On 4/26/2010 8:28 AM, Invisible wrote:
>> Maybe the fact that Windows is not good at scaling has meant that
>> making a 150 or 200 dpi monitor that is used from "desktop" viewing
>> distances would be impossible to use due to the tiny physical size of
>> the fonts and other GUI items?
>
> Plausible.
>
>> I was running it for a while on my laptop with a non-standard dpi
>> setting. On the whole Windows and Office was fine, but IIRC my CAD
>> software screwed up, with some buttons being shifted outside of the
>> window so you couldn't get to them!
>
> Haha! And I bet that CAD software was the most expensive thing on the
> whole PC, by a mile... ;-)
>

That's the biggest part of the problem out there, many apps were written 
without regard to a higher DPI setting, and do some wacky things if 
they're used with a higher DPI. I think Windows 7 has some compatibility 
settings somewhere to help alleviate some of these issues. So, high-dpi 
display may be coming soon.
-- 
~Mike

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>> Ooo, here's a random thought: Do you think there will ever be a day 
>> when the Internet becomes fast enough to watch TV-quality video in 
>> realtime?
>>
>> When do you think that day will be?
> 
> About five years ago.

Really?

And where the hell does this happen?

> Are you sure you are not living in the jungle?

Yes, quite sure. (I hate the outdoors, remember?)

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:25:35 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>> Ooo, here's a random thought: Do you think there will ever be a day  
>>> when the Internet becomes fast enough to watch TV-quality video in  
>>> realtime?
>>>
>>> When do you think that day will be?
>>  About five years ago.
>
> Really?
>
> And where the hell does this happen?

Here.



>> Are you sure you are not living in the jungle?
>
> Yes, quite sure. (I hate the outdoors, remember?)

I thought you enjoyed skiing. Is it just plants that you hate?



-- 
FE

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On 4/26/2010 8:00 AM, Invisible wrote:

>
> 2. A stretched image where everybody has elliptical heads.
>

I don't know how things are in the UK, but over here, everyone generally 
has an elliptical head. ;)

> 3. One of the various "zoom" modes which distorts the image non-linearly
> to supposedly give a better picture than a linear distortion.

Mmm, my father in law had a TV that did this. It was quite literally 
nausea-inducing. I always wound up with a nasty headache after watching 
anything in 4:3 on that TV.

> 4. Cut the top and/or bottom off the picture to make it fit.

Depending on the program, this is acceptable, of course if there's 
titling or a crawl across the bottom of the screen... it's a nuisance.

> Everybody seems to hate #1, but lots of people apparently see nothing
> wrong with #2 or #3. *shudders*

Yeah, I don't get it. The only reason I really want the screen filled is 
so my CRT doesn't burn-in.

-- 
~Mike

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>> About five years ago.
>
> Really?
>
> And where the hell does this happen?

Virgin have a system called On Demand in the UK.  Here in Germany we have 
T-Home.  Obviously you need a fast internet connection (about 6 MBit/s or 
higher IIRC) to receive broadcast quality video.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_on_Demand

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>>>> When do you think that day will be?
>>>  About five years ago.
>>
>> Really?
>>
>> And where the hell does this happen?
> 
> Here.

Who is it?

It's me.

>>> Are you sure you are not living in the jungle?
>>
>> Yes, quite sure. (I hate the outdoors, remember?)
> 
> I thought you enjoyed skiing. Is it just plants that you hate?

OK, I rephrase: I hate being outside for no particular reason. Like, 
"hey, let's go for a walk outside". (Or rather, "let's wander around at 
random for no purpose when I could be coding stuff".) Apparently some 
people like to look at the view or something...

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Quadrupling the number of pixels doesn't necessarily mean that the 
> *compressed* signal takes more bandwidth.

  It depends on the video contents and the codec.

  If you take, let's say, a 640x480 video and quadruple its size to
1280x960 (using some interpolation filtering), you won't need significantly
more bitrate eg. on MPEG-4 to get the same picture quality. That's because
the larger version doesn't contain any more information than the smaller
one (any additional bitrate you might need comes mostly from other overhead
caused by the larger video size).

  However, if your *original* video is 1280x960, at full detail, then it
will contain significantly more information than the 640x480 version. Most
of this extra information will get mangled if you use the same bitrate as
you did with the smaller video (assuming the bitrate was pretty optimal for
it to begin with). You will need more bitrate to retain that extra
information as much as possible (although not four times as much, of course).

  This is so for MPEG-4. Digi-TV (at least here) uses MPEG-2 (the same as
DVDs use). I don't know how well that handles larger video resolutions
compared to smaller ones.

> Then again, since we replaced our old CRT with a shiny new LCD, suddenly 
> I notice that just about *everything* on TV has DCT artifacts all over 
> it. (I guess the CRT was too blurry to show this.) It's quite annoying.

  Most digital TV broadcasts use significantly lower bitrates than DVDs,
which is why most digital TV broadcasts have significantly more visible
artifacts.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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scott wrote:

> Virgin have a system called On Demand in the UK.  Here in Germany we 
> have T-Home.  Obviously you need a fast internet connection (about 6 
> MBit/s or higher IIRC) to receive broadcast quality video.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPTV
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_on_Demand

Hmm, interesting.

I know the BT Vision system is supposed to allow you to download video 
content to watch later, but I'm not aware of any system which can manage 
it in realtime. (Certainly not just using a normal PC...)

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Fredrik Eriksson <fe79}--at--{yahoo}--dot--{com> wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:15:28 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >
> > Ooo, here's a random thought: Do you think there will ever be a day when  
> > the Internet becomes fast enough to watch TV-quality video in realtime?
> >
> > When do you think that day will be?

> About five years ago.

  At what quality?

  Certainly if your bandwidth is enough to transfer a full double-layer
DVD (ie. about 8 gigabytes) in 2 hours, then it would be enough to *watch*
that DVD in real-time over the internet. Not many people have such huge
bandwidths, though.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> I know the BT Vision system is supposed to allow you to download video 
> content to watch later, but I'm not aware of any system which can manage 
> it in realtime. (Certainly not just using a normal PC...)

Many TV company websites let you watch TV live via your PC at varying levels 
of quality.  I have certainly seen a few that exceed digital SD broadcast TV 
(a friend was watching american football streamed over the net in HD 
quality, I had it through my laptop hooked up to the TV - definitely better 
than watching it on normal SDTV).

How about BBC iPlayer, what's the quality like on that? (I can't access it 
outside the UK)

YouTube also streams video at resolutions up to 1080p, you just need a fast 
enough internet connection to watch it in real time as it's downloading. 
IIRC the best digital TV broadcast streams use about 6 mbit/s, so that 
should give you some idea what internet speed you need.

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scott wrote:
>> I know the BT Vision system is supposed to allow you to download video 
>> content to watch later, but I'm not aware of any system which can 
>> manage it in realtime. (Certainly not just using a normal PC...)
> 
> Many TV company websites let you watch TV live via your PC at varying 
> levels of quality.  I have certainly seen a few that exceed digital SD 
> broadcast TV.

Seriously??

> How about BBC iPlayer, what's the quality like on that? (I can't access 
> it outside the UK)

Pitiful. Utterly pitiful.

I mean, forgetting the minor detail that it's plain unusuable at certain 
times of day, the picture quality is abysmal. (The sound isn't bad though.)

Also, if you use the iPlayer client (rather than just the Flash thing on 
the website), it appears to turn our PC into a peer-to-peer client, 
constantly uploading and downloading data even when iPlayer isn't 
running. (It installs a background service which starts at boot.)

> YouTube also streams video at resolutions up to 1080p, you just need a 
> fast enough internet connection to watch it in real time as it's 
> downloading. IIRC the best digital TV broadcast streams use about 6 
> mbit/s, so that should give you some idea what internet speed you need.

I've yet to see anything on YouTube which even approaches TV quality.

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>  Certainly if your bandwidth is enough to transfer a full double-layer
> DVD (ie. about 8 gigabytes) in 2 hours, then it would be enough to *watch*
> that DVD in real-time over the internet. Not many people have such huge
> bandwidths, though.

That "only" comes out at around 9 MBit/s, a lot of people nowadays have 
internet speeds getting on for that.

Anyway, there are also compression algorithms that are a lot more efficient 
than the one used on DVDs. So in theory you could get DVD quality with a lot 
less than 9 MBit/s if you use a better compression algorithm.

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> I've yet to see anything on YouTube which even approaches TV quality.

You did find a video that supports HD resolutions, and switch YouTube to use 
that resolution, and watch full-screen?  Search "1080p demo" to easily find 
some.

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> Anyway, there are also compression algorithms that are a lot more efficient 
> than the one used on DVDs. So in theory you could get DVD quality with a lot 
> less than 9 MBit/s if you use a better compression algorithm.

  MPEG-4 Part 10 (also know as H.264) can compress DVD video to at least
1/4th of the size without any visible loss of quality, so what you are
saying is certainly true.

  However, MPEG-4 is still such a new technology that not many companies
nor devices support it well yet. (H.264 also requires quite a lot more
computing power to decompress than MPEG-2, which means that viewing
devices need to be more expensive.) Of course since we are talking about
internet broadcasting here, and thus people wathing on their PC's, that's
mostly a non-issue.

  Digital TV could have benefited from using MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2, but
it didn't. It's a bummer.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Invisible escreveu:
> http://www.xkcd.com/732/
> 
> This puzzles me too.

yeah, my only conclusion is that you and the author of XKCD both use 
(blurry) glasses.  Perhaps that even may explain his simple art style... :D

> 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? 
> I don't understand that.

It *is* a significant increase and it looks specially good on big Full 
HDTV screens in the living room, not a small 19 inches PC monitor.  BTW, 
mine here at work is a 19 inch LG monitor and is running at the maximum 
resolution of 1600x900 pixels.  That is below 1080p.

You won't even want to know what I ran back in 2004.  Humor demands 
exaggeration. :)


> (And hell, half the equipment and content that says "HD" on it isn't 
> even full resolution anyway... Why allow half a dozen resolutions when 
> it would have been far simpler for the designers and less misleading for 
> the public if they allow only one resolution?)

Because, say, games at full HD may have to cut geometry or frame rate 
here and there to fit comfortably?

> Hell, when I was at uni ten years ago we had computers exceeding these 
> resolutions. With Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 4. Has technology not 
> moved on since then? It's not like there's any technical challenge to 
> using a higher resolution, after all...

Regarding the iPhone resolution:  obviously huge TV screens have far 
"bigger" pixels than that on a iPhone display.  Literally.  From the 
distance of your sofa, though, you don't notice them individually.  Just 
as a guy doesn't notice any lack of pixels at a tiny iPhone display.

> PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" TVs. 
> Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 aspect, 
> what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 aspect?? I 
> don't understand.

Yeah, why sell color TVs in a time when 99.98% video content ever 
created is B&W?  This is one of your "obviously impossible" kinda 
comments, ain't it?

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 18:04:34 +0200, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
>
>   Digital TV could have benefited from using MPEG-4 instead of MPEG-2,  
> but it didn't. It's a bummer.

Over here we have already started the switch to MPEG-4.

Depending on where in Finland you live, you might even be able watch some  
of it (with a compatible receiver of course).



-- 
FE

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scott escreveu:
>>  Certainly if your bandwidth is enough to transfer a full double-layer
>> DVD (ie. about 8 gigabytes) in 2 hours, then it would be enough to 
>> *watch*
>> that DVD in real-time over the internet. Not many people have such huge
>> bandwidths, though.
> 
> That "only" comes out at around 9 MBit/s, a lot of people nowadays have 
> internet speeds getting on for that.

yeah, but DVDs are old wig.  How about bluray-quality?

It's interesting because the topic started out by ranting about "low" 
resolutions...

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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Fredrik Eriksson escreveu:
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:15:28 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>
>> Ooo, here's a random thought: Do you think there will ever be a day 
>> when the Internet becomes fast enough to watch TV-quality video in 
>> realtime?
>>
>> When do you think that day will be?
> 
> About five years ago.

Only today I've got a 10Mbit connection at home.  I can view most HD 
videos comfortably, meaning little time for buffering the video so I can 
  start playing them as they still keep loading.  Resolution is not Full 
HD at all and compression quality is worse than in bluray.  And play 
cursor may occasionally still reach buffer cursor before it's full.

> Are you sure you are not living in the jungle?

I live in Brazil out of the jungle, but even the jungle and slums are 
wired... :P

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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Invisible wrote:
>>> why not increase the resolution *significantly*?
>>
>> 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...

Yes, inside the TV as well. How much did his laptop cost in 2004? How much 
did his television cost in 2004?

Do the math on memory bandwidth for 1920x1080x60x32bits, for example.

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

It's cheaper to manufacture something with lower resolution. Much, much 
cheaper. And in the USA at least, there's only two HD resolutions, not "half 
a dozen".

>> Did you have a 40" computer monitor ten years ago?
> 
> 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. (That would require a greater dot-pitch.)

*You* might.

(Actually, you're confusing terms here. A large monitor with the same 
resolution as a small monitor will be *far* more expensive.  A large monitor 
with the same pixel count as a small monitor is what you meant.)


> Ah. So that's the true reason...


Wow. You're getting as snarky-cynical as I am! :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Fredrik Eriksson wrote:
> 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.

Plus, 1080p on a 19" diagonal screen is overkill. You can't see the 
difference anyway.

Heck, it's not obvious to notice the difference between 720p and 1080p on a 
46" screen from a couple feet away.  You actually have to look at it and 
think about it, in contrast to SD vs HD.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Invisible wrote:
> I'm of the opinion that "full price 1080p" shouldn't be that expensive 
> in the first place, and we should all be saving up for 4096p or 
> something. But I guess that's next year's money draw...

What's the advantage. Your *eyes* only have a limited resolution.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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

Alternately, to lower the cost of smaller televisions where 1080p would be 
below the resolving power of your eyes anyway.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Am 26.04.2010 15:49, schrieb scott:

> I think mine was about 1500 GBP, although I think our IT guy has some
> scam going with the supplier, because his prices always seem to be way
> more than I find them for on other websites ;-)

Chances are your IT guy is buying the stuff complete with some service 
contract. So not only the usual "if it breaks within 24 months we'll fix 
it for free" guarantee, but "if it breaks we'll get a replacement to you 
within 2 business days" or some such.

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Invisible wrote:
> I don't mind paying money when I actually get something in return.

You do. You pay less money to get a smaller screen with a lower pixelcount.

> I often wonder why we don't have monitors with 300dpi or 600dpi yet. 
> Then the text on screen would be nearly print-quality.

People in the printing business would laugh at you for that statement. 
300dpi is barely draft quality. 1200dpi is what you show the clients in 
black and white to get their approval before actually printing it.

> (Except that, to this day, changing resolution makes everything come out 
> too small. How many managers have you seen turn down the resolution to 
> make the text bigger?)

Now you know why 19" screens are 720p.

> (Or are you talking about the HD channels? We only receive SD.)

So you're complaining about the fact that there's a 720p and a 1080p HD 
standard (at least in the USA), and you're only getting 512i signals anyway?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Invisible wrote:
> Everybody seems to hate #1, but lots of people apparently see nothing 
> wrong with #2 or #3. *shudders*

You forgot #5:

An HD picture with black bars on the top and bottom to make it SD aspect 
ratio, then broadcast on an HD screen with black bars left and right to make 
it fit.

Altho there are actually components in a lot of TVs that will detect this 
and only show you the middle anyway.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Invisible wrote:
> When do you think that day will be?

Not only is it here. It's a commodity.

http://www.netflix.com/NetflixReadyDevices

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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scott wrote:
> Anyway, there are also compression algorithms that are a lot more 
> efficient than the one used on DVDs. So in theory you could get DVD 
> quality with a lot less than 9 MBit/s if you use a better compression 
> algorithm.

Indeed. A 10:1 improvement in compression is easily attainable without 
noticable loss compared to DVD compression anyway.

The problem with 1080p videos on youtube is that youtube overcompresses them 
anyway.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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>> I often wonder why we don't have monitors with 300dpi or 600dpi yet. 
>> Then the text on screen would be nearly print-quality.
> 
> People in the printing business would laugh at you for that statement. 
> 300dpi is barely draft quality. 1200dpi is what you show the clients in 
> black and white to get their approval before actually printing it.

You're telling me it's possible to tell the difference betwee 600dpi and 
1200dpi?

> So you're complaining about the fact that there's a 720p and a 1080p HD 
> standard (at least in the USA), and you're only getting 512i signals 
> anyway?

As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some 
big deal or something.

Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>> Everybody seems to hate #1, but lots of people apparently see nothing 
>> wrong with #2 or #3. *shudders*
> 
> You forgot #5:
> 
> An HD picture with black bars on the top and bottom to make it SD aspect 
> ratio, then broadcast on an HD screen with black bars left and right to 
> make it fit.
> 
> Altho there are actually components in a lot of TVs that will detect 
> this and only show you the middle anyway.

Yeah. Or you manually flip the controls on the TV, as I constantly do.

(Or rather, did. With the new BD player, it seems to happen 
automatically. God only knows why this didn't happen before...)

The fun part is when you watch "widescreen" stuff, and there's *still* 
black bars at the top and bottom. (I.e., the picture is even wider than 
your TV.) Oh that was *so* worth it...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:20:26 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some
> big deal or something.
> 
> Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...

It is actually a big deal when you have a big screen.  Our 16:9 
projection screen measures 106" diagonally, and there is a *huge* 
improvement between SD and HD on it.

Jim

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Le 26/04/2010 10:19, Invisible nous fit lire :
> http://www.xkcd.com/732/
> 
> This puzzles me too.
> 
> 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?
> I don't understand that.

They are not increasing resolution, they are reducing it.
One step at a time, they increase the lcd... just to make you buy it
over and over. But from CRT, we lost a lot!

> Hell, when I was at uni ten years ago we had computers exceeding these
> resolutions. With Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 4. Has technology not
> moved on since then? It's not like there's any technical challenge to
> using a higher resolution, after all...

In 1990, I studied on HP systems, with either VT-100 (80x24+1 line
terminal, amber) or huge (and heavy) glassy screen: more than 2048² on
X11, palette colours (256 entries).(the screen was flat, and weight a lot!)

PC where in 1024x768 or 1280x1024, in 16 colours or 256.
No Web then. Turbo was a 12MHz PC!

Around 2000, CRT for PC was already able to reach 1600x1200. But most
configuration was 1024x768. In 16777216 colours (256^3) or more.
Video card pushed to 10 bits per channels with gamma internal...
Then came out LCD... from laptop to desktop and TV, they killed the CRT.
The colours drop to less numbers, but this is now an hidden information.

Nowadays, all you can found in store at best is a 1920 x 1080.
1920x1200... disappearing.
2560x1600... on order only (and price is 4 digits!).

And it is LCD. No more CRT.

The fact: lcd matrix are ordered "in mass" for TV (HD ! lol), so they
only produce 1080 matrix, and computer screen have to take from that stock.

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Le_Forgeron <jgr### [at] freefr> wrote:
> Then came out LCD... from laptop to desktop and TV, they killed the CRT.
> The colours drop to less numbers, but this is now an hidden information.

  Not to talk about contrast...

  Also, CRTs could be looked at from about any direction and it would
always look exactly as good. Only in the last few years LCDs are
*approaching* that (many still have problems when viewed from above
or below).

  Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many years
(only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
pixels).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many years
> (only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
> pixels).

Screen burn, anyone?

(Not that modern "screen savers" actually save your screen...)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> You're telling me it's possible to tell the difference betwee 600dpi and 
> 1200dpi?

Yeah. You have to look close.  (And, honestly, this was before I hit 40 and 
my eyes started to get old.) But yes, it was pretty clear. I could pick up a 
paper in my brother's advertising office and tell you if it came off the 
Apple laser printer or the "real" laser printer, for example, just by 
looking at the jaggies on an X or something.

The same way that in the same timeframe you could look at a TeX paper and 
tell by the crappy spacing between letters and the poor typography that it 
was using Computer Modern fonts instead of fonts designed by a typographer.

> As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some 
> big deal or something.

1080 is a lot more than 2x the resolution of 480. It's also because it's 
digital now, so the signal is better.

> Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...

Certainly. But you wouldn't pay for that, would you?

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:20:26 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
>> As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some
>> big deal or something.
>>
>> Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...
> 
> It is actually a big deal when you have a big screen.  Our 16:9 
> projection screen measures 106" diagonally, and there is a *huge* 
> improvement between SD and HD on it.

Heh. And my brother has his stuff all hooked up to a projector giving him a 
9 foot diagonal picture. Pretty cool to play video game football when the 
players are literally larger than life size.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Warp wrote:
> 
>>   Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many years
>> (only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
>> pixels).
> 
> Screen burn, anyone?
> 
> (Not that modern "screen savers" actually save your screen...)

They prevent screen burn. :-) Either that, or you've never actually seen 
screen burn.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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On 26-4-2010 14:49, Warp wrote:
> 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.
> 
>> Really?
> 
>> Huh, well, you learn something every day. The picture always looked 
>> fairly square to me...
> 
>   I'm beginning to suspect that this is not Andrew, and instead some troll
> is posting using his nickname.
> 
>   If even TV is not square (it's 4:3), how in the world could you ever
> think that movies are square? I don't get it.
> 
>   The narrowest aspect ratio used in movies for the past 20+ years has
> usually been 1.85:1. The most common aspect ratios for big movies today
> is 2.25:1 and even 2.35:1 (that's well over twice as wide as tall).
> 
a few days ago I heard a talk that might provide an explanation. Someone 
set up an experiment with 180 degrees view and figured out how wide they 
perceived it. You get a camel distribution with one hump at 180 and 
another, larger! one at 90. Experiment was reproducable per person.

Hard to believe but apparently true. Something fishy in our brain. Jan 
Koenderink, who was giving the talk, is trying to figure out why.

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Am 26.04.2010 21:33, schrieb Warp:
> Le_Forgeron<jgr### [at] freefr>  wrote:
>> Then came out LCD... from laptop to desktop and TV, they killed the CRT.
>> The colours drop to less numbers, but this is now an hidden information.
>
>    Not to talk about contrast...
>
>    Also, CRTs could be looked at from about any direction and it would
> always look exactly as good. Only in the last few years LCDs are
> *approaching* that (many still have problems when viewed from above
> or below).
>
>    Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many years
> (only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
> pixels).

Stick to CRTs if you like - I do prefer to have room enough on my desk 
for /two/ displays with 24" @16:9 and 19" @4:3 size (effective image 
diagonal, not nominal tube size), both presenting their image perfectly 
flat and undistorted, with perfectly sharp pixels, no analog signal 
distortion or beam focus problems, no "pumping" effect with brightness 
changes, no moiree effects with the X11 login screen, less dust 
accumulating on the display, less eye strain from flicker - and no risk 
of my desk collapsing under the displays' sheer weight.

It's all a question of priorities. Yours may vary.

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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> You're telling me it's possible to tell the difference betwee 600dpi 
>> and 1200dpi?
> 
> Yeah. You have to look close.  (And, honestly, this was before I hit 40 
> and my eyes started to get old.) But yes, it was pretty clear. I could 
> pick up a paper in my brother's advertising office and tell you if it 
> came off the Apple laser printer or the "real" laser printer, for 
> example, just by looking at the jaggies on an X or something.

Apparently I'm just weird. I can't really tell the difference between 
the old 300dpi LaserJet 6P, the 600dpi LaserJet 4100, and the 1200dpi 
Xerox Phaser.

Oh, unless you mean in greyscale or something. There it makes a 
difference...

> The same way that in the same timeframe you could look at a TeX paper 
> and tell by the crappy spacing between letters and the poor typography 
> that it was using Computer Modern fonts instead of fonts designed by a 
> typographer.

Now, see, to my eyes the Computer Modern fonts look much, much better 
than anything any other system ever produces. (Certainly TeX beats the 
**** out of anything Word produces!)

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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>>>   Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many 
>>> years
>>> (only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
>>> pixels).
>>
>> Screen burn, anyone?
>>
>> (Not that modern "screen savers" actually save your screen...)
> 
> They prevent screen burn. :-) Either that, or you've never actually seen 
> screen burn.

Go to any arcade. Observe how every CRT in the place has "Insert £1 
Now!" faintly displayed in the center of the screen, regardless of the 
image from the video card...

The idea of a screen saver is that it displays different images so that 
no one particular area of the screen gets unduely stimulated. But lots 
of modern screen savers display static or nearly static images...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Apparently I'm just weird. I can't really tell the difference between 
> the old 300dpi LaserJet 6P, the 600dpi LaserJet 4100, and the 1200dpi 
> Xerox Phaser.

Plain old black-and-white text. It was pretty easy to see. Enough that I was 
impressed with the quality of the 1200dpi laser printer.

> Now, see, to my eyes the Computer Modern fonts look much, much better 
> than anything any other system ever produces. (Certainly TeX beats the 
> **** out of anything Word produces!)

Sure, but that's because Word is doing it on the fly, as you type. Any 
decent typesetting system is going to give you nicer-looking output.

You can go to journals written in the 90s or so, and see who had their 
papers typeset and who wrote it themselves with TeX just by looking at the 
poor spacing and the fonts with bad balances of black and white and such.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> But lots of modern screen savers display static or nearly static images...

Huh. I never saw a nearly-static screen saver, I guess.


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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clipka wrote:
> It's all a question of priorities. Yours may vary.

You know, I'm realizing I've been getting back aches lately. I think part of 
it is my new LCDs are so much flatter than my old CRT they're another foot 
away, and I start leaning forward to see them clearly. :-)


-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Darren New wrote:
> Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> But lots of modern screen savers display static or nearly static 
>> images...
> 
> Huh. I never saw a nearly-static screen saver, I guess.

For example, there's that popular one that shows your desktop, but with 
a distorting lense rolling over it. So 80% of the screen isn't changing, 
just the 20% of it under the lense...

Just one small example. I've seen lots of Linux screen savers which 
gradually draw stuff over the period of a minute or so. I guess that's 
not so bad, because *what* they draw is random, so it'll only ever be on 
the screen for a minute or two.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> For example, there's that popular one that shows your desktop, but with 
> a distorting lense rolling over it. So 80% of the screen isn't changing, 
> just the 20% of it under the lense...

Yeah, OK.

Come to think of it, I've seen a number of screen savers that when they 
started I thought "now why in the world if I'm locking my screen would I 
want to show everyone what it says like that?" :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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Darren New wrote:

> Come to think of it, I've seen a number of screen savers that when they 
> started I thought "now why in the world if I'm locking my screen would I 
> want to show everyone what it says like that?" :-)

Hmm, yes...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 12:49:52 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:20:26 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
>> 
>>> As I say, everybody's shouting about 2x the resolution as if it's some
>>> big deal or something.
>>>
>>> Now, if it was 10x the resolution, that would seem more impressive...
>> 
>> It is actually a big deal when you have a big screen.  Our 16:9
>> projection screen measures 106" diagonally, and there is a *huge*
>> improvement between SD and HD on it.
> 
> Heh. And my brother has his stuff all hooked up to a projector giving
> him a 9 foot diagonal picture. Pretty cool to play video game football
> when the players are literally larger than life size.

With our sound system, it's just like going to the cinema - except we can 
pause to get more popcorn.  And don't have the crying babies that some 
parents bring with because they can't get a sitter.

Oh, and our floor isn't sticky. :-)

On the downside, had to replace the bulb in the projector last weekend.  
Had a spare on hand, but those bulbs are not cheap. :-/

But yeah, our PS3 is connected to it, so I end up playing the occasional 
game on that screen.  It's really nice - even my wife likes it, and she 
initially thought the idea was ridiculous, but she now admits freely that 
it was a good idea. :-)

Jim

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:44:58 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

> (Not that modern "screen savers" actually save your screen...)

If they use DPMS, they sure do. ;-)

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> With our sound system, it's just like going to the cinema 

My brother had movie theatre seats for a while too, until he realized a 
couch was more comfortable anyway.  It was amusing, tho. I think he still 
has them in storage.

> On the downside, had to replace the bulb in the projector last weekend.  
> Had a spare on hand, but those bulbs are not cheap. :-/

That they aren't!

> But yeah, our PS3 is connected to it, so I end up playing the occasional 
> game on that screen.  It's really nice - even my wife likes it, and she 
> initially thought the idea was ridiculous, but she now admits freely that 
> it was a good idea. :-)

Yeah. And a wii is pretty spectacular too when you're not looking at a 
tennis court that's 20" wide.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Linux: Now bringing the quality and usability of
   open source desktop apps to your personal electronics.

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clipka escreveu:
> Am 26.04.2010 21:33, schrieb Warp:
>> Le_Forgeron<jgr### [at] freefr>  wrote:
>>> Then came out LCD... from laptop to desktop and TV, they killed the CRT.
>>> The colours drop to less numbers, but this is now an hidden information.
>>
>>    Not to talk about contrast...
>>
>>    Also, CRTs could be looked at from about any direction and it would
>> always look exactly as good. Only in the last few years LCDs are
>> *approaching* that (many still have problems when viewed from above
>> or below).
>>
>>    Then there are the dead pixels, which plagued LCDs for many, many 
>> years
>> (only relatively recently LCD vendors have started guaranteeing no dead
>> pixels).
> 
> Stick to CRTs if you like - I do prefer to have room enough on my desk 
> for /two/ displays with 24" @16:9 and 19" @4:3 size (effective image 
> diagonal, not nominal tube size), both presenting their image perfectly 
> flat and undistorted, with perfectly sharp pixels, no analog signal 
> distortion or beam focus problems, no "pumping" effect with brightness 
> changes, no moiree effects with the X11 login screen, less dust 
> accumulating on the display, less eye strain from flicker - and no risk 
> of my desk collapsing under the displays' sheer weight.
> 
> It's all a question of priorities. Yours may vary.

thank you.  Saved my time. :)

-- 
a game sig: http://tinyurl.com/d3rxz9

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