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Powerbook and Apple 23" HD Display

A

aminadab

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 3, 2005
132
1
Portland, Oregon
Hi,
I have a new model (1.5 ghz) 12" Powerbook. It has the GeForce 5200 Graphics card. Will this work with the apple 23" display? I went the apple store and they said that the 20" works better. I generally get the impression that they don't really know all that much there, so I'm appealing to you guys. Also, any comments on the 20" vs. the 23" would be appreciated. For instance, I'm not sure what exactly designates the 23" as HD, seeing that proportionately, the aspect ratio seems equal between the two. The apple store was not able to answer this question. Yikes. Thanks very much.
 
Your PowerBook will be able to run the 23" display. However, depending on your use of the display (such as games or other graphic intensive apps), the larger the display, the poorer the graphic performance.

The 23" display is HD wich means that it has more lines of resolution than the 20". I can't remember how many lines are required to be officially considered HD, but that is the main difference between the 20" and the 23" displays.

Either way, I'm sure you'll be happy with your display. I'm thinking of purchasing a 20" myself as I just can't justify the almost 100% price increase from the 20" to the 23"... :confused:

Best wishes,
JOD8FY
 
Either way, I'm sure you'll be happy with your display. I'm thinking of purchasing a 20" myself as I just can't justify the almost 100% price increase from the 20" to the 23"... :confused:


Yeah, I though about that too. What justifies the price hike there? I'm pretty sure I'll go with the 20" too. I tested both today, including a dvd being run from the PB and it looked terrific. I don't play games, really. I just want to watch a dvd and have more screen space when I'm home.
 
LCD's at that size dont have great yields, which means that the larger displays have a premium, much like processors. It takes a high number of LCD's to be produced in order to get a number of good ones... If a company gets 80 good LCD's out of a run of 100, the yield is 80%, but they still need to recover the cost of building 100 displays.

As the technical question is concerned, true HD as concerning displays, have 1080 vertical scan lines. That means that a display must be able to project 1080 lines to be called "HD" (there are 480 and 720 modes as well). The 20" display only has 1050 (yeah, it sucks) and the 23" has 1200 (i believe) the 30" has even more.
 
The 20" display only has 1050 (yeah, it sucks).[/QUOTE]

Really, it does suck, or are you being sarcastic about the 1050 only being 30 away from 1080? Or is this not really the way it works? So, if a 40" screen had 1080 it would qualify as HD but would ostensibly look worse than a 20" with 1050? Am I all confused?

That's helpful info on the production end, and it explains the price hike. Very interesting.
 
Sorry about the confusion. Im saying that it sucks that its only 30 lines away from being a true HD.

Your assumptions about the 40" display are correct. As long as the display contains 1080 vertical scan lines minimum, it could display an HD image. Your right, however, that if it had only 1080 pixels it would look like crap. Fortunately, there are scaling technologies (H.264 that steve is all excited about) that will scale the image to fit. Or you are just left with some dead space outside and around the HD image. (similar to the letterbox on DVD's)

The second part gets into the PPI (pixels per inch) of the display. When you see everyone on this board talking about a HD Powerbook, they are talking about a higher PPI. Right now, i think most of the displays hover around 75 PPI. So a HD powerbook would require 1) a larger screen or 2) more PPI. The larger screen makes no sense ... can you Imagine carrying around a 20+ in PB? So the answer lies in putting more pixels into the 15 and 17" display.

The problem with this is that your icons and text become very small, almost to the point that they are illegible. Pictures and movies display just fine, but you cant see webpages or read documents. Thats where the RESOLUTION INDEPENDENT GUI come into play (it is a feature in tiger that is disabled by default, i dont know how it is turned on, though... maybe the developer tools CD). Resolution independence means that you can basically jack up the size of certain GUI elements, while others remain small... such like text size of 1024X768, but able to display an HD image.

Hope this helps and isnt too confusing. If you have any more questions, just ask. Most folks around here sure are helpful.
 
That was by far the most helpful and smart answer I've had on anything in a while. If only the people at the apple store knew how to respond in that way... I guess it's why we have this forum. There's no way I'd carry around a 20" PB -- though it's a pretty sick idea, I have to admit. Now I need to figure out if I should just buy a 20" iMac and upgrade to the G5. My girlfriend's going to kill me!
 
Be prepaired for non-stop fan running once you hook up your PB to and Apple display.

May not matter to some, but it happened to me with my 12'' PB and the 20'' ACD.
 
Koodauw said:
Be prepaired for non-stop fan running once you hook up your PB to and Apple display.

May not matter to some, but it happened to me with my 12'' PB and the 20'' ACD.
Click to expand...

Hell, I have a 17" Dell monitor and it runs non-stop. Oddly enough, I've found now that I have the extra screen, I'm more comfortable just using what I have. Odd, isn't it?
 
I was looking at the 23" a few days ago for my 15" PB too. My purpose is that I want to have two app windows side-by-side. The 20" seemed kinda small for this, while the 23" seemed about right. It is amazing what 3" does. But now you have me worried about slowing my machine down. I have 128 of V-Ram, what do you guys think? Would my PB's performance be better with a 20" vs a 23"?

I really don't care if it is HD or not. I had a Dell laptop with a Hi-res screen and I always had to lower the resolution (out of the native resolution) just to make things bigger.
 
EasyB said:
I really don't care if it is HD or not. I had a Dell laptop with a Hi-res screen and I always had to lower the resolution (out of the native resolution) just to make things bigger.
Click to expand...

But thats what the Resolution Independent GUI is for in Tiger... your icons can remain at a larger size without sacrificing the ability to display an HD movie/image (as long as you have an HD monitor). Someone more knowledgable than I would be able tell you how to set that up.
 
EasyB- From what I understand 128mb far exceeds the needed vram. If it is your only display you can even run games on it. (I saw a benchmark somewhere where they used the 23" to compare the 64mb ati 9700 to the 128mb) If you have 128mb vram and feel like spending the money then the 23" is a great choice.
 
BlueT said:
Hell, I have a 17" Dell monitor and it runs non-stop. Oddly enough, I've found now that I have the extra screen, I'm more comfortable just using what I have. Odd, isn't it?
Click to expand...

What do you mean? That you enjoy using the regular screen on the PB more than your external?
 
Koodauw said:
What do you mean? That you enjoy using the regular screen on the PB more than your external?
Click to expand...

Yup. I'd rather just use the 12 inches than use both screens at the same time. Kinda freaky. Of course, part of the problem is that I hate it when the fan on my PB turns on...
 
BlueT said:
Yup. I'd rather just use the 12 inches than use both screens at the same time. Kinda freaky. Of course, part of the problem is that I hate it when the fan on my PB turns on...
Click to expand...

Wow, I thought I was the only one who felt that way. I kinda like the compact ness of the 12'' screen. I sold my ACD, after owning it for a week. Weird huh.

And I agree the non-stop fan running is not pleasant.
 
macbaseball said:
Then why don't you sell you LCD...
Click to expand...

I usually use it to watch downloaded movies and tv shows. Plus, I'd never get the amount of money I put into it, and the extra cash isn't worth it (I'd get 50-60% of what I paid; that's a loss I'm not willing to accept). Meh, if I ever decide to buy a real HD LCD (for TV and computer), I'd probably just give my screen to my mom anyway. It's not a useless device; just not terribly useful to me.


Koodauw said:
Weird huh.
Click to expand...

Took me by surprise. The thing I love about my 12 inch now is my iLap. I can't believe how comfortable it makes using this computer. That's probably at least part of why I don't like the LCD. I'm much more comfortable sitting on my couch, typing away...instead of crouching on a desk. Anyway, that's my commercial for the night.
 
aminadab said:
Hi,
I have a new model (1.5 ghz) 12" Powerbook. It has the GeForce 5200 Graphics card. Will this work with the apple 23" display? I went the apple store and they said that the 20" works better. I generally get the impression that they don't really know all that much there, so I'm appealing to you guys. Also, any comments on the 20" vs. the 23" would be appreciated. For instance, I'm not sure what exactly designates the 23" as HD, seeing that proportionately, the aspect ratio seems equal between the two. The apple store was not able to answer this question. Yikes. Thanks very much.
Click to expand...

The bigger display will NOT slow down you PB. The only draw back is that each display has 1/2 of you VRAM. So your built-in screen will use 32 MB and external display will use 32 MB assuming that you have 64 MB VRAM total. However you can close the PB's display, connect a keyboard & mouse and use only external display and it will have all your 64 MB.

Now to HD vs non-HD. There are 3 sizes of HD-video. The largest one has resolution of 1920x1080 pixels (16x9 ratio). 23" Apple Cinema HD Display has res. of 1920x1200 pix (16x10 ratio). This means that 23 inch ACD can play HD video at full-resolution. But HD is 16x9 and ACD is 16x10, so black bars will appear on the top and the bottom of the display when watching video full-screen.

20-inch ACD has only 1680x1050 pix. resolution, so it cannot play HD video at full-size.

Hope this helps.
 
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