Is 1080p enough resolution for everything?
By Ben Drawbaugh 
posted April 30th 2010 10:21PM
posted April 30th 2010 10:21PM
posted April 30th 2010 10:21PM
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How much would a 27" 2560 x 2048 LCD cost? Or a 42" for that matter? Contrast? Response time? What would black levels look like?
I always assumed the tech was finished or cost prohibitive that's why it didn't trickle down yet.
@sc28 Not finished I mean.
@sc28 The real question is at that resolution...who is going to sit 1 foot 2 inches away? Remember, screen size and resolution determine distance. I A 50" displays sweet spot is 6ft 5-7 inches at 1080 resolution.
1920x1200 is more than enough. Come on, more isn't allways better, unless it's money and that's what there trying to drum up, your money.
@Nvtwist
Resolution isn't really the issue; pixel density is. Resolution is a function of pixel density and screen size, and I'm not sure that we've quite reached the screen size sweet spot yet.
I usually use a 24" WUXGA monitor and find it much better than smaller monitors i've used in the past. Still, I think 27"-30" would be better; beyond that I expect the size would become a hinderance rather than a benefit. Monitors of this size aren't really affordable yet (at least, not for me), but hopefully the cost will come down in the next few years.
For the 24", WUXGA is a good resolution. You can sit a foot or two away and not pick out the pixels. Higher resolution on that size would be pointless, IMO. I suspect that you'd want something higher on a 30".
For video, gaming, and light computing work, 1920x1080/1200 is fine. For serious computer work (developer, video editor, etc), either dual 1920x1200 or 3840x1600 can make a difference.
Resolutions aren't higher than what we have now because no OS is fully resolution independent. You can change the DPI around a bit, but it often just screws up some parts of the UI. And when you have this magnified on a super high resolution screen, it becomes unusable.
In fact, the only reason why we have better screens than 10 years ago pixel-wise is because screens got larger, not more dense. Simple as that.
Fix resolution independence, and maybe you'll see some 300 DPI desktop monitors.
No xkcd reference? Engadget, I'm disappointed in you!
http://xkcd.com/732/
Thats because for most people, going to higher resolutions squeezes the icons ever smaller and smaller and makes the text more so. At work we've used 1600x1200 LCDs for about 5 years, and CRTs 5 before that, and a lot of the 40+ crowd goes with the lower resolutions (1280x1024 or lower) because the icons and text is just too hard to read at 1600x1200.
At home I bought a 1080p monitor to replace my dying 1280x1024 LCD and it's great, but the text _is_ small and I'm getting older enough that higher resolution monitors won't be of much use for me.
@h0mi How is the text necessarily smaller? All of my LCDs were roughly 100ppi, higher resolution screens meant a larger screen, not smaller text and icons. We can benefit from higher resolutions, printers don't print better than 300dpi for no good reason. The problem seems to be chicken-and-egg, OS makers don't feel compelled to do res independence to make higher ppi work well, and display makers don't seem to want to try selling high-ppi consumer screens without the benefit of res independence.
@JDM
The text doesn't necessarily have to be smaller anyway. You can have a high resolution and still set the system font to be larger: that's a much better solution than just turning resolution down to 1280x1024.
What annoys me (well, not really) is we have barely scratched the surface of what we can do with a standard 1080p BD movie - now we are on to 3D and other formats.
Think about what the first DVD players picture looked like...and compare it to the last great 'ultra' DVD players. It was a vast improvement. So much we can do with 1080p.
That said, I welcome a 4k format!!!
I don't think PC gamers and graphics engineers are a big enough market to make extra Hi-res monitors commonplace for the everyday crowd.
It's even worse. 1900x1200 is getting rare on large monitors. Instead, they cheap out and make 1900x1080 and people buy them because they are marketed as "HD".
@andysexton
That is worse.... :( Leave my 1920x1200 monitors alone! They're perfect.
@andysexton
Exactly!
It is very hard to get a decent priced 1920x1200 monitor now. But everywhere you look you can get very cheep 1080p monitors.
I snagged one of the last Samsung T260HD 26" I could find and am extremely happy with it. Now I just wish I could have afforded 2 more for a triple setup because they have gone from $300 I paid to well over $500 now.
@Bamboo I just ordered a second Asus VW266H 25.5 inch for $255 AR last week. Not a bad monitor for a TN panel.
I AM a video editor and even larger than my 1920x1080 display is fairly pointless. I run a 17" 1680x1050 LCD as my main display with a 23" 1920x1200 for my full quality monitoring. Ok maybe two 23" displays would be nice, but two displays are Much more flexible than one large one. Even the 4K footage I'm editing I'm doing offline so a full 4K display wouldn't come in handy there either.
-Brian
It only matters more pixels-wise if the video or game or whatever being displayed is natively supportive of that resolution otherwise it's only good for multi-tasking but the windows appear smaller so you don't really appeal to most consumers whatsoever
I saw a demo of "Ultra HD" a few years ago (8k x 4k resolution) and it was amazing. Even being projected on a 50' diagonal screen, the image was clear even viewing close up. It also came with 22-channel surround sound. Very impressive.
The company that was working on it made it perfectly clear that their intent was for very specialized applications, as in IMAX-style theaters for museums and the like. But it looked positively amazing, and it was definitely a lot sharper and clearer than the 2k we're used to seeing in theaters (and at home) now.
I won't be happy until I have three 42" 4K monitors in front of me, with an additional one functioning as my desk with multitouch support. Until me entire field of view is digital then society has failed to address the awesomness!
I would agree that "HD" is ruining the real resolution race in that because of economies of scale, HD makes itself inexpensive, and nothing larger gets built. OTOH, I really like that I can get an HD monitor for under $150.
That's a great graphic, Ben. Thanks for including it.
I think 2k is the ticket at 50-60". Anymore than that you can't see the detail away. Plus anymore resolution would require sitting 2 feet from your set.
What good is resolution if you are sitting too far from it to resolve it? What good is it asking this question of cowsumers that are ignorant to the first question to benefit what they are paying for?
Sure, you could have laptop-type pixel densities on a desktop monitor, but would that mean you also have laptop-type black levels and color gamut? I will happily sacrifice pixel density in favor of more accurate and deeper colors.
Sure, you could make a 2560x1600 screen that's 25.6" in diameter (smaller than many 1920x1200 screens) but if it looked like the screen on my 13.3" laptop, I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.
Since I've gone to a 1920x1200 monitor I have never really felt like I "NEEDZ MOAR RESOMOLUTIONS!!1" (hell, 1600x1200 would probably be enough). Sure, there are occasional moments when I think of what a 2560x1600 screen could offer, but for almost everything I do, I'd rather have two or three of the smaller screens than one larger one.
What really worries me is that prospect that somewhere down the line, 16:10 (8:5) displays like WUXGA and WQXGA will be unavailable or prohibitively expensive compared to 1080p and 2560x1440 displays. With respect to 16:9 on my desktop, I'm afraid my position can be summed up as "DO NOT WANT!!1"
Well, I say prohibitively expensive, but my dream setup would be three HP Dreamcolor monitors; it's hard to imagine something more expensive than that.
Resolution =! pixel density. 1920x1080 on a 50" display has a much lower density (dpi) than on a 22" display, but both have exactly the same resolution.
So, "...the technology exists to produce super high dots per inch displays, most are 1920x1200", does not make sense as written. This suggests that there are 1920x1200 dots per inch. Wonderful for video glasses, but not for large displays.
I have a 1920x1200 17" monitor on my ASUS laptop and i think this is the practical limit for pixel density. I have to zoom all websites to 150% just to be able to read everything, but it's true that all the fonts look very beatifully rounded compared to some 1280px wide display with no zoom. Also it's great for viewing pictures.
If i used a regular PC with a 22"+ monitor, i'd certainly like it if it was 2560x1600, but anything over that would be overkill.
@GGG
Have you tried adjusting the DPI in control panel? You didn't mention your OS, but both Vista and Windows 7 have this option.
Higher the DPI in the control panel! It makes everything bigger, just like your zoom
@GGG
I know and i already did, it's set to 120 dpi :)