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Time:
11:20 EST/16:20 GMT | News Source:
the inquirer |
Posted By: Todd Richardson |
SOFTWARE FIRM Microsoft has instructed Sharp to produce an ultra high resolution LCD to be used for the next operating system it will introduce, Longhorn.
According to today's Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the spec called for a screen capable of displaying one billion hues, far beyond the 16.7 million hues LCD screens can currently handle.
Designers at Microsoft supplied the spec for engineers at Sharp to implement.
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#1 By
1896 (208.61.158.208)
at
5/21/2003 11:39:58 AM
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I assume the format will be 16:9. Also it will be interesting to see the price of these monitors. Yesterday I was just checking a Viewsonic one:
http://www.viewsonic.com/products/lcd_vp2290b.htm
This monitor resolution is 27.6 million-dot and costs $7500; the one MS and Sharp are talking about should have, if I understood correctly, 1 billion-dot. Even considering the time frame I am wondering what could be the price of such equipment.
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#2 By
1868 (141.133.144.55)
at
5/21/2003 12:56:38 PM
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Can anyone explain to me why we need this high of a resolution? What kind of software would utilize this kind of hardware, I highly doubt that games would even utilize these requirements--and besides the gaming market business apps won't need this kind of technology or would they?
Anyone got any ideas what this could be used for?
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#3 By
2332 (216.41.45.78)
at
5/21/2003 1:11:39 PM
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#2 - What does somebody run their machine at 1280x1024 instead of the default 640x480 or 800x600? Productivity.
If I can have 2 or 3 or 4 times the stuff on my screen that's all visible at once, that means I'm spending a lot less time scrolling, a lot less time juggling windows, etc.
MS research published a paper a while back detailing the productivity increase at higher resolutions. It's significant.
Plus, it's puuuuurty.
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#4 By
1868 (141.133.144.55)
at
5/21/2003 1:49:22 PM
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RMD,
I read the paper about productivity increases, but I saw one glaring oversight. From what I know(and I may be wrong), the human eye cannot see the difference after something like 20 Million colors, so what is the point of going higher?
Higher Productivity can be gained by increasing screen resolution, but that's because your essentially increasing the workspace for the worker(they can see more and therefore do more in the same physical monitor space)--give them an even bigger physical monitor and they can do even more(duh).
While I am advocating that Longhorn should be pretty, I just don't understand how a billion colors makes it pretty when I can't see the difference.
I'll give MS one thing, it will be damn cool to be able to look at my friends and laugh at their monitors that can only handle millions of colors, when my monitor will be able to handle a billion colors, muhaha.
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#5 By
1989 (216.145.191.5)
at
5/21/2003 1:50:11 PM
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Fritzly, the Viewsonic is 9.2 megapixels (3 dots (red, green blue ) for each pixel). The Sharp LCD wouldn't be a billion dots (333 megapixels) but each pixel can display one billion color hues where as the Viewsonic pixel can only display 16.7 million color hues. The amount of colors shouldn't change the quantity of pixels on the LCD. Not quite sure why so many more colors are needed even though I think the human eye can see more than a billion color hues???
As for high resolution, I love my Dell UltraSharp display on laptop because it runs at 1600x1200. Makes programming much easier by allowing you look at multiple pages of code.
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#6 By
61 (65.32.171.144)
at
5/21/2003 2:54:33 PM
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I did not read the article, however I did see the Longhorn preview at WinHEC....
Unless this article is talking about something completely different, what Microsoft is going for is higher density displays... ie, more dots per inch. It makes for a much crisper image as well as for higher productivity.
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#7 By
7826 (65.205.133.2)
at
5/21/2003 3:16:38 PM
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Most LCD screens today are only capable of 18-bit color resolution although all of them call themselves 24-bit color resolution. Switch to higher color resolutions helps smooth out the display and minimized the color banding.
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#8 By
1896 (208.61.158.208)
at
5/21/2003 4:34:57 PM
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RMD, Lord British I am not saying that these kind of monitors wouldn' t be cool; if I could afford it I would buy the ViewSonic right now. My point was that given an actual price of $7500 what could be the prices one year from now? Yes prices drops, I bought my Sony flat 2 years ago for $1,300 and now it costs $700 but the consider that today there is nothing getting even closer to the specification mentioned in the article so, again, what is going to be the price of these ones? I don' t know is considered mainstream nowadays but I strongly doubt that prices higher than $1,500 would allow a wide penetration, at least at the beginning.
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#9 By
2539 (24.141.47.37)
at
5/21/2003 5:30:20 PM
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#9, at WinHEC Microsoft was claiming Athens PC (which were 16:9 LCDs) displays would be available for less than $400 in a year's time. That seems way too optimistic to me, but maybe they know something we don't?
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#10 By
7390 (198.246.16.251)
at
5/22/2003 9:59:07 AM
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The higher quality is a plus but for my part all that I want is a bigger monitor (flat panel ofcourse). I have a Dell 17' Flat running at 1600 x 1200. Give me something bigger at the same price. That is not a Microsoft issue but more of a monitor manufacturer prob.
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#11 By
1896 (65.80.240.64)
at
5/22/2003 4:52:04 PM
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16:9 is the way to go; besides the fact the format for High Definition TV it also allows to have two pages besides without shrinking them.
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