Wall o' 30-inchers

We rarely take the time to highlight someone's rig -- and when we do, it's usually not their rig, per se, but their heads. Well, step aside, oh masterful 24 display Virginia Tech workstation, you're old news with your 31,457,280 pixel array of twenty four 1280 x 1024 displays. No, the new crown goes to a man known only to us as Crazy Jon (trust us, that's no misnomer). Dude cobbled six NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 512MB video cards and three 1,000-watt power supplies to take on a wall o' what appears to be Dell 30-inch 3007WFPs. Twelve, to be exact. By our math that's 49,152,000 pixels -- and about $26,400 just for the displays alone. Oh, and did we mention that Crazy Jon already had five Apple 30-inchers on his desk? We love you, Jon. Seriously though, can we come over sometime?

[Via Make]

[weatherman @ Apr 13th 2006 4:43PM]

Doh! I only realized after I mounted them that I should have arranged them 4x3 instead of 3x4. That's an expensive mistake I won't live down for a long time, especially after the kids at Engadget realize it.

-Crazy Jon

[Frank Beamer @ Apr 13th 2006 4:44PM]

GO HOKIES!!

Vick sucks

[Jarques @ Apr 13th 2006 4:46PM]

Some people have way too much time and money.

[jfox @ Apr 13th 2006 4:49PM]

No one tell crazy job that one of the TV's was stolen, and 4 others dont work.

[Robby @ Apr 13th 2006 4:51PM]

Is there an article anywhere outlining the technical backend? I'd be interested to hear what he had to do outside of mounting the massive monitors.

(READ: I obviously don't have enough money)

[Anders @ Apr 13th 2006 4:54PM]

#1, you had it right the first time. Mounting 8 of them vertically won't take up the same amount of space as 12 of them horizontally.

[Excited @ Apr 13th 2006 5:22PM]

This is the best tech pr0n ever!
Blood preasure high.

[Marc @ Apr 13th 2006 5:26PM]

that's really a waste of money: $26,400 just for the displays alone. With a video project I have a bigger display size for much less money and time.

Marc

[Eli @ Apr 13th 2006 5:28PM]

While I admire the (minor) technical skill it took to put together, I have to note that in the final picture they seem to be running at lower than native resolution. It seems that it would have been cheaper and more efficient to do it with plasma.

Also, those are 30" Apple screens, not 32". The great irony here being that the Apple and Dell screens are essentially the same thing.

[PanMan @ Apr 13th 2006 5:31PM]

Am I to practical, if I ask for a use for such a wall? I can see the Pimp factor of it, and it's sure usefull if you have lot's of 49 Mpix pics to show, but wouldn't for most *consumer* uses a (HD?) beamer be more usefull? No black lines thu the screen of your movies, and Way less expensive. But, then again, maybe not as pimp...

[Eli @ Apr 13th 2006 5:38PM]

#9: Yeah, exactly. I've been talking to friends about this and we all think it's kind of cool in a "omg hay guyz look how much money I have lolz" sort of way, but none of us can think of a practical use for it. Especially not just glued to the wall of some random office. Maybe if it was set up more like a control center...

[Skan @ Apr 13th 2006 5:42PM]

Just buy a freakin projector for goodness sake!!!!!!!

[Vaughn @ Apr 13th 2006 5:53PM]

Don't forget the "My buddy stole a truck full of monitors, we can't really sell them, whatever will we do with them?" type of possibilities...

Creative way to use excessive resources. ;-)

[Ben Hobbs @ Apr 13th 2006 6:00PM]

John,

Actually the screens probably work best in the configuration you've got them, giving a total resolution of 7680x6400 (4:3.3) rather than 10240x4800 (16x7.5) if you had 4 wide and 3 high.

Ben Hobbs

[slyecho @ Apr 13th 2006 6:15PM]

Funny how I was just trying to figure out how much monitors you would need to put together to make a 16:9 display from 4:3 monitors. And the answer is 12 :D

And you need to arrange them in a 4:3 configuration.

4:3 * 4:3 = 4*4 : 3*3 = 16:9

[john russell @ Apr 13th 2006 6:45PM]

Although the sheer number of pixels seems insanely high, it would appear that the displays are running at a resolution of 1280x800 (half of the native resolution). This would mean that the entire array of screens would have a resolution of 3840x3200. Only 12,288,000 pixels, much less than the array of 24 SXGA monitors at Virginia Tech has.

[Ian @ Apr 13th 2006 7:08PM]

this guy is my hero!!!

[Al2x @ Apr 13th 2006 7:56PM]

Good ol' QJ! I was looking at the new 'brew updates on PSPUpdates.qj, and I saw that, and damn, I wish I was a remote. Total control over those som' bitches.

[sdwells @ Apr 13th 2006 7:59PM]

i must add to the vote for using a super bright high resolution projector that would be not only way cheaper but most likely nicer and easier to run.

the main thing i can see making these useful would be to actually use them at their native resolution and then using them to display good quality images, or one extremely high resolution image split between all the monitors.

OR! if you could drive at least a 1080p video signal to each of them and use it like some kind of super hd tv surveillance system, that would be one awesome and detailed security room setup... now where to get all the hd surveillance cameras...

[deviantflux @ Apr 13th 2006 8:31PM]

Both VA and Crazy Jon still have a ways to go to catch up to the UCI Hiperwall... 50 30" Apple LCDs, 200,000,000+ pixels I believe.

http://vis.eng.uci.edu/cg/projects/hiperwall/

[David @ Apr 13th 2006 9:14PM]

Which Matrix Screensaver is that? Looks pretty good...

[Briandot @ Apr 13th 2006 9:47PM]

At SuperComputing '05 back in November, some group (from USC, I think) had a wall of Apple 30-inchers to display ultra-high res arial photography of Los Angeles. I want to say it was a 4 x 4 array, but might have been bigger.

It was nice and warm near the monitors. :)

[bildekor @ Apr 13th 2006 10:14PM]

No need for windows now...

[tiuk @ Apr 13th 2006 10:15PM]

I don't know which one that is, but I spotted some people running this one at work, it's pretty damned good.

http://www.kellysoftware.com/ssaver/Matrix_ks.asp

[Daniel Spisak @ Apr 13th 2006 10:38PM]

That is weak sauce compared to the visualization wall we have here at UCI. Check it out, 50 displays!

http://vis.eng.uci.edu/cg/projects/hiperwall/

[MacsAre1 @ Apr 14th 2006 12:46AM]

lol. I have Apple Hot News in my RSS feed combined with Engadget. At the top I read about the iCluster, 50 megapixels with 12 30" Apple Cinema Displays. Then I saw this. Is everyone's mind on the same wavelength? No, wait, I know--someone from engadget must work at Apple. That would explain everything ;-)

[MacsAre1 @ Apr 14th 2006 12:55AM]

link for Apple's article on the iCluster: http://www.apple.com/science/profiles/sio/

[dan @ Apr 14th 2006 2:30AM]

seriously now, i'm at VT now, where is this rig?

[matt @ Apr 14th 2006 4:03AM]

I'll be impressed when someone makes a 30+ megapixel SINGLE DISPLAY. Who wants to look at a bunch of monitor bezels?

[clay clark @ Apr 14th 2006 7:51AM]

Updated with more info and a movie at QJ:
http://gadgets.qj.net/Wall-O-Monitors-revisited-User-Q-A/pg/49/aid/21941

[David @ Apr 14th 2006 4:36PM]

To the people saying "a projector would be better":

Can you find me a projector for under $3000 that has a resolution of even 1920x1200? Each of those 30 inch monitors has a resolution of 2560x1600 -- no consumer projectors go anywhere near that. Maybe you can find a $20,000 projector designed for movie theaters or something that has the resolution of ONE of these 30" monitors. With an array of monitors, the purpose isn't always to "watch a movie" amidsts all those bezels...think about somebody wanting to monitor multiple stock tickers, while watching TV on one 30" screen, monitoring a weather report, and perhaps doing some light gaming or spreadsheet work. Maybe you won't stare at all 12 monitors simultaneously, but together they can display much more information than any single projector you'll find in the next 10 years...and you can just turn your head instead of minimizing and maximizing windows repeatedly. Maybe some of the monitors are too far for, say, playing an intensive game...but those monitors could be relegated to other purposes like weather reports, stock tickers, monitoring business transactions, running news headlines, etc...this is in some sort of office, not some guys living room. Projector fans should also remember that bulb replacement runs at about $300 every 2000 hours (about 8 months at 8-10 hours/day)...so your frugal option is not only technologically inferior (resolution per dollar) but comes with a nice hefty maintenance cost to go with it.

And anybody screaming "waste of money" -- the same could likely be said about your brand new SUV (you know, that you use to drive yourself to work alone 99% of the time), and it probably cost upwards of $30,000 and does a lot more damage to the environment than a few computer monitors.

[Slickfl21 @ Apr 14th 2006 10:23PM]

Well there are many questions placed here. So if you are wanting answers or even want to follow the progress of the wall-monitors check it out here. Http://www.data1online.com/tech

We update the site and progress of this project daily.

And trust me, Plasmas, projectors, and especially DLP wouldn't come close to this resolution.

[Eric @ Apr 14th 2006 11:41PM]

There are starving children out in Africa, all that money u spent on 12 stupid screens hooked up to some of the best graphics cards could've saved and given many children and adults out there a second chance at life.
But noooooo, u didnt u selfish mofos

[Matt @ Apr 17th 2006 1:22PM]

28--The big wall o' screens here at VT lives at the InfoVis lab inside Kent Square. I know it's somewhere above the Ben & Jerry's, but to be honest I've never been there so I don't know precisely where. http://infovis.cs.vt.edu/gigapixel/

(Yes, VT's CS department really has a lab above a Ben & Jerry's.)