Toshiba Introduces New 6.1-Inch Display at 498 PPI

[gnasher729]

There was a lot of debate about this when iPhone 4 first introduced Retina, but when laser printers made the jump from 300DPI to 600DPI, the printed text looked notably better, even if one's eye can't really detect individual dots at 600DPI....

The laser printers could only print dots that were either 100% black or 100% white. So if you want to print text that has a gray level of 75%, you need to print three black pixels, and one white pixel, while your iPhone or any old LCD monitor just displays a gray pixel. So you need a lot more resolution on these printers for the same result. Twice the resolution (600 dpi) just to create five levels of gray.

 

[CJM]

This is super exciting. I have to say my eyes don't feel quite comfortable reading on the iPad and a PPI increase would be fantastic.

That said, beyond writing in Chinese and Kanji, I'm not sure how effective 498PPI would be for Roman type.

 

[juannacho]

This just just a tech demo, Toshiba wants to let their customers know they can produce really high PPI screens. I seriously doubt anyone will actually be using any 6.1" 498 PPI tablets in the future, but it's likely we'll see 498 PPI smaller devices eventually, and perhaps Toshiba will keep working at it and get larger screens as well.

I'm looking forward to Apple doubling the pixels again in some future iPhone. It'll be total overkill, but it will look so real. 1304 PPI or bust.

It's all very clever and everything, but for a screen does this have any actual real application?

Now my eyes may be a slightly ageing 37 years old, but there is literally no distance near or far I can hold my iPhone 4 where I can discern the pixels at all!

Bring it in much closer than 10" and it just makes me go gozzy & my eyes hurt a bit!

 

[mattlol]

hahahahahaha at all the fanboys rubbishing this technology. if this were to be put in an idevice you'd be blowing your collective loads.

 

[viewfly]

Interestingly, they show examples of 244 dpi vs 498 dpi, but not Apples' Retina display of 326 dpi.

The human eye will not be able to tell the difference greater than 326dpi. That was the point of the Retina display. 498 and 326 will look the same to most people.

The iPad 2 is not a Retina display yet, and hence it does appear a bit fuzzy.

The comment about inkjet resolutions above is correct.

 

[mjtomlin]

if the human retina can't see more than +-300 pixels per inch, why put 600 on 1 inch? You would think that the difference wouldn't matter. I would think that it's more important to make bigger retina display's (retina iMac, iPad?)?

I have to agree. I just looked at the iPhone 4S yesterday and the display is freaken awesome! I can't imagine why you'd need something even better... And would you even notice at that point?

The only thing this could be good for is possibly pushing the cells apart and inserting other tech in between the pixels; touch sensors, image sensors, etc. Apple had a patent describing how image sensors could be built into a display... So that not only would the display show you information, but it could be used to capture information... So you'd have a display that doubled as a lower resolution camera too.

 

[Signal-11]

I have to agree. I just looked at the iPhone 4S yesterday and the display is freaken awesome! I can't imagine why you'd need something even better... And would you even notice at that point?

Because no one individual is the general case.

In looking at the comments on this thread, it's obvious to me which posters, especially among the 300 dpi is good enough/max threshold comments, do not work extensively in CJK-Chinese/East Asian languages.

CJK, particularly traditional Chinese fonts, do not anti-alias well, especially at smaller font sizes. Chinese characters have a higher spatial information density, which means that visual discrimination between characters becomes more difficult, more quickly as you shrink the text. AA + CJK characters below a certain threshold quickly becomes a blurry mess.

The Retina display in the iP4/4S and 4th Gen iPods might be at the level where even the sharp eyed, exclusively Latin alphabet reading user might never notice improvements in resolution, but it is definitely not there for CJK rendering.

 

[geoffct]

Scale it....

That DPI yields a 1080p (1920x1080) in 4.5in screen or a 4K (7680x4320) in only a 18 in or 2K (3840x2160) in 9in. I doubt they really want to make a 6in screen, rather this is a demo of the technology.

 

[nateo200]

Can we get a 2.5k 16:9 HDTV first? One that doesn't cost >9000 dollars? Its cool but seriously there is essentially 0 content over 2k resolution available...and I don't see Apple having 2.5k video downloads unless we start seeing 256GB iPad's...I say bump the resolution up to 1400x1050..that would create a beautiful display...

 

[Smigit]

Ceddie - I may be wrong but I think the 300ppi theory of being the max we can see is based at a viewing distance of about 12 inch. This said why you would use the device any closer is questionable!

I'm wondering if its more to achieve some ratio with something else, similar to how Apple scaled the display by two when going to the iPhone 4. As such it could be more a software consideration than optical.

That or I wonder if such a display would be useful for something else such as medical equipment or perhaps inside a visor of a military helmet or something where the screens would be much closer than a typical phone or tablet is used for.

The other likely possibility is they are doing R&D and the dimensions here were selected due to them providing a good base to go elsewhere for more mainstream devices like a phone. Perhaps 6.1" is a good starting block for then attempting the same thing with 4".

 

[cube]

Oh God, first a 4" android phone.. then 4.5".. now the Nexus with its 4.65" screen.. now this 6.1"? When will it stop?!

There's already the Samsung Galaxy Note with a 5.3" screen.

 

[Eric5h5]

Newspapers still print at 150dpi to this day and nobody is complaining.

No they don't, speaking from experience. You're confusing dpi with lpi. And photo quality in newspapers is usually terrible.

The human eye will not be able to tell the difference greater than 326dpi.

That's wrong. It's just as wrong as "the eye can't see faster than 60fps". Please stop accepting marketing fluff as "fact", especially when it's so easily disproven by simple observation.

--Eric

 

[kdarling]

if the human retina can't see more than +-300 pixels per inch, why put 600 on 1 inch?

The limit is how much of an angle a point takes up at the distance you're looking at it from, not how big it really is.

The oft-used 300 PPI "limit" is at one foot away, for people with normal vision. People with better than normal vision, or holding the device closer, can of course see pixels at even denser PPIs.

As you get closer, the pixels have to get smaller to take up the same angle. At 6", you need almost 600 PPI to be "retinal". At only 1" away, the eye should theoretically be able to see over 3000 PPI.

Obviously, the reverse is true as well: at football field distance, a pixel can be almost a foot tall and be "retinal" by Apple's definition.

 

[twoodcc]

i would love to see this in an iPod touch

 

[BuzzMega]

Misleading images. On purpose?

The images leading this article are chosen to show how "overwhelmingly, self-evidently Goood" the 498 ppi image is, and how "obviously, sadly, self-evidently bad" the others are.

By showing a blow-up that displays the 498 ppi image at a sub-display pixel resolution, you can't see its individual pixels at all. Thus making it seem to be a seamless plane of white with images.

But anyone with an iPhone Retina display knows that it looks exactly that clear, detail-free white to any viewer's eye.

The choice to show the Retina display as a grossly-lined, sub-adequate display is where the intentional misdirection comes in. You can't, on a web page, show what any of these displays looks like to your eye. So you use the 3mm "comparison" identifier which tells me nothing. A clever variation of a Fox News-like "fair and balanced."

On my computer screen it shows up as being 18mm wide. Big enough to show the dimmest blue display pixels as a strong set of dark lines. But nobody —NOBODY— views their iPhone from 50mm above the display surface. Which is where you'd have to put your severely nearsighted eyes to even begin to resolve the color pixel pattern.

Human vision tops out at about 100 pixels per degree of angle of view. The fact that Toshiba can make a display 498 pixels per inch is not a big deal. The OLED and other displays inside mirrorless DSLR cameras are far finer than that.

In making your point here, you've given us all a lesson in how agenda-driven journalism seeks to create false drama to sell us something.