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It's amazing that pixel density has been stagnant since 2014, when the first 5k TV (low ppi) and 5k desktop displays (>200 ppi) were released. It's 2023 now and
by 111111IIIIIII 3y ago
It's amazing that pixel density has been stagnant since 2014, when the first 5k TV (low ppi) and 5k desktop displays (>200 ppi) were released. It's 2023 now and it still takes a kidney to get 5k >200 ppi, and we only recently got the 6k >200 ppi option for 2 kidneys. Pixel density, however, is stagnant.
I expect the industry realizes 6k is basically the stopping point so they're intentionally approaching it very slowly.
Edit: Updated with ppi specs to draw focus to pixel density of desktop displays.
- mattwad 3y agoWait, we've had 8k TVs since 2019: https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/electronics/8k-resolution https://www.cnn.com/cnn-underscored/electronics/8k-resolutio.... It doesn't even seem that expensive: https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-55-class-qn700b-neo-qled-8k-smart-tv/6517114.p?skuId=6517114 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/samsung-55-class-qn700b-neo-qle... (this is just the first result on Best Buy's site). Are we thinking of the same thing?
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoI should have been more specific about pixel density. TVs have very low pixel density. I've updated my comment for more clarity about this.
- mattwad 3y agoah ok. thanks.. it is confusing
- adgjlsfhk1 3y agopixel density doesn't matter. what matters is anyway pixel density. your TV is 2x bigger than your monitor, but you sit at least 2x further away, so the angular density is the same
- nailk 3y ago"8k" name in this case is just a marketing. It's not 8k, it's 4230p only.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- lern_too_spel 3y ago8k is 7680×4320. 4k is 3840x2160.
- NavinF 3y agoNope, That TV is 4320p (presumably 4320x7680) "4k" means ~2000x4000 pixels and "8k" means ~4000x8000 pixels. It is 8k and reasonably priced at $1000 new / $752.99 used
- epgui 3y agoNo, 4k === 3840x2160 resolution.
- avhon1 3y ago...and 3840x2160 is roughly 4000x2000, thus "4K". It's close enough for the marketing department, and now that's what it's understood to mean.
- plastic3169 3y agoOriginally 4K came from the DCI spec for digital cinema and it was 4096x2160. For consumer use it was shrinked to UHD which is the 3840x2160, but cinemas still use 4K (although most of the screens actually use 2K) Now 4K refers to image roughly the width of 4000 pixels according to wikipedia [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4K_resolution
- Thlom 3y agoAll new/upgraded auditoriums installed 4K (laser) projectors when I left the business 5 years ago. So not sure if most auditoriums only have 2K these days?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- valval 3y agoIt’s no secret that higher pixel counts are harder to achieve since computational power required grows approximately quadratically while GPU and CPU power improvements are more linear.
- colordrops 3y ago> GPU and CPU power improvements are more linear Do they?
- elabajaba 3y agoWe also just didn't have any good ways of driving such high PPI displays until recently without having to resort to janky hacks like dual cable setups (and the lines down the middle that those tend to have). A lot of laptops still don't support HDMI 2.1, and DP 2.0/2.1 only just came out (and I don't know if any displays are using it yet). There's also the bullshit the HDMI forum pulled where they relabeled HDMI 2.0 as HDMI 2.1 (years after HDMI 2.1 was out and established as "the one that can do 4k120hz no chroma subsampling" (a lot of implementations were around 40Gbps instead of the full 48Gbps because it was cheaper, and they didn't need the full 48Gbps for 4k120hz 10bit)), despite them having hugely different specs. Displayport 2.0/2.1 is also a clusterfuck because they decided that it would max out at either 40Gbps or 80Gbps depending on the implementation (DP40 and DP80), and companies don't generally tell you what their implementation actually supports. Macbook Pros only got HDMI 2.1 this year, iirc base and airs still don't have it. Intel iGPUs only do HDMI 2.0 and DP 1.4, AMD's Zen4 laptops can do HDMI 2.1 and DP 2.1 (idk what bandwidth). For dGPUs, AMD's 6000 series is HDMI 2.1+DP 1.4 (but there are issues with DSC), while 7000 series is HDMI 2.1 and DP 2.1 (DP80). Intel Arc dGPUs are DP 2.0 (DP40) and HDMI 2.1. Nvidia's 30 and 40 series are HDMI 2.1 and only DP 1.4. edit: Also, people don't realize just how fucking huge an 8k framebuffer is, and you need multiple for a swapchain. Even for just basic 8bit colour you're looking at ~133MB per framebuffer.
- NavinF 3y ago> ~133MB per framebuffer That's not a lot for people in the market for 8K monitors. 24G VRAM in the form of used 3090 cards is way cheaper than high end monitors. But yeah lack of DP2.1 support on current-gen cards like the 4090 is a problem > you need multiple for a swapchain There should be just two with variable refresh rate
- npunt 3y agoTV resolution goes at the pace of available content, and everything goes at the pace of context (living room 8-12' away), which is presently stuck at roughly what the human eye can resolve at that distance, which is about 4k. There isn't a world where a 5k or 6k tv ever makes sense. Monitor, yes. But not for TVs.
- IggleSniggle 3y agoRight, and then there’s HUDs!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoContent over 4k is readily available and even cheap to produce, but most of the good stuff is still being produced in 4k, so why is that???
- vanviegen 3y agoBecause 4k (and even 1080p) is good enough for most people?
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoYeah, for TVs that sounds right, but not for desktop displays. I wonder if desktop display pixel density is only stagnated because the TV industry has so much influence on the momentum and the TV industry thinks 4k is good enough.
- bobthepanda 3y agoBandwidth. ISPs already throttle streaming and have data caps.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- QuadrupleA 3y agoI feel like these DPIs have improved beyond the point of it mattering. Diminishing returns given the limits of human vision. 5k, 6k, seems more about marketing, like 96khz in the audiophile world. Makes little subjective difference.
- kitsunesoba 3y agoFor TVs I would agree, but there’s a visible difference between 4K and 5K at 27”. Don’t seem any point going past 5k for 27” monitors though, that truly is overkill.
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoI think there is actually a pretty common consensus that returns diminish at ~220 ppi, i.e. what Apple calls "Retina."
- vanviegen 3y agoI would guess that returns diminish a lot earlier, and just stop to matter entirely at around 220.
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoI don't have a definite reference for anything between 185 and 217, but it is a big difference visually. Somewhere in that range, the pixels disappear at a reasonable viewing distance.
- lrem 3y agoRead any old book on photography printing. If it is new enough to mention DPI, it insists at 300 for amateur prints.
- graftak 3y agoThat is not an entirely fair comparison, most print techniques are inherently less crisp because dots (pixels) tend to bleed into each other.
- wmf 3y agoClearly the tech is possible since phones have gone from 200 ppi to 400 but IMO desktop monitors simply don't need it.
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoI think desktops need at least >200.
- interlinked 3y agoDidn't apple just release a VR headset with 4k displays for each eye?
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoYes but those displays are stretched over a much wider field of view. When I sit on my couch and look at my TV it is covering maybe 30 degrees of my FOV. A VR headset typically would like to have 100+ degree FOV, which means a 4K VR display will have way less fidelity than a 4K TV.
- IggleSniggle 3y agoRight, but presumably you would need insane pixel density to achieve 4K at that range?
- Miraste 3y agoYes, it is around 3400ppi. This has been achievable for a bit in very small displays (these are 1.4in), although I believe there are difficulties with anything larger.
- TaylorAlexander 3y agoThis is the fundamental struggle with VR displays. Human eyes have very good visual fidelity and it would be real nice to match or exceed that with a VR headset. This presents many technical challenges.
- babypuncher 3y agoThere's no reason to go higher. 4k at most sizes in most living rooms is already at a point of diminishing returns. 8k TVs do exist, but nobody bothers making content for them. There's no appetite for it.
- 111111IIIIIII 3y agoI agree 4k is enough for TVs, but not for computer displays. 27"@4k still looks pretty bad on a desktop display. For desktop display, 220 ppi (27"@5k or 32"@6k) is perfect.
- dep_b 3y agoI saw a Samsung 8k screen and the resolution was amazing. Of course there was not much more content available than just that demo movie, but still it was interesting. I do see individual pixels on retina screens but I don't notice them on more organic stuff like movies on my screen. I guess computer content is just perfect squares and then perfect circles and fonts with some jaggy edges where they're rounded off, which is really not that hard to spot on retina screens. The difference between 4K and 8K in my opinion is that you can better see little glimmers, textures and things like that. But the 8K demo movie of course was highly optimized to show exactly that. What I really like is HDR on true black OLED, killer feature. But what I want more than anything is a "compression" feature on the audio of movies. I mean I just want to hear what people are saying to each other without the neighbors calling the police when going into a scene with explosions and/or music. I'm using subtitles in English for English movies nowadays FFS!!!
- jachee 3y agoIt’s amusing that you want more dynamics to your visuals, but fewer dynamics to your audio… Why the disconnect?
- GRiMe2D 3y agoI want more dynamics on audio too. But it requires to keep my audio speaker volume settings loud. I can easily isolate brightness pollution by closing door and sun shades. But isolating sound is difficult. At this point, going to cinema is the only solution to enjoy high dynamics audio.
- clhodapp 3y agoWell, the only affordable one. https://smyth-research.com/ https://smyth-research.com/ works pretty great
- Toutouxc 3y agoSpeaking of affordable, Apple TV + Dolby Atmos movies + AirPods Pro 2 with spatial audio enabled is probably the consumer friendly way to go for dynamic surround sound that won't get you evicted.
- rocqua 3y agoI think PC displays are not the innovation driver here. They get technology leftovers from TV. And TV doesn't care about Pixel density because of viewing distance. Meanwhile phones (and apple's VR thing) have massive pixel density, but PC displays are more like scaled down tvs than scaled up phones.
- diego_sandoval 3y agoI don't care about resolutions > 4K, like, at all. Things I care about: - More HiDPI laptops that are not 16:9, preferably 15"-16". - More 4K Monitors in the 22"-24" size range, preferably not 16:9. Having more of those things would have a much bigger impact on my daily display usage than a 5K TV. Apparently, the market doesn't share my preferences in displays very much. We're finally getting 16:10 and 3:2 alternatives in the laptop space, after more than a decade of enduring 16:9, but other than that, almost everything 4K is 16:9 14" and 27"-32".
- Eisenstein 3y agoWhy do you dislike 16:9?
- nottorp 3y agoIt's only good for content consumption. If you do code or anything that has text in it, the vertical space needed is infinite. And even if you edit 16:9 video content, you need extra space for your controls. Incidentally, on a 16:10 monitor you can have a 16:9 movie or game take up the whole upper part of the screen and still have your dock or task bar visible.
- jimjimjim 3y agoDefinitely agree. For software development I always end up rotating my monitors to portrait. You are always going to have more lines in a file than will fit on a landscape 16:9 screen. A taller screen gives you a much better "view" of the context of the code. And with window title bars, tabs, url bars, bookmarks, headings and sub headings the first jira issue appears more than halfway down the screen
- diffeomorphism 3y agoFor "infinite vertical space" you can do 9:16, i.e. portrait. That said, widescreen is quite useful for two 8:9 windows side by side, which works less well on more square ratios.
- 2muchcoffeeman 3y agoI've been wearing glasses for most of my life due to nearsightedness, and I don't care at all about density anymore. Even 4k is a bit luxurious. As I get older, it matters even less. I simply cannot tell the pixels apart anymore. The real limiting factor is display size at the current densities. I can always use more real estate. A 49" super ultra wide is still fairly expensive (but getting cheaper quite quickly) even at not 4k densities. Even with phones, Apple pretty much nailed it with the Retina display. The only thing I notice with newer displays is that the colours are better. In terms of smoothness, I can't tell the difference.
- pantulis 3y agoThis. It's not like 16k displays wouldn't be desirable or useful in some use cases. It's that they are useful for most consumers.
- starky 3y agoThere really isn't much benefit of going above 4K with either TVs or desktop displays and multiple drawbacks. I run dual 4K monitors on my desktop and the pixel size is smaller than you can resolve at reasonable viewing distances, while I've yet to find an OS that deals with HiDPI displays well (Windows and Linux are both terrible at this). If you want to game you are pushing 4X the pixels as with 1080p so you don't get good framerates unless you spend an exorbitant amount on a GPU. For content viewing, 4K is probably the upper limit of what you want, and if you game there probably isn't much benefit for going above 1440p.
- leptons 3y agoSpeak for yourself. I want a single curved 55" 8k display to replace my three 32" 4k monitors. Going from 6k to 8k with no bezels is an upgrade I will pay $$$$ for.
- rbanffy 3y agoFor gaming it’s useful, but for work I like the separate panels. Multiple single-window screens beats overlapping windows.
- diffeomorphism 3y agoWhy overlapping? Nothing prevents you from tiling the large screen into multiple screens; just with zero bezels between them.
- rbanffy 3y agoThen the temptation to drag the "bezels" is too great - I have poor impulse control.
- Sentionolo 3y agoDifferent people have different use cases. Surprise My DSLR takes pictures bigger than 4k for a few years already. Guess what? You can see a difference between the 4k 27" and a retina display. And no for this use case you don't need a magic GPU. And yes I also see a.difference in resolution on my 4k OLED between 4k and 1440p.
- walrus01 3y ago> It's amazing that pixel density has been stagnant since 2014, when the first 5k TV (low ppi) and 5k desktop displays (>200 ppi) were released. It's 2023 now and it still takes a kidney to get 5k >200 ppi, and we only recently got the 6k >200 ppi option for 2 kidneys. Pixel density, however, is stagnant. Maybe this is so for desktop size screens, but for larger things, the big advance in the last 18 months is real 8K 60Hz displays at 65 to 80 inch diagonal size going from "absurdly incredibly expensive" to being priced similar to where 4K displays were when they were introduced. 8K displays are absolutely viable now. There is obviously a lack of real high bitrate 8K content unless you're shooting it yourself.
- pault 3y agoIt’s because of yield. More pixels per panel means more panels ruined by dead pixels.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIt's probably a matter of demand vs cost; I'm confident technology can make displays at a higher DPI, but... why? If it's not for consumer use (e.g. 4K, now 8K screens which are IMO completely gratuitous), if they can't scale up to produce millions of panels, it's not worth the investment beyond the research of whether it's possible. Anyway, the next frontier is (has been?) VR, which needs / needed high DPI but small screens.
- rbanffy 3y agoThe only area where I’d think we want more pixels would be in medical imaging but even then we can always zoom out the interesting parts of the image (and rely on machines to look for interesting parts)
- ksec 3y agoYes. 4K TV is enough for people with 20/20 vision. That is roughly ~80%. of population. And even with better vision most of the time they are only visible during static screen comparison. In motion as in video they are not as visible. We really should have taken the middle ground between 8K and 4K and settle on 6K. Instead we now have 4K that is good enough but not the best for most people.
- RayVR 3y agoHere in Japan, every big electronics store sells 8k televisions from a number of Japanese brands. NHK also broadcastsl some (all?) of its content in 8k. I don’t know much about the technical aspects so I can’t attest to whether it is “true” 8k being streamed but it looks much better than the 4k OLED televisions, which also look amazing.
- az226 3y agoAlso worth mentioning not all pixels are created equally. Many years ago a Nokia phone’s camera had 44mp but the images were worse than many 12mp phone cameras.
- ksec 3y agoNHK only broadcast 8K in one of their channel. And AFAIK all 8K TV are premium segment. EU has new energy efficiency requirement which basically means 8K in EU market wont happen unless there are substantial improvement in technology. 8K has more exposure in Japan mainly because they were the first proponent of the technology. I much rather we settle on 6K and HDR10, and leaves room for 60Hz or 120Hz for different types of video which requires those framerate.
- lmpdev 3y agoSamsung's already sidestepped the 90W regulation for the EU by shipping 8K displays this year by dimming the display in factory settings (you can turn this setting off) There's also nothing physically stopping engineers from designing more efficient 8K displays that are sub 90W (in fairness they generally are more than double that atm, though)
- ksec 3y agoExcept for Cost. Even before EU regulation, 8K has been an hot topic between Panel Vendors and TV brands mainly pushed by Japan. And market were showing signs that 8K may be just like 3D TV. EU regulation were more like the nail in the coffin. Forcing panel marker to focus on other aspect rather than pixel density. Which is something much harder and costly to achieve with self emission panel technology.
- suprfnk 3y agoIt just doesn't matter that much for the average consumer. Most office workers (that is, not silicon valley programmers) work on 1920x1080 and that's fine. There really is not much to gain by doubling or tripling the resolution. I'm working on a 27" 2560x1440 screen. I can see pixels, but that really doesn't matter. Text is readable, nothing is blurry, I can do my work and get on with my day. Screens are good enough, they work, and there is not much to gain by having higher resolutions.
- epolanski 3y agoI feel like text that isn't crystal clear stresses my eyes more. I can feel eye fatigue and blur after an intense day of work. I would more than welcome higher density and crispier text any time. I'm on 24" 1080p and unhappy of that. I'm gonna buy a widescreen 34" at much higher pixel density soon.
- rowanG077 3y agoThat's not true. You can get 643 PPI screens in a phone. Hell the Apple VR headset is claimed to have 4000 PPI. The reason the pixel density stagnated in TVs is because it's simply useless to go beyond 4k.
- az226 3y agoMost people won’t care for the extra definition going from 4k to 8k or 16k+. Barely perceptible.
- the8472 3y agoThere are more metrics than just pixel density that they need to optimize for. HDR, WCG, refresh rates and latency, aging/color stability, ... 4k is good enough for most needs, so the demand is elsewhere. Plus the gaming market is limited by what GPUs can render.
- globular-toast 3y agoMy phone screen is >600ppi. My e-book reader (e-ink) is 300ppi. For me 300ppi seems to be the point at which things start to look "pixel-less". A 300ppi e-ink display looks remarkably close to paper print quality. I think popularity of sans serif fonts online is mostly due to serif fonts looking shit on low PPI displays. It would be really nice to have a 300ppi monitor just so I could switch to more pleasing fonts.
- arghwhat 3y agoDisplay technology is not the limiting factor in resolution viability - remember that driving pixels is expensive for the whole system. A 4k at 120Hz panel takes a ~30Gb/s of data to drive. For an 8k display, this is ~120Gb/s. That's a lot data, for which content needs to be continuously rendered, read from VRAM and sent over a link during scanout and finally processed by a fast enough display controller to update the pixels. High-end systems can do this, but for the resolutions to become the norm you need to be able to do this from a low-power media boxes and entry-level laptops. Only then will such displays become the norm and prices go down.
- cubefox 3y agoSony uses screens with 3.840 x 1.644 pixel resolution and 120 Hz in their top level smartphones, so a laptop is probably able to do significantly more.
- arghwhat 3y agoDriving at that rate is either full hardware decoded video, or rendering at much lower resolution or refresh. Take an Xbox series X pulling some 200 watts as example - it can technically drive 4k@120, but most content won't render at that speed or resolution. Now look a power budget of 20W for a laptop, or singular watt for a phone.
- cubefox 3y agoGaming consoles do expensive 3D rendering. 2D must be much cheaper, otherwise the Sony phone couldn't do it.
- arghwhat 3y agoThat's not how really how rendering works - there is no 2d or 3d, just variable complexity. On that phone, some UI activities like simple scrolling in some apps might be able to fun at a full 120Hz. Many apps apps won't, and games will either dynamically render a much lower resolution to keep up (a common performance technique), or just render nowhere near 120Hz, with sub-60 being more likely. And that's at 4k. This thread is about higher resolutions. To give the same meh performance at 6k, the phone would have to be more than 2x as fast in every metric. At 8k, more than 4x as fast. All while staying within the same power envelope. That's a lot to ask for in a generational bump.
- MagicMoonlight 3y agoThere’s obviously a limit to how small you can make something. I don’t really see how you could make things much smaller.
- rbanffy 3y agoPixel density is pointless after you get above your retina’s “resolution”. I can’t really tell 4K from 1080p from my couch. What I can tell apart is HDR from SDR. I think a lot of progress will continue on that area because it results in higher perceived quality. If I had a pet owl, they’d probably be the only ones in the house to be able to tell content apart by resolution. Even for my 27” desk monitors, it’s almost pointless to go beyond 5K.
- SamuelAdams 3y agoMost of the market doesn’t buy 4k. 1080p TV’s from the early 2000’s are still running strong. The steam hardware survey says most gamers (a market infamous for their tech) still use 1080p displays. The latest survey puts 64% of gamers at 1080p. https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/?sort=chg https://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/processormfg/?sort=c...
- Slartie 3y agoThe rationale behind buying PC monitors for gaming purposes is very different from the rationale behind buying TVs. As a PC gamer, you take your GPU into account when choosing a monitor. Doesn't help to buy a huge screen, even if it‘s relatively cheap, when you can't afford the high-end GPU you need to drive those pixels. The TV buyer doesn't face this problem at all. Usually no signal source is connected to the (smart) TV anyway, and the internal streaming apps have no problem to play 4k content, as long as the subscription allows it.
- jaredhallen 3y agoAlso, gamers are often more concerned with refresh rate than pixel density.
- sputter_token 3y agoIf 44% of homes in America had 4K televisions in 2021 then it is probably over 50% ("most") by now. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1247334/4k-ultra-hdtv-us-household-penetration/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1247334/4k-ultra-hdtv-us...
- velosol 3y agoIf 200ppi is your spot you have to go back another decade to hit the IBM T220 (2001-2005): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
- ilyt 3y agoI don't. Most people don't care and won't pay a premium
- alberth 3y ago3,400 PPI is in the display of Apple Vision Pro That's an order of magnitude increase over current displays today. https://wccftech.com/apple-vision-pro-retail-units-have-lowered-resolution/ https://wccftech.com/apple-vision-pro-retail-units-have-lowe...
- oblio 3y agoPlease compare like with sort of like. Oculus Quest 2 has about 800 PPI at roughly 1/12th the price.
- sputter_token 3y agoA HMD is much closer to your eyes than a computer monitor and a monitor will be much close to your eyes than a TV in your living room. The closer it is to your eyes the more PPI maters.
- BeFlatXIII 3y agoWe're probably approaching the limits of human vision. Increased PPI wouldn't have a corresponding increase in visual clarity to be worth the price.