Why does the ipad 3 have better resolution than even $600 monitors ?

[Blazkowicz]

nice one. I saw a buddy using some kind of oldish blackberry too, and I was suprised to see as much text crammed in here.

I'm waiting for a cheap 3G plan with no long term contract and no subsidized phone, willing to keep a slim and cheap feature phone for the calls.
in that scheme an additional e-ink tablet that only reads books, essays and documentation would fit well. I could pass it around without handing my phone and computer at the same time.

for all the hatred I have against the gadgets I'm willing to find a reasonable way to consume them

 

[Arwin]

The latest Kindle already has negligible weight. For reading it is really very good. But don't overstate the issues with reading in bright light - my old iPhone 3GS is bright enough for that. But the kindle is just insanely more comfortable. The buttons into both sides for page turning help too. We have the cheapest, non-touch version which is $99.

 

[hoho]

But don't overstate the issues with reading in bright light - my old iPhone 3GS is bright enough for that

I was reading books on my kindle at beach with direct sunlight shining on the screen. It was better than regular paper book as it wasn't reflecting the light right back to my face thanks to the matte screen. My phone was unusable in that light.

 

[Arwin]

I was reading books on my kindle at beach with direct sunlight shining on the screen. It was better than regular paper book as it wasn't reflecting the light right back to my face thanks to the matte screen. My phone was unusable in that light.

Hey, no argument about that. The more light you put onto the Kindle's screen, the better it looks. That's the great part about passive displays like that. And I consciously avoided the touch version because I heard those tend to be slightly more reflective. My wife got a very cheap but neat little fake leather protective booklet thingy (of the type that protects calendars etc.) that has a fold-out led-light, which you need when you're not in a well lit room and she loves it.

But nevertheless, unless I hold it purposely to reflect the sun, I was pleansantly surprised that the phone could still reach useable brightness in bright, sunny conditions. That it doesn't hold a canlde to the Kindle in those circumstances, sure, but I found unuseable a bit of an overstatement.

 

[Grall]

I was reading books on my kindle at beach with direct sunlight shining on the screen.

Ugh, I generally prefer not reading in direct sunlight. I start sweating and attracting unwanted insect attention when sitting out in the sun for too long. Better to chill in the shade.

Also, a Kindle is only good for reading books, while an iPad has many other uses as well. Single-use gadgets will get killed by flexible devices like tablets and smartphones before long.

It was better than regular paper book as it wasn't reflecting the light right back to my face thanks to the matte screen.

Well, paper is pretty matte too, at least when talking about the kind of cheap paperback novels I usually buy...

 

[hoho]

Also, a Kindle is only good for reading books, while an iPad has many other uses as well. Single-use gadgets will get killed by flexible devices like tablets and smartphones before long.

Let me know when your tablet won't tire my eyes due to the backlight when doing my 10h+ reading marathons and has a battery that lasts for a few weeks. Also, HW keys for turning pages is pretty much mandatory for me due to how convenient it is and having half the weight or less of your average tablet is kind of nice as well.

Yes, I know kindle is only good for reading but it is simply so good for it that it will take ages for tablets to become anywhere near as nice. I'm sure there are people for whom a tablet with backlit LCD is good enough but they will definitely not kill e-ink readers. They may converge into one in some distant future once we get some hybrid or fast coloured e-ink screens, not before that.

 

[Arwin]

Kindle $79 now by the way. Also, the kindle weighs 6 ounces / 170 grams. So yeah, some way to go for iPads ... (23 ounces, if I understand it right) No disrespect for the versatility of the iPad, but specialist devices can really rock. Kind of like a Vita costing half (well, almost), performing better, and staying completely cool rather than a rather warm 47 degrees Celsius (117 F) after an hour of gaming. Oh, and buttons and analog sticks.

I want all of them, mind you!

 

[Scott_Arm]

The new iPad screen is very nice, but there are other things I would have preferred more power saving with a more modest bump in resolution. Most Internet sites do not have high resolution content to take advantage of the screen. Sure, text looks nice, but it isn't as if the text on my much lower ppi monitor is horrible and unreadable. I guess you can watch a 1080p movie with letterboxing/pillarboxing, but I'm skeptical as to whether you could notice the difference between a 720p and 1080p video on that small of a screen. Overall, still a very nice display.

Oh, and I have to agree with hoho, Arwin on the Kindle (e-ink variants) being the only good way to do marathon reading with an electronic device.

 

[Mendel]

Well I´d really like to have a 23 - 32 inch displays with the same pixel density as the new ipad... What res would it be, maybe over 9000 pixels wide.

 

[AlphaWolf]

Well I´d really like to have a 23 - 32 inch displays with the same pixel density as the new ipad... What res would it be, maybe over 9000 pixels wide.

The 22" 3840 x 2400 displays are/were 204 PPI. The iPad is 264. Dells 30" U3011 is 101 (which would mean about 6700x4160 if keeping the 16:10 aspect).

 

[hoho]

Can you imagine using 30" screen at same distance as ipad?

 

[Sxotty]

The ipad a $500 device has a resolution of 2047 by 1536 pixels. Monitors with a resolution approaching this cost over a thousand dollars.

Why are we not seeing higher resolutions at home and when can we expect them to start coming ? PC's used to be the driving force and now device that costs the same as a single monitor is the driving force behind resolution increases .

B/c people don't sit right next to their monitor as well.

 

[Deleted member 13524]

Sure, the current limit of 1080p for low/mid-end 20-24" monitors is too weak and I hope this changes...
But honestly, anything around ~160 PPI for monitors of this size should be "retina" enough, given the distance between our heads and large monitors.
That would be what? ~3200*1800 in a 16:9 24"?

 

[Arwin]

B/c people don't sit right next to their monitor as well.

But comparatively still quite a lot closer than most people sit to their TVs ...

 

[pcchen]

If the distance between you and the monitor is around 40 cm (~16 inches), by the standard 0.3 arc minute per pixel (0.6 arc minute per line pair), the pixel size should be around 0.035 mm. That's more than 700 dpi.

However, at this resolution we probably can take subpixels as pixels (i.e. those RGB things). So maybe 200 ~ 300 dpi is good enough (Note that on paper you can still see better quality from a 600 dpi print than a 300 dpi print).

Personally I think for a desktop monitor 200 dpi is probably good enough. Since currently 1920x1080 for a 24" is roughly 96dpi, we can get near 200dpi @ double resolution (which is convenient), that's 3840x2160. I think then we can focus more on other important issues such as color gamut and accuracy.

 

[Grall]

200+ DPI for a desktop monitor would be awesome (provided the GPU driving the thing can keep up, that is!), considering I can see a clear increase in sharpness on my 1440P 27" display comparing to a regular 1080P 24" unit.

It's just as important IMO that graphics doesn't get all super sluggish. Going overboard with the rez so that the update rate becomes jerky and erratic isn't much of a gain.

 

[french toast]

The ipad a $500 device has a resolution of 2047 by 1536 pixels. Monitors with a resolution approaching this cost over a thousand dollars.

Why are we not seeing higher resolutions at home and when can we expect them to start coming ? PC's used to be the driving force and now device that costs the same as a single monitor is the driving force behind resolution increases .

Because we have all been getting ripped off thats why

Its got to be significantly harder to make a high ppi mobile screen compared monitors/televisions....simply because there is more space available and more power to feed it in a larger screen....

There is no reason why we aren't getting 2500x1600 hd Tv displays that upscale pictures...i mean seriously the new ipad has moved things on considerably....just like they did with mobile software/touch screens/services/build quality/design.
(no i don't like Apple by the way..but its the truth)

Thats got me thinking...what if Apple releases a 'retina display' for itv?? (which we all know is coming) what would the PPI have to be to reach that goal at average front room viewing distances??

 

[Npl]

Because we have all been getting ripped off thats why

Its got to be significantly harder to make a high ppi mobile screen compared monitors/televisions....simply because there is more space available and more power to feed it in a larger screen....

Given that a TV would have many times the surface area, the costs would prohibit any worthwhile sales.

its like expecting bigger cpus to be as cheap as significantly smaller ones, costs rise with surface area at way higher than proportional rate.

 

[pcchen]

Thats got me thinking...what if Apple releases a 'retina display' for itv?? (which we all know is coming) what would the PPI have to be to reach that goal at average front room viewing distances??

That depends on the viewing distance, of course. For 3 meters viewing distance, 96 dpi is good enough. If we use the same standard "subpixel" treatment, 48 dpi should be acceptable. That means 1920x1080 is perfectly fine for a 42" display. However, if you use half viewing distance (1.5 meters) you'll want double resolution.

Also one should note that human eye is more sensitive to high contrast images. That's why high resolution display is so important for texts. For natural images and video it's not that important (normal color printing is 300 ~ 400 dpi, compared to > 600 dpi for black and white texts).

 

[hoho]

There is no reason why we aren't getting 2500x1600 hd Tv displays that upscale pictures...

What kind of throughput do the standard TV interfaces have at the moment? What HDMI version do the 4k displays need? Are they capable of 4k at 48FPS with 3D?