What I still don't get is how the 30" Cinema Display was released in 2004, and almost 10 years later we still have pretty much the same same resolution screens.
I know 4k is slowly hitting the market, but you think about 10 years ago in the mobile world, we were using 84px monochrome screens on our Nokia 3315's.
And also why is the price difference between a laptop screen and a desktop screen so massive? You can buy a 4k screen complete with a whole computer for $1500, where a 4k desktop screen is going to cost you almost twice that.
The Seikis almost sound too good to be true. I'd try one out in a heartbeat if they'd come down a notch in size to ~27 or 30in so I could actually fit it on my desk.
1. Yay, it's 2007 finally, and we have more than 2560x1600 in a desktop display!
2. Jokes aside, 3840x2160 is fairly breathtaking. It is quite choice. If you have the means...
3. Only $700. Sure, that's still not as low as a 3840x2160 display would be today had the living room television not converged with the desktop computer monitor, infecting our workspace with the taint of HD. But it's not $4,000, so that's something to celebrate. And, lo, it's cheaper than a name-brand 30" display. It makes me want to shake Dell, HP, and Samsung fiercely until they admit they've been price-fixing 30" because desktop-be-damned.
4. It's sufficiently large to be nearly immersive, which is something I really want for my desktop environment. I want to be able to completely fill my field of view with very high-density pixels. VR goggles need not apply, yet.
5. It's fairly lightweight and thin. Something bothersome about desktop monitors is that, unlike televisions, they are manufactured with serious heft. Nothing about an LCD should require a four-inch cabinet depth, but there it is in every one of my U3011s. For shame, Dell. The Chinese have shown you up. Of course all laptop displays since the early 2000s have done the same.
6. The bezel is fairly trim at about 1.5cm. Trimmer than my U3011s.
7. While it's glossy, it's not offensively glossy like some consumer monitors.
8. 3840x2160 for $700. Why not, right? Right. RIGHT.
Downsides:
1. It's a television. It's got speakers. Yeah, no kidding. And a remote control! Very well, I'll just stow that in a drawer somewhere. But more onerous than these features I'll never use are the "features" that are not features at all, such as a 5 second SEIKI splash screen when you turn on the monitor. No, monitor, don't do that to me. Just wake up and let's get to business. Oh, I forgot, you're a television. That also explains why you just turn off when you lose the signal on the HDMI connector, not to re-awaken when the HDMI warms up again.
2. It's a Seiki. Yes, they deserve huge amounts of credit for kicking the collective ass of the incumbent manufacturers. Thank you Seiki! But also, it means it's not exactly the finest engineering around. The backlighting is uneven and the materials are second-rate. The back is utilitarian. Incumbent manufacturers at least fashion some fairly nice looking plastic bits and bobs on the back side of monitors. But so be it. I'm not buying the monitor as a piece of furniture.
3. The power buttons are very crunchy/clicky hard buttons on the back side. Since you have to click one of those every time you sit down (due to HDMI not awakening the monitor), I worry that eventually the button will break.
4. Most importantly, it's HDMI 1.4 and not HDMI 2.0. This means at the showcase 3840x2160 resolution, you're going to get 30Hz—30 frames per second. This causes a notably sluggish feeling to animation and mouse control. It's serviceable for getting work done and consumption of Facetube content. My wife doesn't play games, so she is tolerating it. If Seiki drops HDMI 2.0 into a next-generation of this monitor, I'm grabbing one.
5. Yeah, it's 39". I'd prefer to see this resolution at something closer to 30", thereby increasing pixel density. Better still, I'd like a 50" display that cranks something closer to 8,000 by 5,000. I can dream, no?
6. Windows 8.1 is NOT (I cannot emphasize this enough) engineered to work with high-density large form-factor desktop displays. Metro apps are a joke on my 30" displays and they're a tragedy on my wife's monitor. Metro Skype at 39" is ... I am at a loss for words ... you have to see it to believe how idiotic it is. Further ranting at [1]. Similarly, it's not touch-enabled.
You don't get it because you are tracking resolution without regard to the panel size. Large standalone panels cost more and have a smaller market than laptops.
The 2004 30" Apple Cinema Display was 98.44 PPI and cost $3300 at launch. Today that same $3300 buys you a 31.5" 4k monitor at 140ppi. I wouldn't call that "pretty much the same resolution".
There is almost no content for the "big" devices available (TV, PC etc.). At least no content which is important enough for people to change, everything is centered around 1080p atm and the majority of people are just adapting this (upgrading their "hd ready" tv, new consoles, switching from dvd to blu ray etc).
Also it's coming to devices which don't have to rely on 3D performance. It is an astronomical hit rendering on such high resolution, because you still need anti-aliasing.
I do get it. In theory you would think that a bigger screen with pixels further apart would be cheaper to produce than a small mobile screen with double the ppi.
I figured out this Dell screen is 235 ppi so pretty similar to Macbook and other 'retina' equivalent laptop displays.
And I was comparing the current 27" 2560x1440 Cinema Display to the 30" 2560x1600 Cinema Display. The ppi increased a bit, but it is essentially "pretty much the same resolution".
That's a little unfair, considering the current 27" display retails for less than a third of the 30" model.
The fact of the matter is that manufacturing large, high-resolution displays is expensive, and that's due to a number of factors: the limited market for high-end desktop displays, the 2-4x increase in subpixel failures as resolutions scale 2-4x, and Windows.
Now that 4k tech is figured out, and Windows is no longer a complete failure at scaling to high pixel densities, expect the market to increase and prices to fall accordingly.
They're not. At all. The Optoma HD-25LV goes for under $1200 and does 1080p natively. I have its big brother, the HD-33 (1080p + 3d), and it's fantastic, especially considering that it was only $1700. Projectors have gotten really good and really cheap.
Comments
What I still don't get is how the 30" Cinema Display was released in 2004, and almost 10 years later we still have pretty much the same same resolution screens.
I know 4k is slowly hitting the market, but you think about 10 years ago in the mobile world, we were using 84px monochrome screens on our Nokia 3315's.
And also why is the price difference between a laptop screen and a desktop screen so massive? You can buy a 4k screen complete with a whole computer for $1500, where a 4k desktop screen is going to cost you almost twice that.
The Seikis almost sound too good to be true. I'd try one out in a heartbeat if they'd come down a notch in size to ~27 or 30in so I could actually fit it on my desk.
http://www.amazon.com/Seiki-Digital-SE39UY04-39-Inch-Ultra/d...
e- just did the ppi calculation and it only comes out to 113, so probably not what I'd call "retina" quality
My wife has one. Here is an ad hoc review!
Upsides:
1. Yay, it's 2007 finally, and we have more than 2560x1600 in a desktop display!
2. Jokes aside, 3840x2160 is fairly breathtaking. It is quite choice. If you have the means...
3. Only $700. Sure, that's still not as low as a 3840x2160 display would be today had the living room television not converged with the desktop computer monitor, infecting our workspace with the taint of HD. But it's not $4,000, so that's something to celebrate. And, lo, it's cheaper than a name-brand 30" display. It makes me want to shake Dell, HP, and Samsung fiercely until they admit they've been price-fixing 30" because desktop-be-damned.
4. It's sufficiently large to be nearly immersive, which is something I really want for my desktop environment. I want to be able to completely fill my field of view with very high-density pixels. VR goggles need not apply, yet.
5. It's fairly lightweight and thin. Something bothersome about desktop monitors is that, unlike televisions, they are manufactured with serious heft. Nothing about an LCD should require a four-inch cabinet depth, but there it is in every one of my U3011s. For shame, Dell. The Chinese have shown you up. Of course all laptop displays since the early 2000s have done the same.
6. The bezel is fairly trim at about 1.5cm. Trimmer than my U3011s.
7. While it's glossy, it's not offensively glossy like some consumer monitors.
8. 3840x2160 for $700. Why not, right? Right. RIGHT.
Downsides:
1. It's a television. It's got speakers. Yeah, no kidding. And a remote control! Very well, I'll just stow that in a drawer somewhere. But more onerous than these features I'll never use are the "features" that are not features at all, such as a 5 second SEIKI splash screen when you turn on the monitor. No, monitor, don't do that to me. Just wake up and let's get to business. Oh, I forgot, you're a television. That also explains why you just turn off when you lose the signal on the HDMI connector, not to re-awaken when the HDMI warms up again.
2. It's a Seiki. Yes, they deserve huge amounts of credit for kicking the collective ass of the incumbent manufacturers. Thank you Seiki! But also, it means it's not exactly the finest engineering around. The backlighting is uneven and the materials are second-rate. The back is utilitarian. Incumbent manufacturers at least fashion some fairly nice looking plastic bits and bobs on the back side of monitors. But so be it. I'm not buying the monitor as a piece of furniture.
3. The power buttons are very crunchy/clicky hard buttons on the back side. Since you have to click one of those every time you sit down (due to HDMI not awakening the monitor), I worry that eventually the button will break.
4. Most importantly, it's HDMI 1.4 and not HDMI 2.0. This means at the showcase 3840x2160 resolution, you're going to get 30Hz—30 frames per second. This causes a notably sluggish feeling to animation and mouse control. It's serviceable for getting work done and consumption of Facetube content. My wife doesn't play games, so she is tolerating it. If Seiki drops HDMI 2.0 into a next-generation of this monitor, I'm grabbing one.
5. Yeah, it's 39". I'd prefer to see this resolution at something closer to 30", thereby increasing pixel density. Better still, I'd like a 50" display that cranks something closer to 8,000 by 5,000. I can dream, no?
6. Windows 8.1 is NOT (I cannot emphasize this enough) engineered to work with high-density large form-factor desktop displays. Metro apps are a joke on my 30" displays and they're a tragedy on my wife's monitor. Metro Skype at 39" is ... I am at a loss for words ... you have to see it to believe how idiotic it is. Further ranting at [1]. Similarly, it's not touch-enabled.
7. It's glossy. Matte for life!
[1] http://tiamat.tsotech.com/microsoft
You don't get it because you are tracking resolution without regard to the panel size. Large standalone panels cost more and have a smaller market than laptops.
The 2004 30" Apple Cinema Display was 98.44 PPI and cost $3300 at launch. Today that same $3300 buys you a 31.5" 4k monitor at 140ppi. I wouldn't call that "pretty much the same resolution".
There is almost no content for the "big" devices available (TV, PC etc.). At least no content which is important enough for people to change, everything is centered around 1080p atm and the majority of people are just adapting this (upgrading their "hd ready" tv, new consoles, switching from dvd to blu ray etc).
Also it's coming to devices which don't have to rely on 3D performance. It is an astronomical hit rendering on such high resolution, because you still need anti-aliasing.
I do get it. In theory you would think that a bigger screen with pixels further apart would be cheaper to produce than a small mobile screen with double the ppi.
I figured out this Dell screen is 235 ppi so pretty similar to Macbook and other 'retina' equivalent laptop displays.
And I was comparing the current 27" 2560x1440 Cinema Display to the 30" 2560x1600 Cinema Display. The ppi increased a bit, but it is essentially "pretty much the same resolution".
That's a little unfair, considering the current 27" display retails for less than a third of the 30" model.
The fact of the matter is that manufacturing large, high-resolution displays is expensive, and that's due to a number of factors: the limited market for high-end desktop displays, the 2-4x increase in subpixel failures as resolutions scale 2-4x, and Windows.
Now that 4k tech is figured out, and Windows is no longer a complete failure at scaling to high pixel densities, expect the market to increase and prices to fall accordingly.
Because most consumers decided that if it played HD movies and was cheaper than the adjacent unit, they would buy it.
I am not sure you can say this when nobody ever even manufactured such a screen as an experiment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T220/T221_LCD_monitors
By the same token, why the hell are $1000 projectors still 800x600?
They're not. At all. The Optoma HD-25LV goes for under $1200 and does 1080p natively. I have its big brother, the HD-33 (1080p + 3d), and it's fantastic, especially considering that it was only $1700. Projectors have gotten really good and really cheap.
With projectors, lamp technology hasn't advanced all that much, so brightness is important, and is inverse with resolution.
quite a few 1080p under 1k. For example the excellent Benq w1070 ..