Toshiba's 22-inch monitor touts insane 3,840 x 2,400 resolution (and price)
By Thomas Ricker 
posted Nov 2nd 2007 2:42AM
posted Nov 2nd 2007 2:42AM
Ready for yet another 22-inch LCD? How 'bout if it was pumping 4 times as many pixels as just about every other monitor in its class? We're talking 3,840 x 2,400 pixels for a WQUXGA display. Unfortunately, the specs fall off quickly (but not too quickly) from there: 235cd/m2 brightness, 300:1 contrast, and a weak-sauce 120-degree top/bottom and 100-degree left/right viewing angle. Of course you'll need a dedicated (dual-link, presumably) PCI graphics card to drive that resolution over the monitor's single DVI input. Shipping in Japan before summer for an anticipated ¥2,079,000. Right, a staggering $17,500 or about 50 of Dell's 22-inchers.P.S. Sorry, no picture, that's just a generic 22-incher to the right.
Update: Toshiba will sell you a PCI graphics card for an additional ¥312,000 ($2,783). How nice.
[Via Impress]
try playing crysis on that
Ahh, the birth of a legend. Goodbye we say to "But will it play Doom."
Hello to "Try playing Crysis on that."
But I don't want to play crysis. If I do it means I have to run Vista and then everything else will suck too.
crysis runs also on xp. even with most of the dx10 effects, just have to do some tweaks.
Will it blend?
no
Why dont you ask :D
So it's basically 1080p x 2.
Can someone fill me in on the practical use of this display? Things won't even be readable.
its so you can sit really really close to the screen
Actually, that would be "x4" since it could display four 1080p signals at once.
My first thought was MEDICAL systems. You want really good displays to figure out which of those cells are cancerous and not. Or perhaps spotting where I left those damn scissors after the operation?
2140p!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
can your new 8800 Ultra even pump out enough juices to power that thing? and does it require a mini reactor to keep the screen on?
Speaking of juices, how about "Not to be used with Battery Backup"
I'll take the 50 dells, please.
This was done in 2001. See the IBM T221, and it had better specs than this.
yea, seriously, welcome to 2001.
Eek! Oh no, the price is going the wrong way!
A 22" WQUXGQ LCD is nothing new. They've been around for years, but have mostly faded away. I would guess due to lack of demand. IBM was first, then Viewsonic. I still see a few of the Viewsonic VP2290b out there, going for $6000. Better specs to boot. 400:1 and 170º view angle.
200 DPI looks so good on my N770, I can only dream of that on a desktop LCD for now, I guess. :P I'd also wait for DisplayPort or something better than DVI too.
It's most likely designed for the healthcare or scientific imaging industry. Radiologists and physicians must be able to get as much detail out of an X-Ray or CT scan in order to differentiate between "cancer" and "artifact". Refresh time isn't too much of a concern for them.
Most medical institutions don't use these types of monitors (the 300:1 contrast ratio negates any resolution advantage). They prefer to use grayscale monitors with 10 or even 12 bit displays so that they have a huge range of shades to diagnose with.
CT's don't require a high resolution screen as the image matrix generally goes no higher than 512x512. Digital mammography requires at least a 5 megapixel resolution, though I don't think these would have the gray scale dynamic range for proper interpretation.
>Of course you'll need a dedicated (dual-channel, presumably) PCI graphics card
PCI? Oh wow, then i can hook this thing up to my old Rage 128 card! Sweet! :P
i SERIOUSLY doubt that your Rage 128 has DVI..
"Seventeen thousand dollars. Hey, Mr. Oh, how much would these run you in Tokyo?"
"Ahh... about uh... two million yen."
"Two million?!?! These are practically free!"
No. It's more than 1080p times 4.
1920*1080 = 2073600.
2073600*4 = 8294400.
3840*2400 = 9216000.
Most "1080p" hi-def monitors run at 1920x1200, so this is monitor-1080p x 4
I read "most other monitors in it's class" to be other 22"ers, and most of those are sporting 1680x1050 (1.764 Megapixels). So, it's actually 5.2x the rez of most other monitors in it's class.
Yes, it's 4x 1080p + a megapixel or so.
Something of that resolution would be great for editing 1080p content, but I'd much rather have a 30"er and a new car (or another camera and a couple of light kits) for that price.
It looks like Toshiba has in mind not just
the 2 x 1080, but also 3 x 720. I hope they
make it automatically adjust (or user override-able) to fit the image pixels into a whole number of hardware pixels, 2x2, 3x3 or other.
or just buy a couple 50 inch 1080p tv sets with multidesktop on to get the same resolution and a big picture...
YES!! This is the way computers should be going, more DPI! who would need Anti-Aliasing on that beast?? Seriously, you would have to look really closely to see those pixels!
Iiyama AQU5611DT is better, and it is ~2 year old.
IBM also had some hi-res display for years.
Yeah, I saw the IBM model a few years ago and was blown away by it, but I think it was only $6,000.
@Thomas Ricker
"(dual-channel, presumably)"
What on earth is a "dual-channel" video card? We're not talking about RAM here. Do you mean "dual-output"? "Dual-head" maybe?
I think he meant dual link, as in the DVI connection. I'm not sure about this monitor, but the IBM T221 needed 2 dual link DVI inputs. Single link can only handle 1920x1200 IIRC, and since this has 4x the data, it needs 4 inputs. I'm curious as to how this monitor runs off a single dual-link DVI, if you tried doing that with the T221, the refresh rate dropped to a dismal 25hz.
Wikipedia.org a list of supported resolutions for DVI. According to those stats, the monitor can be run over single or dual link, but the refresh tops out at 15Hz and 33Hz respectively, so this thing is really only good for pictures, but with 300:1, that leaves the only suitable job to be something along the lines of displaying adds in a window.
Ah, yes, I believe you're right. I remember the IBM needing the two dual-link DVI.
Sounds like its for medical imaging. When your talking medical equipment, the sky is the limit on pricing.
Oops, didn't see Dans post above.
I know that fighter jet systems use very high resolution displays so that if one portion of the display dies they can resize the image on a working portion of the display without loosing information. Though those displays are generally fairly small.
Guess this might just be an example of "look what we can do".
Ah, yes, I believe you're right. I remember the IBM needing the two dual-link DVI.
I would only buy it if it matched the same brightness/contrast/viewing-angle specs of my 24" Dell 2405FPW (1920×1200 pix, no HDCP support, 500 cd/m², 1000:1 contrast, and [guess] 178° horiz view angle!!!). Anyway, I'd only replace my 2405 with a BIGGER 30" 3007WFP super-monster!
The interesting question is whether porn studios would want to benefit from such monster resolution. (Would they want their libidinous customers to view four XXX clips at the same time on the same screen? Or would they push it further and present 2160p-resolution (4×1080p) forbidden content?)
FYI: I don't buy that lascivious crap either.
Honestly, I'd be glad to have a monitor with less brightness. You only need brightness on a notebook (outdoors) and when you have that crappy glossy stuff. I don't want to wear sunglasses in front of my computer. Sure you can reduce the brightness on most monitors, but sometimes not far enough, and it's bad for color and contrast.
Man, you've got to REALLY need 3,840 x 2,400 to shell out that kind of dough.
How is this different from viewsonic's 22 inch with the same resolution that was released a few years ago? http://www.viewsonic.com/support/desktopdisplays/lcddisplays/proseries/vp2290b/index.htm
So, this is basically a QuadHD monitor (1080p x 4) with only 300:1 contrast?! How pathetic!
Dell's DisplayPort monitors at CES 2008 are going to own this thing so hard.
3,840 x 2,400?!? Forget playing any 3D game on it, even Second Life! There's no way any PCI or PCIe card can pump out that much data that fast!
This is a CAD/Autodesk monitor.
Hey, you know what anti aliasing does? It actually renders a resolution, say 8 times the screen resolution, then it scales it back with linear filtering to give you the extra quality. If you turned your AA off and played a game normally on the screen, in theory it should work fine. It would be like playing in 2xAA on a 1080p screen right?
True, but you're pumping, what, 28 million bytes out to the monitor? Of course, I'm being very ignorant as to how DVI and what current cards work...
IBM has had a monitor with the same resolution for YEARS. They run under $5k. (They were intended for medical imageing)
I wonder what makes Toshiba better?
The funny thing about these monitors is that they have a 12hz refresh rate. 20hz if you use two DVI cables. Theoretical maximum of 40-48hz... if you can find a card to drive it.
Here is a site with some good information:
http://tech . groups . yahoo . com /group/IBM_T2X_LCD/
I think I'd rather buy four 1080p screens, arrange them in a rectangle, and just sit twice as far away from the screen for the same field of view with $10,000 more in my pocket.
Since both the liyama and ViewSonic 22" WQUXGA monitors were just rebadged IBMs. The only advantage I've been able to find in Toshiba's model is the 60Hz refresh rate mentioned in the translated article, though it still seems rather inept for many applications because of the poor contrast ratio and viewing angles.
The IBM T221 was driven by a special double-card Matrox.
WQUXGA??? Shit, all these "xGA" names are approaching my fabled "WSQFGXVGA" moniker.
Come on! I'm still waiting on the magic 16:10 4k screen (4000x2500), so those of us who still idolize the red one will have viewing space (and I just happen to like 16:10; it gives me room to put extra stuff live video controls while watching.)
You are all talking about the same monitor that has appeared in many similar incarnations. The version did indeed use a custom graphics driver. The latest model upped the top frefresh rate from 41 to 48 Hz. When IBM sold its laptop and PC hardware divion to Lenovo this business was also sold. Refurbished or off-lease IBM T221 or VP2290Bs go for between $600 and $3500 on EBay.
There is a superb yahoo group that is a font of knowledge for this technology as well as high resolution devices in general http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IBM_T2X_LCD/links. Also a useful wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_T221
I got my vp2290b off ebay for only $800 although it did have a small scratch on the screen. I think the IBM DG5s are a over-priced just for the increased refresh rate. I am amazed that this thing has worse specs than my vp2290b other than refresh rate... Also 3840x2400 is dooable with games on an 8800 GTX. I was able to get around 80 FPS on CS:S @ 3840x2400 and 340 FPS on older games like quake 3 when I tested with my vp2290b. Right now it runs off my system at work (geforce 6600 gts) which runs it at 33.7 Hz using linux + XGL/compiz which the 6600 is fast enough for @ 3840x2400
Funny how Thomas changed the wording from "dual-channel" to "dual-link" on the sly after I made my comment.
More resolution is fine, Make it a 44" with
3840 x 2400 and you will find a market.
Ultra-high def. anyone? larger screens would be
nice, 60" at 6000 x 3000 !?!
The main problem with these is not lack of demand. It's lack of hardware support, both in terms of interface cables that can provide a decent refresh rate, and graphics cards powerful enough to handle that resolution. Also, try running a game in SLI mode or Crossfire at 3840x2400. I'll bet it will crash every five minutes because nVidia's and ATI's (AMD's) drivers aren't up to snuff. These monitors have been around for years starting with the IBM T221, but until the rest of the hardware catches up they're no good for everyday computer applications. Incidentally, you can find older versions of these on eBay for less than four thousand dollars from time to time. Who's going to pay $17,000 when you can get an equivalent panel for less than $4,000, unless you just have to have the 60Hz refresh, which would be more compelling if they could make that simple plug and play.