High colour depth seems to have died after its mainstream debut on Matrox's Parhelia cards. The idea of 30 bit colour certainly sounded nice, but the parhelia was not a card suited for hobbyists or even keen amateurs.
Indeed, the change to LCD technology actually meant a backwards step in colour depth. It's only in the last 12-18 months or so, that consumer grade LCD monitors have started offering 24 bit colour - prior to that most consumer grade screens were 18 bit.
I've started seeing marketing for plasma screens boasting 33 bit colour, although this is only available from an analogue source - so is therefore of limited use for high-precision workstation use. This same problem manifested with the parhelia cards - the 30 bit colour output was only available on analogue - digital output (DVI) is presently restricted to 24 bit.
I know there are workstation grade LCD monitors which offer 12.5 bit monochrome depth (approx 7000 grey levels) but these are phenomenally expensive and require a proprietary graphics card to drive them. We've got them at work - with a resolution of 2560x2048 and use of 16bit imaging software, the results are pretty spectacular.
Are we likely to see a 'DVI 2' upgraded to support higher colour depths (?48 bit perhaps), and display panels which could utilise such colour depths?
Indeed, the change to LCD technology actually meant a backwards step in colour depth. It's only in the last 12-18 months or so, that consumer grade LCD monitors have started offering 24 bit colour - prior to that most consumer grade screens were 18 bit.
I've started seeing marketing for plasma screens boasting 33 bit colour, although this is only available from an analogue source - so is therefore of limited use for high-precision workstation use. This same problem manifested with the parhelia cards - the 30 bit colour output was only available on analogue - digital output (DVI) is presently restricted to 24 bit.
I know there are workstation grade LCD monitors which offer 12.5 bit monochrome depth (approx 7000 grey levels) but these are phenomenally expensive and require a proprietary graphics card to drive them. We've got them at work - with a resolution of 2560x2048 and use of 16bit imaging software, the results are pretty spectacular.
Are we likely to see a 'DVI 2' upgraded to support higher colour depths (?48 bit perhaps), and display panels which could utilise such colour depths?
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