>> I mean, if you're going to force everybody to buy a new TV, new
>> receiver, new type of disk and a new machine to play it, why it increase
>> the resolution *significantly*? Why only increase it by a small amount?
> 
> Bandwidth. Your LCD is connected to your computer by a 4 foot cable that
> carries a single "channel". Now think about the number of channels and the
> distances involved in broadcast TV.

My monitor is connected via an analogue (or, if I'm lucky, uncompressed 
digital) link. Video signals tend to be highly compressible. Indeed, at 
higher resolutions the data may even become *easier* to compress.

But sure, I guess if you're trying to transmit stuff, there is only 
finite bandwidth to work with. You'd think all this would be less 
problematic for playback from disk though...

On the other hand, greating a succession of slightly higher resolution 
platforms gives manufacturers a way to charge you more money as you 
constantly upgrade all your equipment. :-P

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>> Cost, both for producing the TV and for producing the content.
>
> Producing the content I can understand. It presumably costs more money to 
> shunt larger volumes of data around...

For the same size TV, increased resolution (smaller pixels) is more 
expensive for many reasons:
- Bigger backlight needed
- More/bigger driver ICs
- More expensive components due to higher pixel clock rate
- More RAM for frame buffer
- More powerful DSP/CPU for manipulating frame buffer
- More connections to the panel (worse reliability)
- Panel yield reduced due to roughly constant probability of pixel failure

> How is it *cheaper* to design something more complicated?

Because not everyone can afford the top of the range model.  It's a well 
known economics method to introduce several products with varying 
performance and price to get more money overall.

> No. But you would think that making a large monitor with a high resolution 
> would be much cheaper than making a small monitor with a high resolution.

No, the cost of panel area outweighs all the things I mentioned above. 
Every LCD factory is run at almost 100% capacity, they measure income in $ 
per square metre, a panel that is twice the size is going to be roughly 
twice the cost (plus or minus a bit depending on the factors I mentioned 
above).

> Some movies are widescreen. But by no means all of them. Besides, the time 
> spent watching movies is utterly dwarfed by the time spent watching normal 
> TV - which is never widescreen.

Funny how radiotimes.com indicates almost every TV program is broadcast in 
widescreen :-)  You need to fix your TV if you are not seeing a widescreen 
picture from normal TV.

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> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?

WTF?

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>> How is it *cheaper* to design something more complicated?
> 
> Because not everyone can afford the top of the range model.  It's a well 
> known economics method to introduce several products with varying 
> performance and price to get more money overall.

...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing 
is to extract more money from people.

>> No. But you would think that making a large monitor with a high 
>> resolution would be much cheaper than making a small monitor with a 
>> high resolution.
> 
> No, the cost of panel area outweighs all the things I mentioned above. 

Oh, OK. I assumed the difficulty of manufacturing a higher dot-pitch was 
the main problem...

>> Some movies are widescreen. But by no means all of them. Besides, the 
>> time spent watching movies is utterly dwarfed by the time spent 
>> watching normal TV - which is never widescreen.
> 
> Funny how radiotimes.com indicates almost every TV program is broadcast 
> in widescreen :-)  You need to fix your TV if you are not seeing a 
> widescreen picture from normal TV.

I especially love how I have a widescreen TV, but you have to manually 
flip between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect. Even though it's connected by a 
digital link, so you'd think it could *detect* which kind of signal it's 
receiving...

That being the case, it's not entirely easy to tell whether you're 
watching a widescreen broadcast, or a normal one with the top cut off. 
(Unless of course you configure the TV to show black bars at the side - 
but it's my mum's TV, and she always complains when I configure it that 
way.)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?

At risk of entirely misunderstanding the question, all cinemas have shown all
films in 16:9 or wider for almost a hundred years.

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>> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?
> 
> At risk of entirely misunderstanding the question, all cinemas have shown all
> films in 16:9 or wider for almost a hundred years.

Really?

Huh, well, you learn something every day. The picture always looked 
fairly square to me...

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:25:12 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> How about if it supported only SD (which is one resolution) or only HD  
> (in one resolution)?

Then you would ignore the market segment that consists of people that want  
something better than SD but cannot (or do not want to) pay the full price  
of 1080p.



> I thought it's a high dot-pitch which is expensive? (The "resolution" of  
> the finished item being the area of the panel multiplied by the  
> dot-pitch.) By that reconing, a large 1080p display would be cheaper  
> than a small 1080p display, because the dot-pitch is lower.

I am by no means an expert on LCD panel production, but I do not think  
there are significant cost savings associated with an excessively large  
dot-pitch; certainly not enough to offset the cost of a larger panel.  
Making pixels really tiny is difficult/expensive, but making them really  
large becomes a matter of diminishing returns.



> Well, I'm only talking about the UK. I don't know what's happening in  
> other parts of the world, but in the UK everybody's acting like HD is  
> this Really Big Deal that everybody should be excited about. As far as I  
> can tell, there isn't really much of a difference.

The issue of whether there is an appreciable difference has been discussed  
before, at great length, in this very forum.



> (What the hell is the advantage of a widescreen *laptop* for goodness'  
> sake?!)

1. Watching movies on the go.
2. A better match for the aspect ratio of the keyboard.
3. Cost (remember that thing about the diagonal and the surface area).



> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?

Are you smoking something, or have you simply never been to a cinema?  
Practically all cinemas are widescreen. Heck, they can even adjust the  
aspect ratio on the fly.



I have to ask: Is Milton Keynes like one of those little tribal villages  
sometimes found deep in some jungle, where technology has not improved for  
centuries?



-- 
FE

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Am 26.04.2010 11:38, schrieb scott:

> For the same size TV, increased resolution (smaller pixels) is more
> expensive for many reasons:
...
> - Panel yield reduced due to roughly constant probability of pixel failure

... which, to make things worse, does not just have a /linear/ effect on 
panel yield, but an /exponential/ one.

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Am 26.04.2010 11:49, schrieb Invisible:

> ...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing
> is to extract more money from people.

The entire reason for HDTV /per se/ is to extract more money from people.

They call it capitalism: The desire to extract more money from people as 
the primary driving force for innovation.

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>> ...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing
>> is to extract more money from people.
> 
> The entire reason for HDTV /per se/ is to extract more money from people.

Damn. And here I was thinking it was supposed to improve picture quality...

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