13 ms·

Am I the only person for whom that many pixels in a 28" display sounds like overkill? Maybe I'm just getting old, but the resolution on a cinema display is mor

by timr 13y ago

Am I the only person for whom that many pixels in a 28" display sounds like overkill? Maybe I'm just getting old, but the resolution on a cinema display is more than sufficient to make things unreasonably small. And getting closer to my desktop screen isn't really appealing either (again, maybe I'm getting old, but to see the pixels on my current screen I have to get my nose almost right up to the display, which I'm never going to do). Retina displays on mobile devices are more understandable because you tend to be closer to them, or because it's useful to render really tiny text on a small screen, sometimes. But on a desktop display? Seems like the display version of clock-speed fetish.

knightni 13y ago
I think there's two really great things about retina screens on desktops/laptops: - Firstly, I definitely notice the difference. The higher res screen is noticeably nicer to read. Sure, you don't need to go to the crazy extremes of some newer high res phones, but standard desktop monitors are noticeably ugly by comparison. - Secondly, the res is high enough that you can finally change (apparent) resolution. My parents are in their late 60s and have bad-ish eyesight, so they lower the resolution on their screen. The result is incredibly ugly. Unfortunately resolution independent display seems to be a forgotten goal in modern OSes, so having screens that can change res is definitely worthwhile.
- timr 13y ago
  A human eye with 20/20 vision can distinguish ~150ppi at 2 feet (a typical screen-to-eyeball distance). Beyond that, it's overkill. The apple thunderbolt display is at 109ppi, so there's a bit of room for improvement, but not 60% improvement. Beyond this limit, I suppose there are people with 20/1 vision or something, but they're pretty rare.
  - introspectif 13y ago
    I've never gotten this argument. I mean, I have totally normal (nearly 20/20, but not quite... thanks to aging) vision, yet I can see the blurred edges of diagonal and rounded images perfectly fine on an iphone 5s at 2 feet. I think people just aren't really looking. I tried a thunderbolt display recently, and it was painfully low resolution. I haven't seen the math recently, but I have hard time believing that any phone today, let alone any monitor or television, really reaches the resolution of print.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - tbrownaw 13y ago
    That is, you can distinguish lines that are about 1/150 inch apart. But for a display, you want to be able to have diagonal (or curved) lines at 1/150 inch apart, with pixellation artifacts that are small relative to those lines. That probably translates to something like 450ppi (line width of 3px, so the artifacts should probably be about 1/3 of the line size).
  - barrkel 13y ago
    I have my monitors mounted on arms, so they can be anywhere from 1.5 meters away with me leaning back, to almost right in my face. The ability to physically "zoom" the whole monitor adds another dimension to use, and it's one where you really appreciate higher pixel density. Aliasing is another big deal. Jaggies are very visible until you get into quite high pixel densities.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Humans can distinguish a lot more than that. See: http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html. His calculation gives 530 ppi at 20 inches. Explanation: "The eye is not a single frame snapshot camera. It is more like a video stream. The eye moves rapidly in small angular amounts and continually updates the image in one's brain to "paint" the detail. We also have two eyes, and our brains combine the signals to increase the resolution further. We also typically move our eyes around the scene to gather more information. Because of these factors, the eye plus brain assembles a higher resolution image than possible with the number of photoreceptors in the retina."
- gabriel34 13y ago
  Windows 8.1 does: http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/extremewindows/archive/2013/07/15/windows-8-1-dpi-scaling-enhancements.aspx http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/extremewindows/archive/20...
kayoone 13y ago
In theory stuff should be the same size but alot sharper. That being said, i don't really feel alot of difference when looking at my 24" monitor and on my 5inch phone which has almost the same resolution. For me a huge 40inch 4K monitor would be more useful as the DPI would be roughly the same to my setup now (2x 1920x1200) but more vertical space and no bezels.
- elviejo 13y ago
  Look at the seiki 39" inch and 4k resolution. It is precisely what you describe.
  - kayoone 13y ago
    yep, thats looks about right but its not sold in europe and only has 30hz afaik, other than that its a pretty good deal.
    - will_work4tears 13y ago
      This[1] one is 500 US dollars and is 120. I don't have access to non U.S sites here at work apparently so I can't be certain they have it over there or not. [1]- http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra/dp/B00DOPGO2G http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra/d... Edit: Sorry, didn't catch that it only does 30hz through HDMI on the specs, and didn't realize it until I read the limitation downstream. Dang...
      - gknoy 13y ago
        For coding, you might not notice it as much. I run my 27" monitor at about 30 hz, and it seems Just Fine. Youtube looks okay when not full screen, but frankly I use it for editing code, and I happily trade the refresh rate for the increased resolution.
- thenomad 13y ago
  Yup, this is exactly what I'm hoping for too. 39", 4k, 60hz or more - and that's my next upgrade sorted.
steveridout 13y ago
Bear in mind that higher resolution display != smaller UI elements. It gives you that option of course, but for most people the benefit is that fonts, icons and images look so much crisper and more readable. You're definitely not the only one who thinks it's overkill. I've shown my retina iPad and MacBook to a few people who don't get the fuss at all. I guess this reaction could be due to a) not caring much about aesthetics, b) bad eyesight, c) not spending the time to get familiar with it and use it for some actual tasks. Myself, I think the screens are amazing, and each time I go back to my 23" 1920x1080 monitor is a little painful.
- 300bps 13y ago
  I've shown my retina iPad and MacBook to a few people who don't get the fuss at all...Myself, I think the screens are amazing Over a decade ago, I bought one of those Sharper Image ion air purifiers. I told all my friends how great it was - totally silent but really cleaned the air and left it with a fresh scent. About a year later I started reading scientific assessments and reviews of it. It in fact did nothing to clean the air and the "fresh clean scent" it put out was potentially harmful ozone. It was then I realized that I was as able to fall for marketing hype as much as anyone else. That made me much more wary.
  - anoncow 13y ago
    The air purifiers were misleading. Better resolution is not. That said, applications/OS should be able to use the resolution. UI elements should become crisper not smaller.
  - steveridout 13y ago
    I know what you mean, that it's easy to fool yourself and fall into marketing traps. But in this case of monitor resolution, there is a very noticeable difference (to me at least) between current desktop monitors and retina ones. If in 5 years some company tries to push the trend even further with 8K extreme retina or something like that I'm sure I'll be on your side, but for now, please, bring on the 4K desktop displays! (Actually, when it comes to TVs I do think we're getting into overkill territory with 50" 4K displays, when for typical TV viewing distances 1080p is fine)
jbri 13y ago
> again, maybe I'm getting old, but to see the pixels on my current screen I have to get my nose almost right up to the display, which I'm never going to do The point of going to higher and higher resolutions is that eventually, you don't see the pixels. Pixels are an implementation detail, what you're really wanting to see is the image they represent.
- steveridout 13y ago
  Exactly. And for anyone who struggles to see the pixels on a typical desktop monitor, that's probably because a lot of tricks are used to disguise them. Try turning off anti-aliasing or sub-pixel font rendering and then tell me you can't see the pixels.
  - 300bps 13y ago
    So the point of higher pixels is so you can't see the pixels and to prove this point, you tell people to turn off other (cheaper) technologies that already hide the pixels. There seems to be some faulty logic here. What is the point of the higher resolution displays if the pixels are already hidden with other technologies?
    - jre 13y ago
      Antialiasing typically produce artifacts and somewhat blurry letters.
    - jonknee 13y ago
      The tricks aren't perfect--antialiasing is blurry for example. A properly high DPI monitor is a thing of beauty--crisp images and text.
    - baldfat 13y ago
      Actually in video/ photography these tricks don't work. So BIG DEAL :) It's like mixing music with $5 ear buds.
    - Geee 13y ago
bluedino 13y ago
>> Maybe I'm just getting old, but the resolution on a cinema display is more than sufficient to make things unreasonably small. You're either getting old, sit very far away, or have bad vision - the Cinema display has a laughably low ppi for very large UI elements, and the pixels are incredibly visible.
namlem 13y ago
No way. Reading text on a desktop display sucks donkey balls compared to my GS4. You can't get nice crisp fonts on PCs like you can on phones these days and it's horrible. I've been saving articles from my desktop to rad on my phone ever since I got one with a hi res display. Now I won't have to.
namlem 13y ago
No way. Reading text on a desktop display sucks donkey balls compared to my GS4. You can't get nice crisp fonts on PCs like you can on phones these days and it's horrible. I've been saving articles from my desktop to rad on my phone ever since I got one with a hi res display. Now I won't have to.
namlem 13y ago
No way. Reading text on a desktop display sucks donkey balls compared to my GS4. You can't get nice crisp fonts on PCs like you can on phones these days and it's horrible. I've been saving articles from my desktop to rad on my phone ever since I got one with a hi res display. Now I won't have to.

by timr 13y ago

knightni 13y ago

I think there's two really great things about retina screens on desktops/laptops: - Firstly, I definitely notice the difference. The higher res screen is noticeably nicer to read. Sure, you don't need to go to the crazy extremes of some newer high res phones, but standard desktop monitors are noticeably ugly by comparison. - Secondly, the res is high enough that you can finally change (apparent) resolution. My parents are in their late 60s and have bad-ish eyesight, so they lower the resolution on their screen. The result is incredibly ugly. Unfortunately resolution independent display seems to be a forgotten goal in modern OSes, so having screens that can change res is definitely worthwhile.

timr 13y ago
A human eye with 20/20 vision can distinguish ~150ppi at 2 feet (a typical screen-to-eyeball distance). Beyond that, it's overkill. The apple thunderbolt display is at 109ppi, so there's a bit of room for improvement, but not 60% improvement. Beyond this limit, I suppose there are people with 20/1 vision or something, but they're pretty rare.
- introspectif 13y ago
  I've never gotten this argument. I mean, I have totally normal (nearly 20/20, but not quite... thanks to aging) vision, yet I can see the blurred edges of diagonal and rounded images perfectly fine on an iphone 5s at 2 feet. I think people just aren't really looking. I tried a thunderbolt display recently, and it was painfully low resolution. I haven't seen the math recently, but I have hard time believing that any phone today, let alone any monitor or television, really reaches the resolution of print.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- tbrownaw 13y ago
  That is, you can distinguish lines that are about 1/150 inch apart. But for a display, you want to be able to have diagonal (or curved) lines at 1/150 inch apart, with pixellation artifacts that are small relative to those lines. That probably translates to something like 450ppi (line width of 3px, so the artifacts should probably be about 1/3 of the line size).
- barrkel 13y ago
  I have my monitors mounted on arms, so they can be anywhere from 1.5 meters away with me leaning back, to almost right in my face. The ability to physically "zoom" the whole monitor adds another dimension to use, and it's one where you really appreciate higher pixel density. Aliasing is another big deal. Jaggies are very visible until you get into quite high pixel densities.
- rayiner 13y ago
  Humans can distinguish a lot more than that. See: http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html http://clarkvision.com/imagedetail/eye-resolution.html. His calculation gives 530 ppi at 20 inches. Explanation: "The eye is not a single frame snapshot camera. It is more like a video stream. The eye moves rapidly in small angular amounts and continually updates the image in one's brain to "paint" the detail. We also have two eyes, and our brains combine the signals to increase the resolution further. We also typically move our eyes around the scene to gather more information. Because of these factors, the eye plus brain assembles a higher resolution image than possible with the number of photoreceptors in the retina."
gabriel34 13y ago
Windows 8.1 does: http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/extremewindows/archive/2013/07/15/windows-8-1-dpi-scaling-enhancements.aspx http://blogs.windows.com/windows/b/extremewindows/archive/20...

kayoone 13y ago

In theory stuff should be the same size but alot sharper. That being said, i don't really feel alot of difference when looking at my 24" monitor and on my 5inch phone which has almost the same resolution. For me a huge 40inch 4K monitor would be more useful as the DPI would be roughly the same to my setup now (2x 1920x1200) but more vertical space and no bezels.

elviejo 13y ago
Look at the seiki 39" inch and 4k resolution. It is precisely what you describe.
- kayoone 13y ago
  yep, thats looks about right but its not sold in europe and only has 30hz afaik, other than that its a pretty good deal.
  - will_work4tears 13y ago
    This[1] one is 500 US dollars and is 120. I don't have access to non U.S sites here at work apparently so I can't be certain they have it over there or not. [1]- http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra/dp/B00DOPGO2G http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra/d... Edit: Sorry, didn't catch that it only does 30hz through HDMI on the specs, and didn't realize it until I read the limitation downstream. Dang...
    - gknoy 13y ago
      For coding, you might not notice it as much. I run my 27" monitor at about 30 hz, and it seems Just Fine. Youtube looks okay when not full screen, but frankly I use it for editing code, and I happily trade the refresh rate for the increased resolution.
thenomad 13y ago
Yup, this is exactly what I'm hoping for too. 39", 4k, 60hz or more - and that's my next upgrade sorted.

steveridout 13y ago

Bear in mind that higher resolution display != smaller UI elements. It gives you that option of course, but for most people the benefit is that fonts, icons and images look so much crisper and more readable. You're definitely not the only one who thinks it's overkill. I've shown my retina iPad and MacBook to a few people who don't get the fuss at all. I guess this reaction could be due to a) not caring much about aesthetics, b) bad eyesight, c) not spending the time to get familiar with it and use it for some actual tasks. Myself, I think the screens are amazing, and each time I go back to my 23" 1920x1080 monitor is a little painful.

300bps 13y ago
I've shown my retina iPad and MacBook to a few people who don't get the fuss at all...Myself, I think the screens are amazing Over a decade ago, I bought one of those Sharper Image ion air purifiers. I told all my friends how great it was - totally silent but really cleaned the air and left it with a fresh scent. About a year later I started reading scientific assessments and reviews of it. It in fact did nothing to clean the air and the "fresh clean scent" it put out was potentially harmful ozone. It was then I realized that I was as able to fall for marketing hype as much as anyone else. That made me much more wary.
- anoncow 13y ago
  The air purifiers were misleading. Better resolution is not. That said, applications/OS should be able to use the resolution. UI elements should become crisper not smaller.
- steveridout 13y ago
  I know what you mean, that it's easy to fool yourself and fall into marketing traps. But in this case of monitor resolution, there is a very noticeable difference (to me at least) between current desktop monitors and retina ones. If in 5 years some company tries to push the trend even further with 8K extreme retina or something like that I'm sure I'll be on your side, but for now, please, bring on the 4K desktop displays! (Actually, when it comes to TVs I do think we're getting into overkill territory with 50" 4K displays, when for typical TV viewing distances 1080p is fine)

jbri 13y ago

> again, maybe I'm getting old, but to see the pixels on my current screen I have to get my nose almost right up to the display, which I'm never going to do The point of going to higher and higher resolutions is that eventually, you don't see the pixels. Pixels are an implementation detail, what you're really wanting to see is the image they represent.

steveridout 13y ago
Exactly. And for anyone who struggles to see the pixels on a typical desktop monitor, that's probably because a lot of tricks are used to disguise them. Try turning off anti-aliasing or sub-pixel font rendering and then tell me you can't see the pixels.
- 300bps 13y ago
  So the point of higher pixels is so you can't see the pixels and to prove this point, you tell people to turn off other (cheaper) technologies that already hide the pixels. There seems to be some faulty logic here. What is the point of the higher resolution displays if the pixels are already hidden with other technologies?
  - jre 13y ago
    Antialiasing typically produce artifacts and somewhat blurry letters.
  - jonknee 13y ago
    The tricks aren't perfect--antialiasing is blurry for example. A properly high DPI monitor is a thing of beauty--crisp images and text.
  - baldfat 13y ago
    Actually in video/ photography these tricks don't work. So BIG DEAL :) It's like mixing music with $5 ear buds.
  - Geee 13y ago

bluedino 13y ago

>> Maybe I'm just getting old, but the resolution on a cinema display is more than sufficient to make things unreasonably small. You're either getting old, sit very far away, or have bad vision - the Cinema display has a laughably low ppi for very large UI elements, and the pixels are incredibly visible.

namlem 13y ago

No way. Reading text on a desktop display sucks donkey balls compared to my GS4. You can't get nice crisp fonts on PCs like you can on phones these days and it's horrible. I've been saving articles from my desktop to rad on my phone ever since I got one with a hi res display. Now I won't have to.

namlem 13y ago