PixyJunket

Let's discount CRT since it's on the way out (and are limited to around mid 30" models). Every other display technology is fixed pixel.. meaning they'll look great in one mode and varying amounts of decent to poor in anything else. Are there any upcoming technologies that aren't going to be stuck with this limitation? SED is based on CRT type technology but from what I've read it'll be fixed pixel as well.. laser reads as fixed as well. Or is just not that big of a deal to anyone else?

Spiky

Maybe if you could explain when or in what mode you think it looks poor...

IMO, it is generally the processing that causes problems, and that is not related to the panel type. There are always individual products to stay away from, like some older LCDs with too much gap between pixels. (what was that called, memory dying)

I don't see any major inherent issue with fixed pixel.

X

Short of a tube how are you not going to get pixels?

The way to emulate non-pixels and probably the way it will happen is to get more and smaller pixels.

PixyJunket

I haven't gotten a TV yet.. but if you have an LCD monitor for PC that's say, 1280x1024 natively.. switch to 800x600 and you'll notice massive blur and softness as it tries to fit a 800x600 image into 1280x1024 pixels. Maybe it's not as bad for TVs.. but I've read a lot of posts stating how much better images looked in TV's native resolutions.

mbs

That is true, but why is this an issue for TVs?

I have a 720p LCD and it isn't an issue at all. The television will scale everything to it's native resolution (720p in my case). If the set didn't have a scaler, you would have an issue. But when I view 480p material (or 1080i), it is all scaled to 720p and looks just fine.

Drexl

I think the reason they're not as bad with TVs is because of the material used. Computer GUIs with their precise patterns and text are going to show the issues with a scaler more than a TV would with regular programming. It's the same way with geometric distortions on CRTs-you notice them with a computer GUI or a test pattern, but not really with regular programming.

Spiky

Sounds like you are trying to use an LCD as a "multi-sync" monitor. Some of them claim to do this but as you point out, they quite simply don't. It is much better to scale the software to the screen than the other way around with fixed pixel displays. These days that is becoming more and more easy to do. Most games offer various resolutions to be native on more monitors, for example.

Esp with TV, as mbs pointed out. TV is generally only in 3 resolutions. And although SDTV (often 240 res in the 480i signal) doesn't look good on an HDTV, that is just how it is going to be. That's a different problem than you mention. And DVD, which uses the 480 to the max, looks pretty decent. Both HD resolutions look good on both types of HDTVs, so there isn't much issue.

GreenMonkey

Pixy

I'm not aware of any non-fixed-pixel displays coming up. I'm with you on the upscaling, it looks awful on a PC.

That said, some things scale better than others. I haven't had any complaints about any of my video game consoles using s-video or better, they look great on my projector. My pj has been scaling them to 800x600.

Text, I think, scales worst of all. I don't think images suffer from it too much, unless it is a very low-rez signal (SD, 320x240, etc).

Stuff being scaled to native rez on a PC LCD looks awful. I think because you're sitting so close to the monitor; also, I think that HDTVs expect non-native resolutions to be sent to them and are manufactured with a much better scaler than a PC LCD.

I'm keeping my widescreen 24" HP/Sony FW900 CRT monitor for as long as it keeps working!

Spiky

A PC LCD probably doesn't have any scaler at all.

The Bus

The Dell 30" monitors currently display 2560x1600.

A monitor with 4320 vertical lines of resolution could display NTSC, 1080P/i, and 720P images natively. A monitor with 8640 vertical lines of resolution could display NTSC, 1080P/i, 720P, and PAL images natively.

(In the 1st example, a block of 4 pixels makes up one "1080P" pixel, a block of 6 pixels makes up one "720P" pixel, and a block of 9 pixels makes up one "480P" pixel).

So my guess is wait another 5-10 years.