LCD TVs won’t see any further development

https://www.tomsguide.com/news/its-official-lcd-tvs-wont-see-any-further-development

by belltaco • 3 years ago

219 475 3 years ago

noncoml• 3 years ago

Grew up with CRTs giving me horrible headaches and LCDs was a breath of fresh air for my eyes. Headaches gone! Then came OLEDs and brought back headaches.

Luckily Apple still sells the iPhone SE with LCD. I really don’t know what I will do once LCDs are gone.

porphyra2• 3 years ago

I wonder why? With CRTs there is noticeable flickering but no such issue happens with OLEDs. Is it just the contrast ratio?

kitsunesoba4• 3 years ago

Not entirely sure but I think OLED pixels modulate brightness with PWM, which causes high frequency (though invisible) flickering.

masswerk2• 3 years ago

Regarding CRT flicker: for monitors, you don't want to drive a CRT below 90Hz (120 Hz is pretty stable), even TVs were at the end 100Hz (refreshing frames multiple times). The problem was "cost effective" office PCs with graphics hardware just capable of 60Hz refresh, which isn't a great idea, unless you have a monochrome monitor with slow phosphor. (Meaning, this was just an abuse of technology – and workers.)

blackoil• 3 years ago

What about MicroLED? New Macs and iPad Pro use them.

p1esk• 3 years ago

You mean MiniLED?

Dylan168072• 3 years ago

In this situation microLED should be the same as OLED, also those don't use it.

temikus2• 3 years ago

Not the OP but I am sensitive and sadly found the MiniLED to be unusable as well. Had to switch from a 15’ MBP to the low-cost 13” with the old-school 500nit display.

exmadscientist• 3 years ago

Is it OLED displays themselves that bother you, or the truly horrid subpixel arrangements they use on phones?

I love my LG OLED TV, with a full matrix (RGBW at every pixel). Phones, using something like PenTile, usually have half the number of red and blue subpixels, and in funny arrangements at that. Phone OLED displays make my eyes hurt, especially when anything is scrolling.

novok• 3 years ago

Is that the same with iPhones too?

starky3• 3 years ago

Pentile is a pox on the entire phone industry that they use to justify using crappy low resolution displays under the guise of something higher resolution. "1080p" Pentile is really like an 880p RGB matrix display.

Dylan168072• 3 years ago

Some OLEDs don't use PWM, and some PWM fast enough not to cause problems.

Also badly driven LCD backlights can flicker badly too.

Acrobatic_Road• 3 years ago

I'm not sure how OLED can give you a headache, but not an LCD.

noobermin2• 3 years ago

My wife has issues with bright screens, for her, matte coatings/films are a lifesaver. Have you tried those?

kitsunesoba4• 3 years ago

Makes sense, but I hope that there’s meaningful progress on microLEDs soon. While OLED burn-in has improved a lot, it’s still a concern for the lengths of time that people keep screens for… my 5 year old VA panel TV still looks identical to the day that it was unboxed after thousands of hours of usage at high brightness, and I’d hope any TV replacing it would be capable of the same or better. Same goes for monitors.

porphyra2• 3 years ago

microLEDs also have

* better linearity

* smaller size (that is, the light comes from a tiny pinpoint in the middle of the pixel rather than a whole rectangle being lit up). This actually helps make the display look a lot sharper.

rsaxvc3• 3 years ago

You don't want small pixels. This causes optical aliasing and associated problems.

Edit: By small pixels I mean a low pixel aspect ratio(area of lit pixel vs total area per pixel). If you consider this as a DSP problem(instead of a time series problem, a brightness value over distance or angle), there's effectively no reconstruction low pass filter. You can think of small lit pixel area with larger distance between like zero padding. This can make some things appear sharper, but by doing so it'll appear less like the image source wants it to.

aidenn02• 3 years ago

I have a 12 year old LCD panel. Do OLEDs have similar longevity?

Gigachad2• 3 years ago

I know someone who uses an ancient samsung oled phone which they had left on overnight regularly for youtube for years and that had the faintest of burn in only visible on a pure white screen.

It's really not something I'd be concerned about.

opan• 3 years ago

The Samsung Galaxy S III is 11 years old and had an AMOLED screen (does that still count as OLED?). People are still using them with custom ROMs somewhat, and I haven't heard of display issues.

There's also the first revision PlayStation Vita that had an OLED screen and is a similar age. I have heard of yellowing on some models, unsure how prevalent burn-in is. Of people I know with a Vita or several, most got a second gen only, or switched to a second gen and so the old one didn't get used as much.

Much less old, there's the Switch OLED, and WULFF DEN on YouTube has one he's leaving constantly turned on to see what happens to the screen. I think we're 1.5 years in or so and he's done a handful of videos showing what it looks like now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TMyUDKqWWI

zeroonetwothree• 3 years ago

My OLED is only 7 years old but has no issues so far.

jeffbee• 3 years ago

That would depend entirely on how many hours you used it. They don’t age like meat, over time. They age from having current running through the pixels. So their degradation depends on the kind of content you watch, for how long, and how bright you configure the picture. I have thousands of hours on a 6-year-old OLED and it looks perfect, but I only watch films in a dark room so I don’t think it’s very demanding.

KennyBlanken• 3 years ago

If you're using a 12 year old LCD panel, you're probably hobbling yourself with terrible resolution, response time, refresh rate, color gamut, viewing angle, backlight evenness, black level/contrast, etc.

It's absolutely bizarre how luddite HNers can be when it comes to keeping even remotely current on hardware.

WalterBright12• 3 years ago

I want my entire desktop surface to be a display. 4*8 feet more or less.

I also want a 0-width bezel, so they can be tiled seamlessly. Why? I want an entire wall to be a display.

I want, I want, I want, ... :-)

WalterBright12• 3 years ago

I also want my Roku box to be able to display PDF files. I'd even pay for it.

and a pony.

judge2020• 3 years ago

I want my Roku box to play AAC.

relyks• 3 years ago

What's the use case for displaying PDF files on a Roku? You would really read documents on your TV? I'd be interested in developing that if there's a market

jnwatson• 3 years ago

Just plug in a Raspberry Pi or PC stick of your choice. That and a wireless mouse or trackball. You'll probably want to move around the file.

ivandenysov2• 3 years ago

OOC: what is your use case for PDFs on Roku?

autoexec• 3 years ago

Roku records and collects multiple screenshots every second of whatever you're watching, even if the content is being streamed from another device, and they analyze the images to figure out exactly what you watch, when, how long/often, and use that to make assumptions about who you are and what you're into which can then be sold to anyone willing to pay for it (and/or leaked/hacked).

Maybe it doesn't matter much for the files you'd be viewing, but if roku could display PDF files they'd be doing the same thing there as well. Sadly, the more things roku can display for you, the more parts of your life they can siphon and use to stuff your dossier.

bredren2• 3 years ago

It seems like the way this will be delivered is via AR similar to what was demonstrated by Apple Vision Pro at WWDC or by some evolution of UST projectors.

WalterBright12• 3 years ago

I already have set up a projector that fills a wall. I love it. But the problems are:

1. it only works after dark

2. fan noise

3. I have to constantly fiddle with the focus to get it crisp across the screen

4. you cannot have anything in the room in front of it

5. running wires to the ceiling mount is ugly

6. you gotta point the remote behind you, not at the screen (I know, I'm such a whiner)

noobermin2• 3 years ago

Walter Bright calling for parlor walls to become a reality.

WalterBright12• 3 years ago

yes, dammit!

Wouldn't it be cool to have "wallpaper" that is whatever you want it to be? Like the view from Mt Everest? or the Amazon jungle?

MikusR2• 3 years ago

https://www.samsung.com/us/business/displays/direct-view-led...

mhb• 3 years ago

Pretty sure I saw this in the Apple store.

jaclaz• 3 years ago

There was the Microsoft Surface (no, not that Microsoft Surface, the other Microsoft Surface), circa 2007/8, though it was more like a huge "all in one", not particularly cheap/convenient, US$ 10,000 (in 2007):

https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-surface-pixelsense-...

LarsAlereon• 3 years ago

While the headline implies it's talking about LCD displays, it actually refers to LCD panel technology. The innovation is in the backlight technology behind the LCD panel, so LCD displays still have an exciting future ahead of them.

rocqua4• 3 years ago

I believe the point is that the main research is now on oled and micro-led. Those are truly LCD-less. Instead of having a backlight that is variously dimmed by an LCD panel, they have self emmisive pixels.

Micro led truly aims to just have a single LED per (sub) pixel.

beebeepka4• 3 years ago

I thought MicroLED was about per pixel backlight for good old LCD.

Gonna hit wiki.

Edit: it's not LCD hehe. I have memorized some incorrect info

Nursie3• 3 years ago

Micro-led seems to me to be one of those technologies that's always just around the corner.

Perhaps I'm a pessimist, but from the launch of the first mainstream OLED tvs several years ago, I've been hearing "OLED is just a stopgap, Microled is where it's at, and that's not far off now".

Ten years later ... oled is still where it's at, or LCD for a lot of people. I know these things take time, but the anticipation of this tech seems to have lasted at least a decade so far.

rickdeckard9• 3 years ago

To be blunt: An exciting future in mass-market and mid-to-high tier. Which is perfectly fine.

For Premium tier the cost of elevating the picture quality to a competitive level (with elaborate backlight tech, multiple layers of LCD, etc.) is simply too high.

Samsung was only riding LCD in premium TVs for so long because they didnt have the technology for large-size OLED. So they spent a ton of money to establish the "QLED" brand as a new name for "LCD with yet another backlight" and started explaining people that brightness (not black-level or contrast) is the most important thing for a TV (because uniform LCD backlight can be brighter than per-pixel OLED)

dontlaugh4• 3 years ago

Which was always so silly. No amount of screen brightness can make up for loss of detail in a dark scene and even OLED maximum brightness is enough to hurt your eyes.

KingOfCoders3• 3 years ago

I have a recent QLED, my parents in law have a recent OLED (LG), seems to be the same. I'd say the QLED is easier to watch during the daylight with sun in the room.

oblio7• 3 years ago

The thing is: can I buy a big OLED and use it for whatever, without doing anything special to take care of it, and not have it suffer from burn in 10 years from now?

tinus_hn• 3 years ago

You can also use a ton of small leds for the backlight, like the display Apple calls the ‘Liquid Retina XDR’ display and there’s probably a world of controller software to improve on for years.

Cthulhu_2• 3 years ago

Yeah, LCD tech isn't going anywhere; unless OLED is or becomes cheaper (long term, it probably will), they'll be churning out LED panels for decades to come yet.

rbanffy14• 3 years ago

There are companies still selling EL display panels.

111111IIIIIII11• 3 years 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.

mattwad2• 3 years ago

Wait, we've had 8k TVs since 2019: 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-qle... (this is just the first result on Best Buy's site). Are we thinking of the same thing?

111111IIIIIII11• 3 years ago

I should have been more specific about pixel density. TVs have very low pixel density. I've updated my comment for more clarity about this.

nailk2• 3 years ago

"8k" name in this case is just a marketing. It's not 8k, it's 4230p only.

valval2• 3 years ago

It’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• 3 years ago

GPU and CPU power improvements are more linear

Do they?

elabajaba3• 3 years ago

We 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.

jiggawatts2• 3 years ago

Actually...

Thanks to Moore's Law, computer power has been growing exponentially since forever. Single-core performance has stagnated, sure, but total performance is still following the curve. Graphics is easy to parallelise, so throwing more cores at it is not a problem. In fact, this is precisely what GPUs do.

In other words, the available "operations per pixel per second" have gone up over the years, despite the increasing resolution!

In fact, we're at the point now that we can even do real time ray tracing, which was unthinkable at any typical resolution just a decade ago. Top-end RTX 4090 GPUs can even do ray tracing at 4K, which is just crazy.

mumumu• 3 years ago

The bottleneck is bandwidth and storage not computer power.

Data from sensor and to display are usually (but not always) raw and uncompressed.

To go beyond 8k 120fps we will need fiber, or better compression.

We have good codecs to move data online. And specialized ASIC to do live encoding with good quality.

The current compression defined by HDMI is very rudimentary.

npunt• 3 years ago

TV 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.

IggleSniggle2• 3 years ago

Right, and then there’s HUDs!

111111IIIIIII11• 3 years ago

Content 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???

dehrmann2• 3 years ago

Now you're gonna tell me I don't need more than 44,100 Hz for sound.

upon_drumhead• 3 years ago

Doesn’t the tv size matter? My little 42” 4k at 12’ can’t be the same amount of fidelity that a monster 83” at 12’ is doing.

riku_iki• 3 years ago

TV resolution goes at the pace of available content

there is also AI upscaling which can upscale content to higher resolution

timc32• 3 years ago

My 20+ years of being involved in broadcast/tv/video technology says otherwise about TV resolution goes along with content. It’s actually a weird chicken/egg situation, that involves more than screens or content such as delivery, price of content creation and customer acceptance.

TylerE3• 3 years ago

Even with really good film scanners, 4K seems to be about the limit of what’s worthwhile. Even at 4K itself compared to 1080, film grain I’d much more evident (not a bad thing persay, but a thing).

cameronh90• 3 years ago

You've missed screen size as a factor. TVs are getting larger by about an inch per year since flat screens took over, and that trend doesn't seem like it's stopping any time soon.

There's also the type of content and your personal visual acuity. If you're young, your eyesight is probably quite capable of resolving much finer details than normal 6/6 vision. I can tell the difference between 4K and 8K at a normal sitting distance on a 65" TV.

However... the difference isn't enough for me to care. I'm much more interested in brightness, colour, framerate and a load of other things over another resolution bump.

Night_Thastus6• 3 years ago

which is about 4k

4k does not exist because it's optimal for the human eye. It's dominant right now because anything higher carries a really significant bandwidth penalty, which would be hard to do for both streaming and optical media.

If we lived in a world where blu-ray disks could hold 1TB, and global internet speeds were 10x what they are now, 8k TVs would be the norm.

wmf• 3 years ago

Clearly the tech is possible since phones have gone from 200 ppi to 400 but IMO desktop monitors simply don't need it.

111111IIIIIII11• 3 years ago

I think desktops need at least >200.

interlinked• 3 years ago

Didn't apple just release a VR headset with 4k displays for each eye?

TaylorAlexander2• 3 years ago

Yes 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.

QuadrupleA• 3 years ago

I 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.

kitsunesoba4• 3 years ago

For 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.

111111IIIIIII11• 3 years ago

I think there is actually a pretty common consensus that returns diminish at ~220 ppi, i.e. what Apple calls "Retina."

nailk2• 3 years ago

5k (5120x2880 resolution) on 27" monitor makes difference for text. It looks crisp clear on 200 PPI, much better compared to 4k.

I still use HP Z27q bought in 2016. I wonder why the industry has so few offers for 27" 5120p monitors.

NavinF3• 3 years ago

5k, 6k, seems more about marketing

On phones, maybe. 4K 32" monitors are nowhere close to retina

babypuncher3• 3 years ago

There'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.

111111IIIIIII11• 3 years ago

I 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• 3 years ago

I 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• 3 years ago

It’s amusing that you want more dynamics to your visuals, but fewer dynamics to your audio…

Why the disconnect?

toast02• 3 years ago

If you've got a receiver, a lot of them have audio compression options. Not sure how well they work though, but they're there. I think some TVs have them too. A receiver should also let you increase the levels on the center speaker vs the others (maybe even if you only have a 'virtual' center where you don't have an actual center speaker and the audio goes to left and right). The center speaker gets mostly dialogue, so that can help a lot.

rjsw• 3 years ago

I only watch TV wearing headphones.

Reason0772• 3 years ago

"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."

This is due to the (misconfigured? buggy?) way that 5.1 surround audio sometimes gets mapped to 2-channel output. Dialogue in a film is usually carried on the centre channel, which in a proper cinema will be pretty powerful and loud set of speakers. Music and surround effects are carried on the other channels.

But for whatever reason, sometimes when down-mixing the centre channel comes through way too quiet and gets drowned out by the others. This seems to have gotten better in recent years (Apple TV, Netflix, etc are either good at down-mixing or the streams come with good 2-channel audio), but some TVs still make a mess of it.

dontlaugh4• 3 years ago

Agreed on both counts. 4K OLED > 8k LCD and dialogue is so hard to understand I have to resort to voice enhancement options.

saiya-jin• 3 years ago

Ha, I thought I am weird for using subs while watching English stuff. Have small kids sleeping not so far, can't wake them up just because some idiotic sound mixer thought that some explosion/crash/something should shatter your windows and that's how everybody should experience given movie.

Older movies made so many things so much better. Sound 'friendliness' is definitely one of them.

TylerE3• 3 years ago

Yeah, the blacks absolutely. Recently upgraded to a PS5 (for 4K discs) and a Samsung S95B. Some of the most impressive discs I own are well restored films from the b&w era. The dead blacks and (with HDR bright highlights) gives it a wonderful natural projected look. The quality is probably better than even the most pristine release print, since these days these sorts of restorations are fine by scanning the original camera negative, so several analog generations better than prints for projection.

rocqua4• 3 years ago

I 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• 3 years ago

I 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• 3 years ago

Why do you dislike 16:9?

2muchcoffeeman2• 3 years ago

I'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• 3 years ago

This. 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.

starky3• 3 years ago

There 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.

leptons5• 3 years ago

Speak 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.

Sentionolo3• 3 years ago

Different 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.

girvo2• 3 years ago

Gaming on a proper 4K native display is superior to 1440p: I have both, and the clarity is worth it. In my opinion of course!

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

I've got a 5K 27" display at home (the much maligned LG Ultrafine) and generally use a 4K 27" one at work. The difference is very obvious.

That said I wouldn't see a huge amount of point in going far _beyond_ 5K at that screen size, and 27" is about as big as I want to go for a screen, so for my purposes we've hit the limits (albeit only expensively).

kuschku12• 3 years ago

KDE handles HiDPI really well since a few weeks ago. Try the current release of Ubuntu Studio on Wayland, it's working incredibly well.

smolder6• 3 years ago

I like having a 4k monitor with a somewhat underpowered video card for the task. Most games that are graphically intense let you set the 3D render scale to something lower. At 70% render scale I get the benefit of sharp 4K text and UI stuff but with the 3D parts being closer to 1440p resolution. Upscaling can be really ugly at lower pixel densities, but rendering 1440p scale on 4K is hardly distinguishable from 1440p native, in my experience.

walrus01• 3 years 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• 3 years ago

It’s because of yield. More pixels per panel means more panels ruined by dead pixels.

Cthulhu_2• 3 years ago

It'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.

rbanffy14• 3 years ago

The 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)

ksec3• 3 years ago

Yes. 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• 3 years ago

Here 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.

az2262• 3 years ago

Also 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.

ksec3• 3 years ago

NHK 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.

suprfnk• 3 years ago

It 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• 3 years ago

I 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.

rowanG0772• 3 years ago

That'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.

az2262• 3 years ago

Most people won’t care for the extra definition going from 4k to 8k or 16k+. Barely perceptible.

the8472• 3 years ago

There 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• 3 years ago

My 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.

arghwhat12• 3 years ago

Display 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.

cubefox5• 3 years ago

Sony 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.

ilyt9• 3 years ago

That's by far the cheapest part of it, decoding will eat more power and transistors than just few differential lines. Add few magnitues if you need to generate it in a video game

MagicMoonlight• 3 years ago

There’s obviously a limit to how small you can make something. I don’t really see how you could make things much smaller.

rbanffy14• 3 years ago

Pixel 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• 3 years ago

Most 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=c...

Slartie• 3 years ago

The 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.

sputter_token3• 3 years ago

If 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...

velosol• 3 years ago

If 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

ilyt9• 3 years ago

I don't. Most people don't care and won't pay a premium

alberth• 3 years ago

3,400 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-lowe...

oblio7• 3 years ago

Please compare like with sort of like.

Oculus Quest 2 has about 800 PPI at roughly 1/12th the price.

sputter_token3• 3 years ago

A 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• 3 years ago

We're probably approaching the limits of human vision. Increased PPI wouldn't have a corresponding increase in visual clarity to be worth the price.

emodendroket2• 3 years ago

I’d wager it’s going to take a lot to get to the point where a huge portion of customers aren’t satisfied with LCD TVs at their current level of capability, especially if prices are only going down.

leptons5• 3 years ago

Agree. There's still plenty of people alive with 4k TVs today that remember when black and white broadcast CRT television was all there was.

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

Sure, but that’s not what this is about. This is essentially manufacturers saying “we’re going to stop trying to make LCDs better and concentrate on other technologies”.

emodendroket2• 3 years ago

Well, according to the article they intend to continue making LCD TVs and you can expect them to get cheaper, so I expect them to have a long life as tried-and-true choices even if they're not being actively researched for improvement.

domador• 3 years ago

What I'm mostly wondering these days is if anyone in any part of the display technology "stack" (so to speak) is working on improving the number of colors displayed to us by our screens. Or will we be limited to using 24-bit color forever (because it is "good enough")?

24-bit color is pretty good, mind you, yet there are everyday cases where we would appreciate the ability to view a more nuanced transition between adjacent colors on certain images and videos.

rocqua4• 3 years ago

HDR content is pretty damn mainstream and uses 10 bits per channel for 30-bit color. Some variants can do 12 bits per channel, but I believe this isn't often used.

Moreover, this content often comes with dynamic tone mapping to allow access to many more colors in a movie, whilst remaining limited to 30-bit color per frame (or usually, per scene)

Tade0• 3 years ago

Some variants can do 12 bits per channel, but I believe this isn't often used.

Dolby Vision has 12bit colour channels, but it's reportedly not such great a leap as going from 8bit to HDR.

iPhones(12 onward) apparently support this standard, so anyone with such a device can see for themselves.

zokier• 3 years ago

Rec2020: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020

adrian_b• 3 years ago

Many good monitors are able to display 30-bit pixels in the Display P3 color space (frequently described as the DCI P3 color space, even if there are small differences between these two color spaces).

I have been using only such monitors for more than a decade (e.g. I am still using a pair of relatively cheap Dell U2720Q; now there are newer, better models).

However most monitors by default display only 24-bit sRGB colors. Many users never change the default settings, so they never see the full color range of those monitors.

An annoying fact is that there are many programs, even expensive professional programs, which come with installers written in Java, and those installers crash whenever they see a 30-bit monitor, regardless of the operating system.

As a workaround, it is usually enough to temporarily change the monitor colors to 24-bit during installation, as the actual programs do not care about the color resolution, so they work after installation.

Color spaces larger than DCI P3 (e.g. that of Rec. 2020) can currently be displayed only by laser projectors.

koala22• 3 years ago

Really sad to see traditional LCDs tending toward obsolescence. The newer OLED and especially mini-LED technologies often give me migraine symptoms.

bombela• 3 years ago

What could be causing your headache? OLED (and mini-LED is very similar) are just better on almost all account (looking at you gradiant banding). Color, perfect black, brightness, high refresh rate.

rxyz• 3 years ago

PWM flicker probably

imhoguy• 3 years ago

Had migraines when CCFL backlights were replaced by cheap LEDs with PWM flickering in 50/60Hz visible frequencies. Pretty much same shit happened to early LED bulbs. Just wait for the better evolution.

temikus2• 3 years ago

Same. There are now devices on the market that help find out sensitivity risk, I use this one when I’m going for hardware shopping: https://flickeralliance.org/collections/tools/products/opple...

rado• 3 years ago

Good riddance. The LED backlight bleed has overstayed its welcome.

ceeam• 3 years ago

I fear that the days of no-flicker displays are numbered. Can't imagine that they invent something with per-pixel LEDs without PWM.

crubier• 3 years ago

When does the flicker bother anyone for my information?

densh• 3 years ago

There is a whole forum of people who are deeply bothered by PWM: https://ledstrain.org/

nyanpasu64• 3 years ago

Today I learned that liquid crystals are being used to develop antennas?!

anoncow• 3 years ago

I read something similar about LG and OLED last year. Will look for a reference.

Update: https://www.techradar.com/opinion/come-in-regular-oled-tvs-y...

cubefox5• 3 years ago

This sounds unlikely, and it's just one source. I'm pretty sure LCDs still make the great majority of the TV, desktop and laptop monitor market. Even expensive iPads still use LCD. Only for phone screens OLED seems to be more common.

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

Oh, they’re going nowhere immediately. But if you’re a panel manufacturer, you’re probably winding up long term development; if the question is “how do we make better LCDs on a 5 year time horizon”, the answer is probably “that’s not worth investing in; in five years LCDs will be low-end only”.

cubefox5• 3 years ago

In the past OLED growth has been massively overestimated. E.g. Samsung entered with many years of delay relative to original projections, and even now only in the ultra premium QD-OLED category. So I wouldn't expect LCD becoming a niche product so fast.

fcanesin• 3 years ago

Lots of comments regarding LED brightness for sun lit spaces. If you are suffering with that have a look into Samsung The Frame (2022 and later) series. They have a special coating that removes reflections, I have installed multiple of those in very bright places and the mate finish works marvelous well.

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

Those are LCDs. The concern is about OLEDs (though realistically it’s one that is already largely solved at the high end, and that’ll percolate down)

h2odragon• 3 years ago

History rhymes again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phoebus_cartel

rsynnott5• 3 years ago

Eh? No; as a technology reaches its end of useful life, it’s natural that investment into it falls off to ~nothing. LCD screens will still be made for years (and for niche uses for decades) but the writing is on the wall.

The Phoebus cartel deliberately made a then current and unlikely to be replaced anytime soon technology deliberately worse. I can’t see any commonality at all.

ilyt9• 3 years ago

Do micro-leds have same burnout problems like OLED ones ?

rcarr2• 3 years ago

I’m convinced consumer TVs/monitors are a dying product and we’ll all be using AR glasses by 2040 anyway. I hardly ever want to interact with a computer without using my xreal now.

koromak• 3 years ago

How do you use the xreal? Looks interesting, never heard of it before.

Is it mostly an entertainment thing or do you actually do work with it?

Hows the pixel density? Does a virtual monitor look as good as a real 2k screen?

rcarr2• 3 years ago

Is it mostly an entertainment thing or do you actually do work with it?

Both. I just got a steam deck and my current plan is to sell my MacBook and just use Steam Deck and some AR glasses as my set up for everything. I can use the desktop mode of Steam Deck along with Distrobox and Podman for dev work and then I can play games, watch Netflix etc using the game mode. The other alternative I was thinking of was getting a Samsung Galaxy and using Dex with some glasses and then using a linux cloud machine for maximum portability but I'm leaning more towards the Steam Deck at the minute because it's a lot of fun and being able to play/code locally regardless of internet signal is a major plus.

Hows the pixel density? Does a virtual monitor look as good as a real 2k screen?

It's only 1080p so if you're used to a MacBook screen or a 4k monitor it's not going to be anywhere near as clear. That being said, the ergonomics are sooooo much better that, in my opinion, it is worth the screen clarity sacrifice. No matter what monitor set up I had going on, (chair, monitor height, position etc) I would always end up hunching. With the glasses you get none of that. You can fix the screen in the air if you use the Nebula app but I prefer to just have it move with me (which is the default) so you literally have zero shoulder/back pain throughout the day as the screen just moves with you. As for the lack of clarity, I just stick the zoom level to 110% and everything is fine.

The Xreal does have a few other flaws:

- brightness levels are pretty low, so daytime use can sometimes be a pain. you'll definitely want to use light mode during the day and then will probably switch to dark mode at night.

- there's a faint halo ring on the periphery. doesn't interfere with the screen at all and I can ignore it but it's still annoying when you notice it.

- You can get a painful pinching on the sides of your head when you wear it for a while. Oddly, you can completely eliminate this by wearing a thin polyester running headband underneath. Why this works I don't know, we're literally talking a very thin bit of material here and it completely stops it, it's very odd.

- They don't have an accessory available that allows you to charge your device and use the glasses at the same time, you have to purchase either the Nubia Red Magic Gaming Dock or the Viture dock.

Like I said, I am willing to put up with all of these issues because the hunching has got to the point where I think I'm getting the beginnings of kyphosis and I'm going to have to do some work in the gym correcting it.

Personally, I think I'm going to be selling the XReal and purchasing a competitor, the Viture glasses, as they look to be a superior product. Reviews I've seen say they eliminate all the above pain points (far higher brightness, no halo, no pinching, accessory available for passthrough device charging - I've actually already bought this and it works a dream with the Xreal) as well as offering diopter adjustment and the really cool ability to just magnetically snap prescription lenses on to them rather than having to faff about like you do with the Xreal. I don't need these yet but could see it happening in the future as I get older so would be nice to have the easier option if need be. They just seem to have thought about the whole setup a bit better than Xreal have including a cool Android neckband accessory, magnetic power cable etc. There's also Rokid, but the styling puts me off. Links to all here so you can do your own comparison:

https://www.viture.com

https://xreal.com

https://global.rokid.com/

It's a really exciting time at the minute, I don't think it'll be long until we get someone releasing 4k glasses in this space at which point they will be the clearly superior option to monitors.

myrandomcomment• 3 years ago

For what it is worth, I just replaced a Samsung 65” from 2019 (QLED) with a new LG 77” OLED and was really blown away with the massive difference in the picture quality. The living room is full of windows, so the room is really sunny. Even at noon the pictures quality is great and easy to see. TV cost $2700 at Costco. The 2019 Samsung will get rotate into my office replacing a 2016 Samsung that crappy software for ARC was so buggy that it did not even work will with the Samsung sound-bar (having to unplug the TV once every 3-4 power on to allow it to work again).

Night_Thastus6• 3 years ago

I hope OLED's major flaw gets fixed at some point - burn in. As long as burn in exists, brightness will have to be carefully controlled - which means OLEDs can never get as bright as a traditional LCD, and they're dangerous to use in cases where content is frequently static like desktops.

For TVs, OLEDs are fantastic. But for now I feel they're too limited for desktops.

Still, it's an exciting time for display technology. So many advancements made in the last 10 years.

mrguyorama• 3 years ago

OLEDs are great for computers if you're one of those tech review youtube channels who can afford to completely replace a $3000 monitor every few years because you often have to buy stuff to review it anyway.

Night_Thastus6• 3 years ago

I agree. It's definitely gotten better with automatic brightness limiters, pixel shifting, pixel refreshes and all that. It's still not at a point I consider acceptable though.

If I have to micro-manage or change my usage of the computer at all to accommodate the display, the technology isn't there yet imo.

LCD TVs won’t see any further development

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