows in the future. Either by some automagic divination that the program is stuck in the '80s, or with a simple rightclick->holy fuck this shit makes me squint fix it pls.
You're talking about Linux, not a BSD. There are many desktop users who are capable of developing support, and I'd be surprised if nobody is already working on similar things for retina.
Finally some movement in the desktop display market. I've been hoping for this every time I dragged a window from my retina display to the desktop monitor and it lost 3/4th of it's pixels.
More than 10 years after the IBM T220/T221 came out, but the IBM monitor still has a significantly bigger resolution (3840x2400) and PPI (203.98 vs 139.56).
Yes but the problem is its low refresh rate. If you're looking at static images, I'm sure it will do great, but if you are trying to watch a movie, play a game, or do anything that has fast motion, you won't have a good time.
Maybe a bit premature, but I'd say you're spot-on in execution. This is almost certainly how Apple will bring Retina to the desktop: A 24" 1080p @2x, which just happens to be the same resolution as the emerging 4K standard. 27" is too big for 1080p-scaled UI elements, but 24" is just about right (and being Retina, you'll no doubt be able to crank it a bit higher if you give up the pure 2x multiplier).
If they launched this summer, I think it'd be a $2000+ display, which is probably more than Apple wants to enter the market at. In another 6-12 months, I can see them being able to hit something more like $1499, which sounds about right.
I expect they'll launch the Retina Thunderbolt with the new Mac Pro (or whatever the new high-end thing is) because it will have Thunderbolt and will be the top end.
Would do anything for an affordable ultra high resolution 24" or 30" monitor for development. Think of all the tmux and vim panes you can cram into one of these puppies :)
Disinclined as I am to use Apple's "Retina" marketing term, it is a conceptually useful distinction. On a given display at the real world distance you use it for work, you can't see the pixels.
That is what we as users want, and it is also the limit of what is useful: packing additional pixels into the same surface area doesn't help anything.
This monitor isn't quite there. But it is still a big leap in terms of progress over the standard 2560x1440 27" inch panels currently used by Apple, Dell, etc.
We already have similar monitors in Japan for like $4000... it will be interesting to see how this one is priced.
I have a couple 30" and a newer 27" monitors, but I'd trade all three of them for one 24" truly retina monitor.
Can anyone explain how 10 bit color would work for a monitor? Would we even notice it since most image formats are 8-bits-per-channel... and what does the OS do?
Is the monitor able to more accurately show the difference between the sun vs a desk-lamp? (Where today both would appear as RGB 255 in a photo, unless you took 3 exposures and combined them into a 32 bit HDR file... but anyway...)
I just bought a 2560x1080px monitor just to discover that there is no way to use it with my laptop. It seems that most laptops are limited to 1920x1080 despite that the graphics card may support higher resolutions.
[+] [-] alberth|13 years ago|reply
It was 3840x2400 in just a 22" display. It has a 204dpi and again, that was 10 years ago.
Any for the nay sayers, yes - this was mass produced to the point that IBM was selling them as the T220 display [2]
[1] http://reviews.cnet.com/lcd-monitors/viewsonic-vp2290b-lcd-m...
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
[+] [-] spartango|13 years ago|reply
http://www.necdisplay.com/category/medical-diagnostic-displa...
These monitors use IPS panels, run upwards of 5MP, and have better color depth than consumer-grade monitors. Often times they are grayscale (most of these images are not colored).
These monitors are extremely expensive (~$20K), but they are FDA approved for diagnostic use. And yes, radiologists do need them.
Interestingly, as digital imaging proliferates across other medical disciplines (such as pathology), the costs of these high resolution displays and appropriate GPUs have been cited as a barrier to digitization. It seems that now prices are falling fast enough to make that excuse go away.
Radiologists and pathologists seem to love retina iPad displays...
[+] [-] bri3d|13 years ago|reply
Plus, even the final revision of the T221 required being driven as either two monitors using one dual-link DVI and one single-link DVI or as four monitors by using four single DVI links. Even then, the internal refresh rate was a slightly annoying 48Hz.
The T220/T221 really were ahead of their time but convenience and standard size of the new generation of "retina" displays shows how far we've come.
[+] [-] TylerE|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kylek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EvanAnderson|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhauer|13 years ago|reply
ASUS, if you're reading this: I'd say add an option to drop the integrated speakers because I still want a very thin bezel so that I can orient two or three side-by-side.
Edit: Ars has a photo of the PQ321 [2].
[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/displays-are-the-key
[2] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2013/05/asus-brings-4k-to-you...
[+] [-] vadman|13 years ago|reply
BTW - one nasty thing about the Sharp display is that it's LED edge-lit, and the ASUS is most likely the same (the press release says "backlit" but they don't mention local dimming so I'm guessing edge-lit as well). Perhaps I am being an unreasonable purist, but I don't like such corner-cutting on premium displays.
[+] [-] fdm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Xcelerate|13 years ago|reply
In fact, the retina MBP's screen is the only reason I switched from Windows to a Mac; that display alone was worth it.
Looking forward to a non-pixelated future. I'm surprised ASUS was the one to take the initiative though!
[+] [-] rogerbinns|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tuananh|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] speleding|13 years ago|reply
I agree, it seems unlikely that they would create a new panel size all by themselves foregoing the benefit of scale. Perhaps there is another client for that same panel. Perhaps a well-known brand that does not reveal its products until they are ready to hit the market and the product can be presented with much fanfare during a keynote speech.
[+] [-] kunai|13 years ago|reply
Sure, humans may have more periphery side-to-side. This is great for television. But, when you read a book, I doubt you read it horizontally.
So, if we do a lot of text manipulation with our computers, why not use a taller aspect ratio, like 3:2 or 4:3?
It makes no sense why this display still has less resolution than some ThinkCentre monitors from the early 00's. It makes no sense why there's still that crap 1366x768 being sold now.
We went from 1280x800 to 1366x768 (fewer vertical pixels), from 1440x900 to 1600x900 (same vertical), from 1680x1050 to 1600x900 (far fewer vertical pixels), from 1920x1200 to 1920x1080 (fewer), from 2560x1600 to 2560x1440 (far fewer).
You could keep the vertical resolutions the same, and simply increase the width, but that would be more expensive to produce, and for the same cost, you'd get a more proportional 8:5 display, so why would you bother?
It's an extremely sad, sad, thing.
[+] [-] vladev|13 years ago|reply
I've been excited for a high density display since Apple announced the retina display, but I have a gut feeling that it will take a lot of time for the Linux desktop to support it properly, if ever.
[+] [-] surrealize|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bashtoni|13 years ago|reply
Everything works very nicely once I've tweaked a few settings, specifically adding zoom in Chrome and setting appropriate font scaling in Gnome 3.
[+] [-] bsimpson|13 years ago|reply
https://github.com/appsforartists/pixel_webdev
It's almost perfect. There's some descender clipping on the tab label and the subheadings in the Command Palette are tiny.
Most apps I've tried work well using the DPI flag in xserverrc. Ones that use custom ui, like HipChat, are unusable though. Linux really needs a better UI toolkit story.
[+] [-] mike_esspe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Elv13|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] legulere|13 years ago|reply
The gnome team made a proposal for supporting HiDPI displays similiarly to how it's handled in OS X: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rvtiZb_Sm9C9718IoYQgnpzk...
It's already merged into wayland and weston: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/wayland-devel/2013-May...
Hopefully wayland support for gnome 3.10 will be ready, so this can also be supported in Gnome.
[+] [-] xixora1|13 years ago|reply
140ppi isn't a massive leap over current displays that are common in laptops. 11.6" at 1366x768 is similar... density wise.
[+] [-] jlgreco|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymous|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] krenoten|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdfjkl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fdm|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtreminio|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jfb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mortenjorck|13 years ago|reply
If they launched this summer, I think it'd be a $2000+ display, which is probably more than Apple wants to enter the market at. In another 6-12 months, I can see them being able to hit something more like $1499, which sounds about right.
[+] [-] grecy|13 years ago|reply
Will that come at WWDC, or later in the yaer... ?
[+] [-] dochtman|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MattDL|13 years ago|reply
I'm not sure I could take the step back down to 60Hz after getting used to it, for me it's a much bigger deal than resolution.
[+] [-] akurilin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paddy_m|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] veidr|13 years ago|reply
That is what we as users want, and it is also the limit of what is useful: packing additional pixels into the same surface area doesn't help anything.
This monitor isn't quite there. But it is still a big leap in terms of progress over the standard 2560x1440 27" inch panels currently used by Apple, Dell, etc.
We already have similar monitors in Japan for like $4000... it will be interesting to see how this one is priced.
I have a couple 30" and a newer 27" monitors, but I'd trade all three of them for one 24" truly retina monitor.
[+] [-] cclogg|13 years ago|reply
Is the monitor able to more accurately show the difference between the sun vs a desk-lamp? (Where today both would appear as RGB 255 in a photo, unless you took 3 exposures and combined them into a 32 bit HDR file... but anyway...)
[+] [-] potatolicious|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vld|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alok-g|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dawkins|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daniel-cussen|13 years ago|reply
That's almost 3 KLOCs.
[+] [-] driverdan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jakehp|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mtgx|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sciurus|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yatsyk|13 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9234078/Sharp_to_laun...
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] sebnukem2|13 years ago|reply