RE: New Monitors. At what point will these new LCD's rez = HDTV?

[GeneR]

Hi, I can't seem to remember what HDTV resolution is and whether these new Apple monitors have already reach HDTV resolution or whether they still have more to go.

Additionally, I heard that when the Mac was first created the potential screen resolution that could be programmed for a Mac (but was never used) was some obscenely large size akin to a movie theatre screen. Is that true? If so, I guess the people at Apple have had big ideas all along about where screens will end up and how big they will be in the future.

Additionally, if this fact is true is it still true of OSX? Since screen sizes are getting bigger and bigger I had to wonder...

If there is anyone with any info on this, I would certainly appreciate your input on this. Thanks!

 

[daveg5]

just a guess

i think it is1080 horizontal for instance 1920*1080 the 1080 is the number you go by but i dont know for sure cause thier is also 420p 720p 1080p i hope someone gives a definative awnser but i think it is 1080 which is why only the top cinema system gets in hd

 

[occam]

Already beyond HDTV

TV is much lower resolution than computers. Standard TV (US?) is 480i (480 lines, interlaced). That's a vertical resolution of 480 interlaced lines (half the lines are scanned each refresh). Computers used to use interlaced CRT's as well, but it was hard on the eyes (particularly for text, word processing & programming). Once the technology caught up, eventually all computer displays became progressive.

HDTV gets a little more interesting (looks a lot better than standard TV) with a variety of modes including 480p (progressive), 720p (progressive again), all the way "up" to 1080i (interlaced). If you do the math, you'll find that the 720p is actually higher bandwidth than 1080i since 1080i is akin to 540p (i.e., 540 lines of information per refresh).

So, worst case scenario, computer screens need to support 1080 lines of information in the vertical range.

Horizontally, I'm not so sure. I assume 4x3 means the horizontal should be at least 1440 (4/3 x 1080). However, if you want to fake 16x9, you'll need 16x9 x 1080 and some hardware to do the widening of the image (a la the various modes on an hdtv).

Bottom line: HDTV's are poor man's computer monitors, but very large. They also have lots of tv, video and movie features built in. Due to their size (even though they're lower resolution), they typically cost a fortune.

Cheers.