Monitor manufacturers are holding back the industry and have been for years. Take one look at ATI's EyeFinity feature and you'll know that modern graphics cards are able to output an incredible number of pixels. Take a look at the specification for almost every monitor on the market for the last thirty years and you'll find hardly any that beat 100 DPI.
There really aren't many reasons for staying at 100 DPI on the desktop other than history. It's about time the monitor manufacturers moved to 300 DPI.
Up until this summer, nobody had really noticed. Then the iPhone 4 came along with its Retina Display and changed everything. The move to high resolutions in mobile phones is now a certainty and it needs to happen on the desktop too. Everyone we've asked who has used a Retina Display for more than a few hours finds desktop displays ugly and blocky.
Moving to 300 DPI on the desktop would give the graphics and display industry a much-needed shot in the arm. Just about everyone in the industry would benefit.
IT workers win because they'll get less eye strain. Both Windows and OS X do text smoothing to hide the blockiness and make text more legible. A move to 300 DPI would mean that text smoothing was no longer necessary.
Monitor manufacturers win because, although stuck pixels are relatively few and far between these days thanks to improved manufacturing processes, plenty of LCD panels never escape the factory because of them. At 300 DPI, stuck pixels hardly matter because a speck of dust on the screen is bigger. So there's a good chance that manufacturers can push all of the panels they produce out of the door.
Monitor manufacturers also win because 3D has, at least temporarily, turned out to be a lemon. They need something to push the boundary again. Preferably using technology that doesn't mean building an entirely new production line.
Graphics chip manufacturers win because there would be a new high point to hit. Memory manufacturers would win because those graphics cards would need more, faster memory.
Marketing departments win because there's something new to sell and it's tangible. The customers can see the difference.
Moving to 300 DPI on the desktop is long overdue. Everyone in the industry has something to gain from it. The big question is, will it be Apple to move first yet again or will another firm have the courage?
1. The raster will usually be well over 1920 wide, which is
a problem for DVI (most users are dual-link challenged).
Does your HDMI or DP port run high enough?
2. Too much content (mostly legacy) which is of fixed pixel
dimensions, and is illegible above 100 dpi. It was this factor
that caused me to drop back from 120 dpi some years back. This problem may decline in time.
Finally, 300 dpi is overkill. 200 dpi is considered "photo quality" and will be quite challenging enough to field.
Of course, what I want in my next monitor is 30in 2560.
100 dpi is fine. Darn few monitors in that space either.
IBM used to offer a 200 dpi LCD. They sold the business.
1. Yes, the raster would be well over 1920 pixels across. A 24" monitor at 300 DPI would be around 6150 pixels across. And, no, DVI couldn't handle that. Not even dual-link DVI. So a new, higher bandwidth interface would be needed. But that's not critical or even difficult to solve as ATI's EyeFinity cards are already capable of putting out more pixels than that (7680x3200).
2. Legacy content can be scaled without difficulty.
Your other points:
3. 200 DPI is not "photo quality" at all unless you've managed to sublimate the colours and even then... Desktop displays aren't always about showing pictures. If you've ever worked with printers, you'll know that "jaggies" are detectable up to around 1200 DPI without sublimation.
4. "IBM used to offer a 200 dpi LCD." That received excellent reviews. Despite costing ten times more than a 100 DPI display and requiring the most expensive graphics card on the market at the time. Despite the poor refresh rate. Almost every reviewer commented that they wished all displays were that resolution.
> And, no, DVI couldn't handle that. Not even dual-link DVI.
Nor HDMI, nor DP. DP could get to 4K. LightPeak is behind DP, but could get into range many years from now.
> So a new, higher bandwidth interface would be needed.
You've just introduced another hurdle to a problem which already had quite enough.
> But that's not critical or even difficult to solve as ATI's
> EyeFinity cards are already capable of putting out more
> pixels than that (7680x3200).
But not on a single wire or fiber. 6K has to be a single PORT, and it had better not require non-standard cables.
> Legacy content can be scaled without difficulty.
That raises yet another substantial issue I forgot about in my initial response - scalers. The first gen 2560 LCDs, you'll recall, only ran full-screen at native res. Send a smaller raster, and they postage-stamped it. This was because economical scalers to re-size, say 1920 to 2560, were not then available. Are economical 4K or 6K scalers out yet? Or is 6K restricted to running at native res, or integer fractions thereof?
> 200 DPI is not "photo quality" at all unless ...
> "jaggies" are detectable up to around 1200 DPI without sublimation.
200 dpi would satisfy most users clamoring for higher local res, but even they (and I'm one of them) may not represent a viable market.
If we consider all the topics where LCD monitors could be enhanced:
* cost & price
* response time / ghosting
* stereovision (misleadingly called "3D")
* mechanical case dimensions
* power consumption
* black level
* bit depth
* gamut & color temp
* off-axis uniformity
* making touch standard
* dpi
we can count on the industry to prioritize and invest incorrectly :(
Lotsa luck getting traction with this crusade when we can't even get the monitor makers to specify their existing dpi. The NEC PA271W-BK may be a 110 dpi LCD, but you won't learn that from NEC or newegg.
A co-worker was a VESA rep back in the early DVI days. I told him that the 1920x1080 single-link limit was a mistake, as I was already pushing VGA higher than that at home (and 1920x1200 DVI single-link is a spec cheat). We're still paying for that VESA short-sightedness.
I couldn't agree more with this blog. For all the time we all spent staring at the one-eyed anti-christ, we could at least do away with the eye strain.
Hardware is a total non-issue. Let's face it, the hardware boys are damned good at what they do (tips hat). Otoh, software and content, are a much bigger problem.
Put another way, fixed pixel UIs really suck. And so, by extension, do all Flash based websites ...
That said, the iPhone 4 aproach of doubling all the pixels in 2-D is brilliant in its simplicity [I use _no_ Apple products].
Most people are familiar with the "Internet" PPI standard of 72ppi. I propose a new "Internet" PPI standard of 144x144 (144=2x72), to be replaced in a few years by 288x288. And so on. You get the idea. Thus, most existing content can be easily scaled on the fly, without aliasing problems.
Let's do this, people!
Samsung Electronics and Nouvoyance Demonstrate 10.1-inch, 300dpi WQXGA PenTile RGBW Prototype Display for Tablet Market
http://www.nouvoyance.com/news-051311.html