Why Retina Displays and 4K TVs May Not Be Worth the Trouble, article (David Pogue, Scientific American)
Low-resolution graphics look no better on a high-resolution screen. If you've programmed an iPhone app, you know that it doesn't look any sharper until you reprogram it for the sharper screen. Until then, the phone just applies pixel doubling (substitutes four pixels for every one on the lower-res screen), which doesn't improve sharpness.
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In fact, they look worse. You may remember that when HDTV came out, standard-definition broadcasts actually looked worse than they did on standard TVs. (They still do.) Well, guess what? Same thing happens on other screens.
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In any case, the problem is especially severe on the biggest app of all: the Web. Few Web sites have been rewritten to accommodate Retina-type screens, so their graphics usually look awful.
I keep hearing this. But I just don't see it! I don't have the Retina Macbook Pro, but I do have the iPad 3 with Retina display (264PPI), and to me, web sites look the same as always.
If you use a big, super-high-res screen, what do you think? Is it just my eyes which are mercifully middle-aged? (They are not that bad, with glasses I can read the phone book and so on.)
13 comments:
In fact, they look worse.
No they don't. The most important part, the very reason we've all been craving for higher resolution displays for 40 years, is text. And font rasterizers are written to be resolution independent, so they already know how to take advantage of the higher resolution screen.
Before this, font rasterizers have had to use subpixel addressing on LCD displays, i.e. treating R, G, and B as separate pixels, to fake a higher resolution display. But this is a compromise. With "retina" class displays there is no longer a need to do this.
You may remember that when HDTV came out, standard-definition broadcasts actually looked worse than they did on standard TVs. (They still do.)
I saw no such effect. In fact quite the opposite: old Columbo episodes looked glorious on my HD TV (when I still had one).
In any case, the problem is especially severe on the biggest app of all: the Web.
Again, text is automatically rasterized at higher resolution. As for images, they don't look any worse when your screen resolution increases. They look the same.
Few Web sites have been rewritten to accommodate Retina-type screens, so their graphics usually look awful.
No, they look the same. But they could look better than before (and load much slower than before) if the capabilities of the retina display were taken into account.
Thank you, that's just how I felt/thought.
I also never saw standard TV shows look worse on HD TVs, probably au contraire. Certainly a well-produced DVD with recent material look awesome, you're sometimes pressed to tell if it's HD or standard resolution.
It is a bit odd, like I said, I have seen this claim many times from usually good sources.
Certainly a well-produced DVD with recent material look awesome, you're sometimes pressed to tell if it's HD or standard resolution.
Exactly! Having watched Columbo through a crappy analog signal in the 1970s, I was in for a really treat when the DVD box was released, and I had just gotten a HD TV. So this is what the NBC producers saw when they were watching the studio U-Matic tapes in Hollywood in the 1970s, I thought.
Anyone else feel like Pogue is writing himself out of a job? I feel like three years ago he was one of the most respected tech writers (granted, it's a crowded field), but these days I find myself feeling more and more like he has no idea what he's talking about.
Anyway, I work for an electronics retailer, and we're knee-deep in the 4K thing now. There is no 4K content as of yet, so all we've got is upconversion technology in which standard hi-def is extrapolated into the 4K realm. It's kinda cool, but not really worth it in my opinion.
Rather, now is the time to grab a high-quality 1080p TV. The prices are falling due to the 4K influx, and today's 1080p TVs are really great. I particularly recommend plasmas for their inky blacks and great contrast.
I have low-def eyes in a hi-def world. LOL.
Anyone else feel like Pogue is writing himself out of a job?
Seems to me—with all his serial Windows Missing Manuals and what not—that his ambitions are not very high. Also, apparently he has no engineering background; he is interpreting things from the pedestrian point of view. And for that reason, he has a limited grasp of what has been, what could have been, and what ought to be. Like Steve Jobs said: (paraphrasing) if you ask the customers what they want, you get nowhere.
He does have one unique piece of work, though, that I do recommend: Opera for Dummies written in collaboration with Scott Speck.
This too gives merely a “pedestrian” view of Opera, but with such a highbrow subject that is exactly what it needs! It is one of the funniest and in many ways most insightful treateses on opera there is.
I saw no such effect. In fact quite the opposite: old Columbo episodes looked glorious on my HD TV
As long as you didn't make the mistake of watching a tape of one from pre-HD days. I did my park contributing to the landfills because I had to get rid of all my old tapes due to how shitty they looked on a modern TV.
This too gives merely a “pedestrian” view of Opera, but with such a highbrow subject that is exactly what it needs!
What exactly is high brow about it? It's one of those things stupid people often pretend to like in order to hopefully look like an intellectual - "Classical" music, jazz, and chess (or go) are among the usual suspects as well. In fact there's no reason to think opera is high brow - that's a modern view. The same way a lot of people see going to a play as being at least potentially high brow - especially if it's Shakespeare. But Shakespeare and the theater in general were once exceedingly lowbrow.
I have low-def eyes in a hi-def world. LOL.
Another classic. I'd have thought you would've blown your brains out by now, Kent - after killing a bunch of other people first, of course.
Oh how cute! My little fan boy changed his name!
You poor schmuck.
Just go on that killing spree already, just make sure you do remember to turn the gun on yourself.
What exactly is high brow about it? It's one of those things stupid people often pretend to like in order to hopefully look like an intellectual [...] that's a modern view.
You answered your own question.
You answered your own question.
No. Thank you for admitting you don't know the answer, though. I suspected you were a hipster - who are, by definition, not hip but who ruin everything including opera.
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