Do you want Retina-Like Displays on a laptop?

With the rumor that the next Macbook will have a Retina Display (2880 x 1800 on 15 inches), this is a trend that we will likely be seeing in Windows/Linux laptops. Is this overkill over 1920x1080? We obviously haven't seen it but we do have a point of reference in the iPad. Having both an iPad 3 and XPS 15 with 1080p screen, I notice in comparing the same content that the 1080p screen has more aliasing (jaggies) in the text but you have to look for it to really notice it. And going from iPad 3 back to to XPS is fine. Not like going from iPad 3 to iPad 2 where you really don't want to go back.

So is anyone interested in a Retina screen for their next laptop? Would you be willing to pay the premium (probably much more than a $100 over a 1080p display)?

 

Only if Windows gets better DPI scaling. I've increased it by one level on my desktop screen, and it causes strange artifacts on some windows (mostly installers and settings screens).

 

Though i enjoy it on my ios devices, i dont need it on PC. 17" 1080P is good enough. Any more than that would be too much for my GPU to handle (gaming wise).

 

I would pay at least a couple hundred for a Retina display upgrade as long as the pixel increase doesn't have a proportionally negative effect on battery life or other image quality issues like brightness, color reproduction, or contrast.

A couple bullet points:

- It's probably been beaten to death somewhere already, but 2880x1800 would be 16:10. A move back to that aspect ratio would delight a lot of people, though multimedia users who want widescreen videos without black bars would be disappointed. Not sure about the legitimacy of the current rumors, like whether there's actually any evidence that 2880x1800 would be more likely than 3200x1800, for example.

- If you're doubling resolutions to create Retina displays, you can play at half the resolution both vertically and horizontally for what should be flawless image quality since each single game pixel is represented by an exact square of four screen pixels. Though the idea of moving from 1080p to 1800p like the rumored MBP 15 screen means that you'd be gaming at 900p after the switch rather than 1080p.

 

16:10 is the bees knees. hope it happens
finally something to push laptop makers to kill 1366x768

 

If they did make a high resolution screen on a Mac at 16:10 aspect ratio, then i would gladly pay the premium to buy one.
I miss my 1920x1200 screen that much. ;(

 

Yes, I never felt that 1920x1200 was large enough.

 

+1 on getting back to 16:10 via a Retina display if necessary. My method now is to stick with older Core2Duo ultraportables (2530P, Dell E4300, Lenovo X200) that manage to get almost as good battery life as Sandy Bridge systems. 1st gen i-cores were worse so they are of little interest.

 

Maybe not retina, but higher resolutions, definitely. Since my laptop screen is further away from my eyes than my phone usually is, something around 200ppi would be nice.

 

its called a high resolution display not retina....shesh

 

While you are right, it is more a technicality and the questions remains pretty clear. In any case, i changed the title to retina-like displays to avoid further confusion.

 

Only if they don't use a stupid marketing term for it.

 

Agreed on the marketing term.

As for the benefit, I'm divided. At normal viewing distances I can't see the pixels at all on my screen provided things are antialiased (which is almost everything in a desktop environment). In game it could be a real pita to drive something that high, though as noted before you could simply drop the resolution.

While I don't think it'll really catch on in the mobile market due to the small text size (unless, as noted before, DPI scaling is finally fixed), since my parents can barley read my screen as it is, I think that it would be quite nice to have the extra space on something like a 27" display.

 

I had a 1200x1920 15in screen... I wish I still had it

 

you mean 1920x1200???

 

Personally I wish all notebook sizes had 1080p 16:9 screen options. As well as matte (at a minimum), or ~400nit screens (for glossy).

I also wouldn't mind 21:9 screens with 1080 in the short dimension. Especially once windows 8 comes out and there's no valid reason for a trackpad any more.

But past 1080p, I have no interest until some movie disc format catches up.

 

Historically it was the monitor that lead the industry in display/resolution quality. The digital change over was the fist time that broadcast system had changed since it began other than the addition of color.

 

If it resulted in less eye strain for people like me who spend 8+ hours on a PC every day for work, yes, please.

 

image quality has nothing to do with screen resolution. Just like megapixels don't really matter in a digital camera.

 

I guess you never really noticed the jagged edges back in the day when games ran at 640x480?

 

Greg, LOL and I remember. Wow it has been a while. Time just keeps moving forward so fast. If anyone wants to see it, put your lappy to its very lowest rez. A couple of hours of that and your eyes will be bleeding. I remember the monochrome monitors. Any color you wanted as long as it was green. Maybe orange, but that might be a faulty memory and burned out eyes.

Like Greg, I spend a lot of my day on computers, so anything that makes it easier on my eyes gets my vote.

 

Or ever used a 2.1 megapixel camera.

It's true that an 8 megapixel photo taken with a high-quality DSLR will look better than a $100 14 megapixel point-and-shoot, since there are many other significant factors in digital photo image quality. Similarly, the image quality of notebook displays is based on several factors, but resolution is a significant factor, and from the consumer's perspective, a higher-resolution panel is typically synonymous with improved brightness, color, and contrast as well simply because that's usually the case when you spend the money to upgrade.

 

I just hope they will offer a 19:10 version of the "4k screens" I dont care if it costs 4 times more i'll find a way to get the money

 

If they do it like ios devices where the resolution is raised but the icon size and ratio is still the same than sure, otherwise the laptop screen is small enough as it is.

 

May suck for gamers to go high res, unless there is good scaling to play at non native resolutions.

 

That had so much less to do with the resolution than it did the games themselves.

Same way you can put AA on and reduce jaggies while using the same resolution.

You can play a modern game in low resolution and its not jagged at all.

Obviously there are limits 640x480 is pushing it, but it does not scale linearly. 4K monitors are not suddenly 2x better than 1920 monitors and the only reason they would be is if you had a larger screen where pixel density started to become a problem.

 

I guess if the resolution is high enough then scaling won't be a problem because even if the image is stretched across 2 pixels wide by 2 pixels high, if the pixel density is high enough you will barely notice it.

 

When ever your scaling up you always have more pixels than the native, this remains true for going from say 1080P to 4K the quality loss is not due to lack of pixels or the pixel density its because your making a best guess as so what color and position each pixel should be.

The loss of quality should be the same going into a ultra high res screen because the theory is the same, the source is what matters not the destination.

Its the opposite when scaling down, its the destination that matters more. So it mealy comes to question is the algorithm going to be good enough to scale the image up and make it look the same as it did before. If your starting with HD content I dont think you would notice much unless your pixel peeping. But this means there is more detail to begin with that may be harder to properly preserve. So sharpness loss may be a problem.

 

If displays end up with very high resolution then it might make more sense to start looking into something like vector graphics. That scales very well. Using pixels is all well and good so far, but I think looking forward to keep upping power requirements and heat, etc will reach a bottleneck especially if display resolutions double. New thinking is needed i think.

 

Computer graphics were originally intended to be vector based, however the polygon based system makes rendering and collision much faster and easier. Trying to do everything mathematically beyond simple spheres gets horrible pretty quickly. While 3D objects are often defined in terms of vectors (more correctly nurbs, since it's 3D), when they are rendered they are usually turned into a polygon mesh, where you specify the level of detail you need.

I'm not too sure how tesselated objects are stored, but if they're stored as vector models then that's pretty cool, that there's hardware available to turn mathematical models into poly meshes on the fly.

 

Things like desktop icons should definitely be vectors if we're talking about scaling up to 4K screens. Then again, scaling up my desktop icons to a ridiculous size, all but a single third-party icon - and the contents of the folder icons - scales up very gracefully, so they might be vectors already.

If we're talking about other images, it gets a bit trickier. Have you ever tried to create or edit a vector image? You can make some cool shapes pretty easily, but anything complex takes a lot of work. Vectorizing a crayon or charcoal drawing by hand, for example, would be borderline impossible with all of their tiny little inconsistencies. Maybe there are decent algorithms out there already, but if there were, I'd expect to see more vector images than we currently do.

 

If you have a 3200x1800 lcd, won't there be no negative drawbacks such as pixel shading if you game at 1600x900??

This could be really cool to essentially have more than one native resolution.

Though, I guess gaming at 3200x1800 you probably wouldn't need anti aliasing.

You'd be surprised. I think the reason why there aren't as many vector images out there is because we don't have retina displays yet... A complex vector image can actually take up more space on the hard drive than a compressed jpeg. Not to mention, if you start scrolling around or animating stuff it will start taking up a lot of graphics power.

You should get inkscape and mess around with it, there are very good algorithms, its actually pretty simple but things can get very complex.

 

2D vector graphics aren't too difficult to render, and they're quite common already. A lot of icons are all vector based now. While it can be a pain to work with more complicated shapes in vector format, they can be a lot more powerful than raster based images in certain cicumstances. Turning a bitmap into a vector image is a pain in the butt for sure, though.

Vectors aren't the solve all to images though. Try and vectorise some grass or dirt in a semi realistic manor and you'll lose hair.

 

I played with Inkscape for a while but couldn't figure it out. Should've followed a guide or two to get a grip on the basic functions, but in reality it was just goofing around, no real use in my day to day life. I've got more vector experience with FontForge (that's the free one, right?) but again, that was about 90% goofing off, not much real applicability to my life. Now if I could scan black and white images as vectors that would be worth my time, since I illustrate simple books for my ESL kindergartners.

Personally, though, I hate the jpg format. I print a lot of black and white clipart for worksheets and flashcards for my kids and I have to do some serious noise removal for jpgs. Why doesn't everybody just use PNG?

Gaming at 3200x1800 would be sweet, and if the screen size didn't change, I imagine AA would be pretty much unnecessary for smooth images, but that's four times the pixels of 1600x900 so GPU manufacturers will have a lot to catch up with whenever 4k becomes the standard resolution. Gaming at half resolution will be SOP for most people for at least a few years after 4k comes into play.

 

I'm guessing mostly because sometimes its not that important to be pretty; and of course, size also matters.

 

I can't notice a difference between "Retina" and my laptop screen...

:L

In fact, the Laptop screen looks better.

 

The difference is significant. You may need glasses?

 

glasses for sure. You put an IPS screen next to a TN screen you will notice...also an iphone to a laptop is granny smith to red delicious. You should compare the new iPad to your laptop.

 

According to Cnet the 2880x1800 monitor will be about $100 more to make than the current Apple monitor. If Apple and other laptop manufacturers make the upgrade $100 more, that's not too bad. Of course they could charge a much larger premium for the upsell.

 

guarantee you its 50% mark up

 

If it's standard then it'll be built into the price of the notebook. If it's an option, I'm guessing at least a $200 upgrade. Imagine your favorite PC manufacturer offering an upgrade from 1920x1080 to 3200x1800 - how many manufacturers would offer the upgrade for less than $200, even if the screen only cost $100 more? Part of it is increasing profits, but part of it is managing supply - make it dear enough and the number of upgrades shouldn't outstrip the supply, but if it's a cheap upgrade you'll quickly find you're getting more orders than you can fill.

That model relies on a limited supply, of course, but is that so unlikely with new tech like this?

 

still want 19:10 though

 

Panasonic has a 4K2K Plasma Display just for you

A Massive 152-inch Screen
Equivalent to nine 50-inch screens, this huge display immerses the viewer in lifelike images. It lets you show even large products with life-seize views that are so real, you feel like you’re looking at the actual product.

4K2K Resolution
Detailed, High-Quality Images with Rich Textures
This is world’s first development for a self-illuminating display. Ultrahigh-speed drive technology featuring super-high efficiency technology, which was made possible by the self-illuminating plasma displays, produces approximately 4 times the amount of information (4,096 × 2,160 pixels) of a full-HD panel (1,920 ×1,080 pixels).

Aspect Ratio 17:9
The TH-152UX1 has an aspect ratio of 17:9, which complies with the DCI standard for digital cinema. The wide screen is suitable not only for digital signage but also in various other display applications.
The 4K2K display faithfully express bright, highly detailed content that fills the entire screen with lifelike images, even when watched from a relatively close viewing distance of 1.5 times the screen height.

FULL HD Signals for Each Eye — Frame Sequential Technology
The technology in which the left-eye and right-eye 3D images are sent to the viewer is the key to 3D image quality. For this, FULL HD 3D uses something called the Frame Sequential technology. The left and right images are alternately displayed at high speed (60 frames per second for each eye x 2 = 120 frames per second*). When viewed with special glasses that open and close shutters in sync with the displayed frames, the brain creates the sensation of depth from the visual disparity to form 3D images.

Compatible with Various 3D Imaging Methods
In addition to the Frame Sequential method, Panasonic professional FULL HD 3D plasma displays are compatible with both the Side-by-Side and Top-and-Bottom methods.

Ultra-High-Speed Drive Technology Achieves Clear 3D with Minimal Double Image
3D images require a display speed of 120 frames per second (fps), which is twice the ordinary speed. A panel with slow response simply cannot keep up with the necessary image processing. As a result, a double image will appear when the images for the left and right eyes overlap on the screen (also called crosstalk). In addition to new short-decay-time phosphors that reduce the afterglow time to 1/3, and a new luminous control, high-precision Motion Vector Prediction function on the VX200 Series helps to achieve highly precise illumination. Ultra-high speed drive technology, which shortens the luminous time to 1/4 compared to previous models, also minimizes double image even on large screens to produce clear and detailed 3D images.

Newly Developed Fast-Decay Phosphors are Used for the Red and Green Phosphors
This reduces the afterimage time to 1/3 that of conventional phosphors while simultaneously expanding the scope of color reproduction. As a result, brighter, sharper images are produced for 3D content.

High-Speed Illumination Achieved with High-Precision Motion Vector Prediction
The VX200 Series features the world's first* high-precision Motion Vector Prediction function. Its precise luminous control predicts front/back movement as well as left/right and diagonal movement to increase the drive speed and produce clear 3D images even on a large screen.

 

4k2k is 16:9....blah....where is my 16:10

 

4K2K displays and infrastructure needed

Also known as Quad Full HD and the slightly catchier Ultra HD, this stunning new video format is better known – in the panel industry at least – as 4K or 4k2k, and it's already been embraced by Hollywood.

How to get 4k to homes?

The problem with delivery is the sheer size of 4K's datastream; the infrastructure simply does not exist.
The Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) specifications, which are used by Hollywood, use a maximum of 250 Mbits/sec for a JPEG2000 compressed 4K image, though this is set to double to 500 Mbits/sec in the next five years or so.
"In DCI terms, at the highest bitrate of 250 Mbit/sec, a two-hour 4k film would be 225GB for the image only, excluding audio or sub pictures," .

How about getting a 4K movie onto a Blu-ray disc?

"On the basis that three hours of 4K video takes up 3.16TB, this would be 212 standard 25GB Blu-rays – although the quality of image and amount of Blu-rays used all comes down to the amount of compression applied."

And how about just downloading a 4K film? In its currently uncompressed format, a two-hour film would take somewhere between 1-2 terabytes, which would take between 38-65 hours to download over a maxed-out 7.6 Mbps broadband line (the UK's average speed). A healthy 100 title-strong film library would therefore require a 1-1.5 petabyte hard disk server.

New firmware or new kit?

Oddly enough, while 4K sources are scant, the cables to carry these high-data signals to TVs have existed for some time. PNY is one of many manufacturers to have already released 4K-capable HDMI version 1.4 cables.

 

I'll put one of these on my wish list right after the Ferrari.^^

 

Same here!

 

What matters more to me is the color gamut. Right now I'm happy with 1080p on a 15'' screen

 

Lol, yay, now that we finally have a perfect gigantic display, I get to look at my favorite thing in the world with awesome lifelike clarity... products.

 

I wouldn't buy that 152-inch display simply on the account that it has a measly 30 DPI...

Should be 2160p (x4)...