Anyone remember IBM's 'Big Bertha'?

[alkemyst]

LINK

Talk about eye candy! The IBM T221, a 22.2-inch LCD monitor, offers such a stunning image that we feel we must warn you: There is no going back. This may be a slight problem because of the $18,999 price tag for the display (code-named Big Bertha by the engineers at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York). As a lease, that's $672 for 36 months?much more than a Jaguar S-Type's current $499 lease.

"The T221 offers a whole new relationship with data," says Steven L. Wright, research staff member at IBM's Advanced Display Technology Laboratory. "Before Bertha, we were looking at data through a soda straw." Take legal documents: Bertha renders the 4-point type with ease and clarity. Or the Japanese language, which requires 170 pixels per inch: Bertha maxes out at 204 pixels per inch. Or a regular PDF file: Bertha can display two letter-size pages side by side.

Bertha's core technology is a jumble of the latest letters: It uses an active-matrix TFT LCD panel with dual-domain in-plane switching (IPS) technology. It has a resolution of 3,840-by-2,400, which allows for 12 times as much data as a 1,024-by-768 monitor. (That's QUXGA-W, for Quarter-UXGA Wide; the wide part comes from the 16:10 aspect ratio, which is just slightly bigger than a typical movie screen's.) Another way to look at it: That's 9.2 million pixels. Two DVI outputs simultaneously channel the digital signals, and four bricks supply AC power.

Almost every aspect of Bertha's inner workings is brand-spanking new. Aluminum was used as a gate material, and newly developed liquid crystals were injected in an innovative process called One Drop Fill. These two advances make faster response times possible, solving one of the major bugaboos of LCD screens. In conjunction, the engineers developed Post-Spacer technology?permanent spacers that provide super-sealing capabilities to prevent light leakage. And the breakthroughs just keep coming: A new protocol called Digital PV link updates only the pixels that need updating, which reduces bandwidth strain.

Call it a game of catch-up. Displays are way behind compared with today's powerful processors, graphics cards, and 5-megapixel digital cameras. When you order a computer online, the display is the last item you pick, yet it's the component you interface with most. But Bertha's brilliance won't matter much if the industries involved can't get together. Take DVI, the new digital standard for monitors. It's power is undercut by confusion over too many types of adapters: DVI-A, DVI-D, DVI-I, and so on. Worse is the lack of support from graphics card vendors; only a few high-end cards currently support DVI. A little synchronization from key players, continued improvement from IBM and others, a bit of a price drop, and we could all be feasting our eyes on our own Berthas soon.

 

[Soccerman06]

Why dont we have 3840x2400 resolution in the consumer market?

 

[bunnyfubbles]

IIRC that monitor had a horrendously slow response time, thus relegating it almost strictly to static images.

at any rate, hopefully OLED will reintroduce the concept of higher pixel density, that monitor might have seemed large in a day of 15" and 17" domination, but 3840x2400 @ 22" is beastly - we can't really even get 1920x1200 (ie 1/4 the resolution) on anything less than 23"

 

[dguy6789]

They have 1920x1200 resolution on 17 inch laptop screens.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
They have 1920x1200 resolution on 17 inch laptop screens.

well that's pretty much the point now isn't it...laptops are laptops...my comment was regarding monitors

even so, to match the pixel density we'd need to see 1920x1200 in 11" laptops, or I guess thats pretty much netbook size...of which, last I checked, having at least 720p on a netbook isn't yet common

 

[Genx87]

It is pretty funny going back and looking at the garbage companies put out at ridiculous price tags. This was replaced by a pair of 400 dollar 20" LCDs and a 200 dollar video card spanning the desktop a year later.

 

[Eureka]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
They have 1920x1200 resolution on 17 inch laptop screens.

You know, 1920x1200 on 17" is a pretty comfortable resolution... why don't they have the same ratio for 24" monitors?

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: bunnyfubbles

Originally posted by: dguy6789
They have 1920x1200 resolution on 17 inch laptop screens.

well that's pretty much the point now isn't it...laptops are laptops...my comment was regarding monitors

even so, to match the pixel density we'd need to see 1920x1200 in 11" laptops, or I guess thats pretty much netbook size...of which, last I checked, having at least 720p on a netbook isn't yet common

I'm just saying the technology is there to do it. I would love to have a screen like that for a desktop.

 

[FalseChristian]

There ain't a GPU on the market that could support let alone play games at that ridiculous native resolution.

 

[yh125d]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
They have 1920x1200 resolution on 17 inch laptop screens.

I have a 15.4" 1920x1200. There might even be a 14.4" 19x12 panel out there

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: yh125d

Originally posted by: dguy6789
They have 1920x1200 resolution on 17 inch laptop screens.

I have a 15.4" 1920x1200. There might even be a 14.4" 19x12 panel out there

I want one! :Q

 

[sindows]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: yh125d

Originally posted by: dguy6789
They have 1920x1200 resolution on 17 inch laptop screens.

I have a 15.4" 1920x1200. There might even be a 14.4" 19x12 panel out there

I want one! :Q

No you don't, I've used one and the fonts are tiny. Imagine putting a dime on your monitor and the font size will be about the same as the size used to print the date.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: sindows

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: yh125d

Originally posted by: dguy6789
They have 1920x1200 resolution on 17 inch laptop screens.

I have a 15.4" 1920x1200. There might even be a 14.4" 19x12 panel out there

I want one! :Q

No you don't, I've used one and the fonts are tiny. Imagine putting a dime on your monitor and the font size will be about the same as the size used to print the date.

I would increase the font size obviously. I want one because the image quality on one of those screens surpasses anything else by far.

 

[brblx]

i wouldn't want anything smaller than 1680 on a 21" or 1920 on a 23".

>1080p on a 15" monitor is nuts. how often do you have to clean your nose prints off it?

 

[angry hampster]

" four bricks supply AC power."


Ridiculous.

 

[yh125d]

19x12 is surprisingly easy to use at 15.4". I won't buy another laptop with less. Its on my m1530, and I used it as my main PC/gaming rig/movie watching setup for about 5 months in the dorms. I had no problems, and yes it is VERY purty

 

[KingstonU]

Forgive me for being uninformed on this. But this is something that has perplexed me when it came to HD tvs, they claimed to have amazing detail and picture quality, yet I can very easily make out every single pixel on an 1080P HD plasma or LCD, even from a distance, which in my mind is terrible picture quality, it that because of pixel density?

So 1080P is actually 1920 pixels (height) × 1080 pixels (wide). And on a 50 inch TV, (simplified by saying it is 50 inches wide, not diagonal) each pixel is therefore 0.026 inches (50/1920=0.026). So (1"/0.026)^2 = 1,475 pixels / square inch.

But then 1080P on a 22" monitor (again simplifying that is it 22" wide), each pixel is therefore 0.0115 inches (22/1920=0.0115). So (1"/0.0115)^2 = 7,617 pixels / square inch.

So the pixel density of a 22" monitor is 5.2x greater than that of a 50" 1080P LCD TV (7617/1475 = 5.16).

My math may be wrong but is that the gist of it? Clarification appreciated.

 

[faxon]

yea pretty much. the primary thing you have to consider here isnt just the size of the panel though, but how far you are sitting from it. with a 22 inch panel much more than 3 feet makes it hard to view, where as a 50 inch panel can be easily viewed from 10-15 feet away with the same amount of visible detail preserved.

 

[ronnn]

Always wanted a big bertha, figure it would get me 300 yards.

 

[machineheadg2rr]

"The T221 offers a whole new relationship with data,"

for that much cash, it better offer a happy ending

 

[soccerballtux]

Originally posted by: KingstonU
Forgive me for being uninformed on this. But this is something that has perplexed me when it came to HD tvs, they claimed to have amazing detail and picture quality, yet I can very easily make out every single pixel on an 1080P HD plasma or LCD, even from a distance, which in my mind is terrible picture quality, it that because of pixel density?

So 1080P is actually 1920 pixels (height) × 1080 pixels (wide). And on a 50 inch TV, (simplified by saying it is 50 inches wide, not diagonal) each pixel is therefore 0.026 inches (50/1920=0.026). So (1"/0.026)^2 = 1,475 pixels / square inch.

But then 1080P on a 22" monitor (again simplifying that is it 22" wide), each pixel is therefore 0.0115 inches (22/1920=0.0115). So (1"/0.0115)^2 = 7,617 pixels / square inch.

So the pixel density of a 22" monitor is 5.2x greater than that of a 50" 1080P LCD TV (7617/1475 = 5.16).

My math may be wrong but is that the gist of it? Clarification appreciated.

Even if your 50" plasma had 7600 pixels/inch^2 , you would not benefit from it-- you'd still be able to see individual pixels-- you'd be limited by the media resolution (1920x1080P). It's "amazing detail and picture quality" because compared to a tube TV, it is.

 

[PCTC2]

We had one of these at work. It actually had the option to run 4 side-by-side displays at once, or 2, or just 1 computer hooked up to both DVI connectors on a Matrox or nVIDIA Quadro. The thing was crazy. We used it to manage a ROCKS cluster before my time, but when I started working it was relegated to the owner's desktop. Wish I had a chance to use it...