Sanyo-Epson announce 7.1-inch 1080p LCD: by far the world's smallest

You'll hear people argue endlessly about the merits of paying that 1080p cost premium on say, television panels of 37-inches or below. Hell, you'll be lucky to find a 37-incher throwing that Full HD resolution in the first place. So hang on to your azzhats kids, 'cause Sanyo-Epson just announced this 7.1-inch TFT LCD panel capable of that "Full HD" 1080p sweetness. Even with all those pixels, Sanyo-Epson is claiming that power consumption is "low" on this "thin" panel yet come up short on the details. Too bad 'cause we'd love to see how it stacks up against Samsung's single-chip 7-incher capable of a mere 854x480 pixels. What we do know is that these panels are destined for mobile digital TV devices and hopefully UMPCs to bump that all-too-common 7-inch, 800x480 display to a whopping 1920x1080 pixels -- assuming same or greater battery life, naturally. What, who ya callin' greedy!? Now if that's still not small enough for you then try on their 2.6-inch TFT LCD panel also announced, touting a 1024x768 XGA resolution and destined for PMPs and cellphones. The panels will be on display at FPD International in Japan starting tomorrow where we hopes to gets additional details and wafer-thin snaps held by waffer-thin models -- you know, as these things tend to go.

[Via Impress]

Read -- 7.1 inch (translated Japanese)
Read -- 2.6 inch (translated Japanese)

[Jim Grumbles @ Oct 17th 2006 9:53AM]

The Westinghouse LVM-37W1 came out late last year and does 1080p just fine, I got one in January. It hardly came at a premium either as it was priced well below any other 37" LCDs who couldn't even hit 1920x1080 resolution.

[z @ Oct 17th 2006 9:59AM]

Can't wait to see that on a video ipod... ;-)

[Pal @ Oct 17th 2006 9:55AM]

You'd think that 720p would be suitable for such a small screen, but more pixels means more marketing bragging rights!

[jay.viz @ Oct 17th 2006 10:05AM]

I need a touch screen version of this...

[Bhaughbb @ Oct 17th 2006 10:28AM]

I picked up a Sceptre 37" 1080p myself, for a fairly low price, probably right on par with that westinghouse, been around since at least February when I got mine. http://www.sceptre.com/Products/LCD/Specifications/spec_X37SV-Naga.htm

[EdZ @ Oct 17th 2006 10:31AM]

This is the holy grail for building your own projector. Small size + high res = perfect.

[Billy @ Oct 17th 2006 10:53AM]

I'm sorry but what a sham. Who would ever waste money on such a device?

[Kyle @ Oct 17th 2006 11:11AM]

I would, I want an HD screen in my car and this would be perfect.

[Lokizilla @ Jun 1st 2007 8:19PM]

Someone who really, really wanted one perchance?

[Patrick @ Oct 17th 2006 11:26AM]

I just got the Aquos 37" 1080p mentioned in the article. I sprung the extra $$ for higher resolution to use it as a living room monitor roughly on par (resolution-wise) with my Mac. No regrets here.

Doing some quick calculations, though, yields a screen height of about 3.5 inches, for a individual pixel height of .0032 inches, or about 82 MICRONS. Useful or no, it's quite a feat.

[Alex @ Oct 17th 2006 12:45PM]

If this is all true, that screen has a dpi of 310.1. That's the quality of a magazine. Newspaper is only around 200dpi. (These figures are rough conversions from lpi.) The average monitor is less than 100dpi. My fancy Trinitron only hits around 130dpi.

This is the kind of resolution we need in modern displays. Especially if we're trying to move towards eBooks being ubiqitous.

[jimmothy86 @ Oct 17th 2006 12:47PM]

i am with whoever said it first, a decent controller board with some inputs and maybe a tuner and a lumenlabs kit and you would have an awesome home made projector

[frank @ Oct 17th 2006 1:34PM]

> If this is all true, that screen has a dpi of 310...

Yeah, but is that even possible? It seems more likely that it's just downsampling the signal. If my math is right, LCD monitors don't get much smaller than about 200 microns for pixel size. I calculate 206 microns for a 17" monitor (13 actual inches of screen real estate) at 1600 pixels wide. And I don't even know of a 17" that can go that high. I think most top out at 1280x1024.

Seems to me that the LCD employed in this thing would be the bigger headline than the actual device. Sure, I'm talking out my ass here since I'm not exactly up on the latest LCD technologies but if it's true, then yes, this is HUGE news if LCD's with 300 dpi are going to be the new standard.

[Balzac2m @ Oct 17th 2006 1:45PM]

Well, there was a 225ppi-display a few years ago called T221 so it is most likely that 300ppi are possible...

hopefully they make 300ppi-displays in 30" someday.

[David @ Oct 17th 2006 1:51PM]

Now if they could just figure out how to get over the air HDTV signals without dragging around a huge antenna, one could get portable HDTV while at the ballpark or whatever.

[Eli Gibson @ Oct 17th 2006 3:33PM]

The 2.6 inch screen is even more impressive, with almost 500 dpi. That is almost getting to the size that you could make a decent 3D heads up display that fits inside normal sized glasses.

Drool.

[Chocolate Starfish @ Oct 17th 2006 5:50PM]

I dunno. It doesn't really look any better than the monitor I've got now...

[Rory Bigger @ Oct 17th 2006 6:35PM]

Could be used to make some really but LCD rear projection TV's...

[Martin @ Oct 18th 2006 5:07AM]

A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that someone with 20/20 vision (ie visual acuity of 1 minute of arc) would have to hold this screen about 10cm (4") away from their eyes to be able to resolve a single 0.004" pixel. OK, so maybe the picture would be sharper than the average, but given the constraints of human vision this is verging on pointless. It's probably horribly fragile as well.

[Morgan @ Nov 30th 2006 2:32PM]

Its been said before but.. This is perfect for projectors, Professional video equipment (mounting a couple side-by-side in a rack) and think of how clear this would look as a digital picture frame! Way more sharper than those cheap screens you get at Best Buy and Target.

[Porsche 911 @ Nov 30th 2006 2:56PM]

1080p PSP and an iPod would be nice