How long 'til 200 or 300dpi monitors?

[magreen]

I'm tired of having to zoom in to view my pdf documents with the fonts looking normal on my screen, or having to print them out on a printer. Viewing them at a size that fits a normal monitor you can't see any of the detail.

With all the decreasing costs of large monitors and increased graphics power, it seems to be quite possible in the near future to get higher resolution in the same space. Right now the standard seems to be about 100 dpi -- that is, approx. 20" for 2000 pixels.

I want better, and I know I'm not the only one -- after all, that's why Microsoft came up with ClearType and made it standard in Windows Vista -- because onscreen fonts look lousy compared to print.

So how long until the standard is a 22" monitor with 12 to 15 megapixels (4500 x 3000 resolution and up) ?

 

[SunnyD]

Originally posted by: magreen
I'm tired of having to zoom in to view my pdf documents with the fonts looking normal on my screen, or having to print them out on a printer. Viewing them at a size that fits a normal monitor you can't see any of the detail.

With all the decreasing costs of large monitors and increased graphics power, it seems to be quite possible in the near future to get higher resolution in the same space. Right now the standard seems to be about 100 dpi -- that is, approx. 20" for 2000 pixels.

I want better, and I know I'm not the only one -- after all, that's why Microsoft came up with ClearType and made it standard in Windows Vista -- because onscreen fonts look lousy compared to print.

So how long until the standard is a 22" monitor with 12 to 15 megapixels (4500 x 3000 resolution and up) ?

When they decide to make it. :roll:

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: SunnyD

Originally posted by: magreen
I'm tired of having to zoom in to view my pdf documents with the fonts looking normal on my screen, or having to print them out on a printer. Viewing them at a size that fits a normal monitor you can't see any of the detail.

With all the decreasing costs of large monitors and increased graphics power, it seems to be quite possible in the near future to get higher resolution in the same space. Right now the standard seems to be about 100 dpi -- that is, approx. 20" for 2000 pixels.

I want better, and I know I'm not the only one -- after all, that's why Microsoft came up with ClearType and made it standard in Windows Vista -- because onscreen fonts look lousy compared to print.

So how long until the standard is a 22" monitor with 12 to 15 megapixels (4500 x 3000 resolution and up) ?

When they decide to make it. :roll:

 

[techmanc]

My crystal ball is in the shop

 

[Lonyo]

You can get a 23" with 2048x1152 resolution. Not exactly 4.5kx3k but higher than "normal".

 

[allies]

Why would you have a screen withe a 1.5:1 ratio?

 

[magreen]

See, I think this is a really interesting question. I don't just mean how long do you think, 2 yrs, 5 yrs, 10 yrs -- thank you for that crystal ball remark

The question is, do you think this is in the works, and what would be required from a hardware standpoint? People often ask why do we need faster computers, faster cpus, gpus, etc., it's only for gamers and hard core number crunching, etc. I think 200 or 300dpi screens would necessitate a much beefier system. But I'm not really sure if the stress would be on the cpu, gpu, or memory subsystem, or all three.

Just as an example, 12MP of screen resolution would place serious stress on today's systems. You'd need ~3 GB/s of memory bandwidth just to feed that image (12MP*4BpP*60Hz = 3000MB/s) meaning no IGP could currently handle it -- systems today only have about 5GB/s of mem bandwidth to start with, and siphoning off that much bandwidth to shared mem would kill the system. So it means a newer architecture, or a discrete gpu just for the memory.

I'm not sure what kind of cpu or gpu load it would generate. But I think computers are moving in this direction.

Thoughts?

 

[TridenT]

I am thinking it is because no one would use it... How would you see anything? 1920x1200 on a 24" is already a very high pixel pitch for many people. (2560x1600 on a 30" is even more dense) I don't even know how you could read the text on a 17" running at 1920x1200...

 

[Concillian]

I do not think this is seriously in the works.

Notebook screens are already available at higher than average DPI, for example the 19" 1920x1200 screen I'm using right now. They aren't marketed for normal computers.

Why?

1) Poeple are dumb and don't realize that they need higher DPI fonts to compensate
2) higher DPI fonts are not common
3) the combination of 1 and 2 lead to service calls to system integrators from people who have no clue (majority of computer useers,) which equates to higher customer service cost which means these people don't want to sell high DPI monitors with their systems.
4) if you lose the system integrators, you lose your volume, and the price is prohibitively high.

The only hope for high DPI screens is HDTV. 1080P is currently only widely available on 24" TVs or larger. Consumers may start demanding 1080P on smaller screens, so this may be an avenue that drives higher DPI.

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: TridenTBoy3555
I am thinking it is because no one would use it... How would you see anything? 1920x1200 on a 24" is already a very high pixel pitch for many people. (2560x1600 on a 30" is even more dense) I don't even know how you could read the text on a 17" running at 1920x1200...

Well I'm not talking about the same fonts shrunken down to tiny size, I'm talking about using much larger (as in, many more pixels wide and high) truetype fonts that would take up the same size on your screen as what we currently use, but without the jagged edges. When you print out a document at 300dpi it doesn't mean it has tiny little print, it just means it's of high quality.

That way, displaying a pdf document where you select "fit to window" so you can see the whole thing, you'd actually be able to read it decently on your screen.

 

[magreen]

@Concillian: I agree with today's operating systems it's not doable, since hardly any user would be willing to play with his font size. This would definitely require OS level support, where the OS would scale the fonts for you to match your resolution and physical display size. The OS would function much like the page layout software does now when you print something.

Not like today, where you effectively tell the OS how many pixels tall you want your font and it brainlessly displays it, meaning higher resolution = smaller font.

 

[TridenT]

Both you guys are forgetting images... What about images? What about websites that are designed to NOT be 99999x999999 resolution? I doubt many are even made for 2560x1600...

 

[magreen]

Images too... Most digital cameras are taking 8+ MP pictures these days. We only scale them down on websites to fit the standard resolution of people's monitors. Change the standard, and the websites can have those higher resolution pics. The pics will look a heckuvalot better too.

Of course, that would take up more network bandwidth, requiring faster networks... Which fits into what I was asking of what hardware changes will this require.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: magreen
@Concillian: I agree with today's operating systems it's not doable, since hardly any user would be willing to play with his font size. This would definitely require OS level support, where the OS would scale the fonts for you to match your resolution and physical display size. The OS would function much like the page layout software does now when you print something.

Current OSes can deal with higher DPI fonts just fine. The issue is nobody has any incentive to go out of their way to design a set of standard fonts. There is even less incentive for anyone to actually promote any set of high DPI fonts as a new standard.

 

[Concillian]

Originally posted by: TridenTBoy3555
Both you guys are forgetting images... What about images? What about websites that are designed to NOT be 99999x999999 resolution? I doubt many are even made for 2560x1600...

If you build it they will come.

Websites are designed around the users who view them. It wasn't long ago that they were all designed around 640x480, then 800x600. People move up the chain and when the masses do, website re-designs take that into account.

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: Concillian

Originally posted by: magreen
@Concillian: I agree with today's operating systems it's not doable, since hardly any user would be willing to play with his font size. This would definitely require OS level support, where the OS would scale the fonts for you to match your resolution and physical display size. The OS would function much like the page layout software does now when you print something.

Current OSes can deal with higher DPI fonts just fine. The issue is nobody has any incentive to go out of their way to design a set of standard fonts. There is even less incentive for anyone to actually promote any set of high DPI fonts as a new standard.

Hmmm... I hear what you're saying about incentive, but OTOH, what was microsoft's incentive to develop ClearType? ClearType is a kludge to deal with a small part of this problem -- wouldn't they have an incentive to fix it right? And Microsoft has definitely developed fonts before, like Arial.

Also, I know current OSes can deal with high dpi fonts if you manually set it. But that's what you were saying above, that most average users won't know to set it to a higher dpi font, and wouldn't know how to mess with that. I'm saying the OS needs to handle it so the user doesn't need to know about it -- just like you can print a microsoft word document to a letter size piece of paper and it will just work, whether your printer prints 300 dpi, 600dpi, or 1200dpi. The computer handles that stuff for you. The on-screen stuff should be the same way.

 

[Flipped Gazelle]

I remember reading about a 200 dpi monitor from IBM, sometime in the late 90's.

I wonder what kind of video card interface would be needed, to display on a 5000 pixel wide monitor, not to mention all the GPU power for 3D apps and games.

As far as images go... most on-screen photos look their best at 50% of original size, or smaller. 100% from a typical P&S camera is pretty awful looking.

As far as web pages go, I think that everything needs to be more dynamically scalable, and vector-based.

 

[ther00kie16]

@ gazelle, t221 from 2001 "The IBM T220 and T221 are LCD monitors with a native resolution of 3840×2400 pixels (WQUXGA) on a screen with a diagonal of 22.2 inch (564 mm). This works out as over 9.2 million pixels, with pixel density of 204 pixels per inch" -wiki
204 is same ppi as ipods and some smartphones are over 300. 15.4" 1920x1200 notebooks are have 147 ppi and apparently there's a 5.6" 1280x800 Fujitsu Lifebook U820, which is 270ppi. So there are some devices out there with really high ppi. There were talks of a 7" 1080p screen by Sanyo, as well as a 3" 10x7 but I haven't seen any news on those since they were first announced 2 yrs ago.
As some have said, you need a huge bandwidth to drive anything of decent size (>~16") with your desired pixel density. For those poor-looking documents/photos, just sit back a little in your chair. I think 24" is a good balance of size and pixel density. But I wouldn't mind something like a 32" 3840x2400.

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: ther00kie16
@ gazelle, t221 from 2001 "The IBM T220 and T221 are LCD monitors with a native resolution of 3840×2400 pixels (WQUXGA) on a screen with a diagonal of 22.2 inch (564 mm). This works out as over 9.2 million pixels, with pixel density of 204 pixels per inch" -wiki
204 is same ppi as ipods and some smartphones are over 300. 15.4" 1920x1200 notebooks are have 147 ppi and apparently there's a 5.6" 1280x800 Fujitsu Lifebook U820, which is 270ppi. So there are some devices out there with really high ppi. There were talks of a 7" 1080p screen by Sanyo, as well as a 3" 10x7 but I haven't seen any news on those since they were first announced 2 yrs ago.
As some have said, you need a huge bandwidth to drive anything of decent size (>~16") with your desired pixel density.

Interesting. That ibm thing may have been before its time, but I think it has a future.

For those poor-looking documents/photos, just sit back a little in your chair. I think 24" is a good balance of size and pixel density. But I wouldn't mind something like a 32" 3840x2400.

Right. The problem is when it has small text to begin with and you just can't read it no matter what you do, except zoom in to 100% or 150% or more, which is a big pain, since a 22" ws monitor is actually as tall as a piece of paper and as wide as two of them... I want it to display things like paper can!

 

[jsoderba]

In the last six months 1080p 21.5" monitors have become widely available. This is the first major move toward higher DPI in desktop monitors. Hopefully this trend will continue.

You may be interested in this Microsoft blog post talks about high DPI features in Vista and Windows 7. The short version is that Vista supports making resolutions independent apps and if you run your display at a high DPI setting (>120 dpi) Vista will rescale fixed-resolution applications automatically.

Fonts do not need to be redesigned for high resolution. TrueType fonts are fundamentally rescalable (as can be seen by their performance on 600dpi and 1200 dpi printers) and only need tweaking for low dpi devices such as normal computer screens, because the TT scaling algorithm breaks down when there are too few pixels to work with. For low-res display font designers add special instructions called hints that essentially deforms the characters so that edges line up with pixel boundaries, otherwise the edges might disappear (without antialiasing) or become blurred (with aa).

To make the web resolution independent we need two things:
1. better support for scalable vector graphics (IE 8 will not have any support. Mozilla, Opera and WebKit (Apple/Google/etc) already support SVG but Microsoft wont support it until IE9 at best. SVG images ought to be used for most non-photographic images on the web.
2. better raster image resizing. Most browsers are finally using bicubic scaling for images so when old browsers like Firefox 2 and IE 7 go away this will get better. Ideally there should be a way to negotiate image sizes so you could serve a high-res image to high dpi users and low res images to low-dpi users, thus saving bandwidth. The Opera Mini browser for mobile phones already does this by proxying web traffic trough Opera's server that strip out background images and resize and recompress inline images.

Dave Hyatt, formerly of Netscape and Mozilla, now at Apple, wrote about this.

edit: ack, wrong markup

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: jsoderba
In the last six months 1080p 21.5" monitors have become widely available. This is the first major move toward higher DPI in desktop monitors. Hopefully this trend will continue.

You may be interested in this Microsoft blog post talks about high DPI features in Vista and Windows 7. The short version is that Vista supports making resolutions independent apps and if you run your display at a high DPI setting (>120 dpi) Vista will rescale fixed-resolution applications automatically.

Fonts do not need to be redesigned for high resolution. TrueType fonts are fundamentally rescalable (as can be seen by their performance on 600dpi and 1200 dpi printers) and only need tweaking for low dpi devices such as normal computer screens, because the TT scaling algorithm breaks down when there are too few pixels to work with. For low-res display font designers add special instructions called hints that essentially deforms the characters so that edges line up with pixel boundaries, otherwise the edges might disappear (without antialiasing) or become blurred (with aa).

To make the web resolution independent we need two things:
1. better support for scalable vector graphics (IE 8 will not have any support. Mozilla, Opera and WebKit (Apple/Google/etc) already support SVG but Microsoft wont support it until IE9 at best. SVG images ought to be used for most non-photographic images on the web.
2. better raster image resizing. Most browsers are finally using bicubic scaling for images so when old browsers like Firefox 2 and IE 7 go away this will get better. Ideally there should be a way to negotiate image sizes so you could serve a high-res image to high dpi users and low res images to low-dpi users, thus saving bandwidth. The Opera Mini browser for mobile phones already does this by proxying web traffic trough Opera's server that strip out background images and resize and recompress inline images.

Dave Hyatt, formerly of Netscape and Mozilla, now at Apple, wrote about this.

edit: ack, wrong markup

Wow, great info in this post. That msdn blog post is an awesome reference. Thanks!

And welcome to AnandTech!

 

[jsoderba]

I wish you hadn't quoted that just yet

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: jsoderba
I wish you hadn't quoted that just yet

ok, fixed

 

[PingSpike]

I don't really care if we get higher DPI monitors. I'd actually prefer a selection of lower DPI ones so you don't need a new graphics card every year to play games at native resolution.

 

[magreen]

Originally posted by: PingSpike
I don't really care if we get higher DPI monitors. I'd actually prefer a selection of lower DPI ones so you don't need a new graphics card every year to play games at native resolution.

It seems like with ultra-high resolutions, there should be an option at the driver level to just double every other pixel, so you can show a half-resolution image in native resolution on your monitor.

For example, the graphics card could be rendering the game at 1920x1200 but the driver will "magnify" it by doubling all the pixels and display the game at 3840x2400 on your monitor, at the monitor's native resolution. Then you wouldn't have the drawbacks of non-native resolutions, and you wouldn't need ridiculous graphics power to drive the game.