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Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

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Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#171

Post by rsync »

mortenjorck wrote: post #149

Something to keep in mind is that this is effectively a Windows monitor, not a Mac one. The reason for this is PPI: Most Apple displays are in the 100-110 PPI range, with Retina Display Macs doubling that to 220 PPI. At 28", a 3840 x 2160 panel has a PPI of 157, which sits right between Retina and non-Retina densities. This means that on a Mac, you’ll have to use it one of two ways: Either at 1x, where the higher PPI…

Can someone explain why this isn't just a continuous dial ?

That is, why are there discreet "steps" in monitor scaling for these elements that you are talking about ? I would think that if I have 157 PPI or 220 PPI or 400 PPI that I would just adjust the dial to fit the element size I want.

What's up ?

Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#172

Post by jsmthrowaway »

randallsquared wrote: post #100
jsmthrowaway wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not correct. The resolution you are referring to is the native running resolution of 4K projectors in cinemas established by DCI. If you were being legal about it, which your comment is a little bit, "actual" 4K is 4096x2560. A "proper" 4K film shown at DCI resolution is cropped by removing lines due to the combination of aspect ratio between film and projector. The trend in film photography, however, is towar…

"The last lens I shot on in news was $20,000 by itself, which is part of the reason the average photog will get really mad at you if you grab it, as people who don't want to be videotaped are wont to do." Grabbing the lens is effective at dissuasion? Good to know.

It's effective at picking up an assault charge. A friend of mine still in the industry lost her lens to an aggressive OWS protester and said protester was immediately arrested and charged. People do crazy shit to photogs, and that you see paparazzi being quick to press assault charges is just the TV news situation magnified a lot.

If you touch a photog or their camera, you're in for bad news. Don't forget they have it on tape...

Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#173

Post by wmf »

rsync wrote: post #171
mortenjorck wrote: post #149

Something to keep in mind is that this is effectively a Windows monitor, not a Mac one. The reason for this is PPI: Most Apple displays are in the 100-110 PPI range, with Retina Display Macs doubling that to 220 PPI. At 28", a 3840 x 2160 panel has a PPI of 157, which sits right between Retina and non-Retina densities. This means that on a Mac, you’ll have to use it one of two ways: Either at 1x, where the higher PPI…

Can someone explain why this isn't just a continuous dial ? That is, why are there discreet "steps" in monitor scaling for these elements that you are talking about ? I would think that if I have 157 PPI or 220 PPI or 400 PPI that I would just adjust the dial to fit the element size I want. What's up ?

App developers cannot write code that correctly renders at an arbitrary multiplier. It's been tried and it never works. Having 1x mode and 2x mode does work, which is why Apple uses that approach.

Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#174

Post by Sharlin »

rsync wrote: post #171
mortenjorck wrote: post #149

Something to keep in mind is that this is effectively a Windows monitor, not a Mac one. The reason for this is PPI: Most Apple displays are in the 100-110 PPI range, with Retina Display Macs doubling that to 220 PPI. At 28", a 3840 x 2160 panel has a PPI of 157, which sits right between Retina and non-Retina densities. This means that on a Mac, you’ll have to use it one of two ways: Either at 1x, where the higher PPI…

Can someone explain why this isn't just a continuous dial ? That is, why are there discreet "steps" in monitor scaling for these elements that you are talking about ? I would think that if I have 157 PPI or 220 PPI or 400 PPI that I would just adjust the dial to fit the element size I want. What's up ?

You can't just take a rasterized image and scale it up or down, the result would look horrible. You need to scale things while they're rendered, and as long as you only do vector graphics like drawing lines and rectangles, that's fine. However, real-world UIs traditionally use lots of bitmap graphics, and those, again, simply can't be reasonably scaled. And PPI scaling even the vector graphics stuff requires major changes to the software and graphics stacks involved, given that historically everybody has simply thought in terms of pixels, not the angular size of screen elements, which is what's actually relevant to the end user.

Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#175

Post by shubb »

1stop wrote: post #81
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try getting it through customs without paying ~$1000 customs duty. If it can't fit in my carry on, it is very difficult to just ship to China.

Fly into Guangzhou (or train in from Hongkong). Flying I've never had my bag even run through a scanner (8-9 times flying in) - unless they are doing it between plane and baggage collect, in which case they are really fast!. Train, you run your bags through scanners, but no one seems to care (I've bought HEAPS of electronics in from Hong Kong ($2-4k worth at different times). Beijing and Shanghai - I would say you ar…

What happens if they find you have stuff that you have not delcared? I know for cheap items they charge you the tax or trash them. For several thousand dollars worth of equiptment though, they might not be so nice...

Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#176

Post by [deleted] »

introspectif wrote: post #132
timr wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A human eye with 20/20 vision can distinguish ~150ppi at 2 feet (a typical screen-to-eyeball distance). Beyond that, it's overkill. The apple thunderbolt display is at 109ppi, so there's a bit of room for improvement, but not 60% improvement. Beyond this limit, I suppose there are people with 20/1 vision or something, but they're pretty rare.

I've never gotten this argument. I mean, I have totally normal (nearly 20/20, but not quite... thanks to aging) vision, yet I can see the blurred edges of diagonal and rounded images perfectly fine on an iphone 5s at 2 feet. I think people just aren't really looking. I tried a thunderbolt display recently, and it was painfully low resolution. I haven't seen the math recently, but I have hard time believing that any p…

[deleted]

Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#177

Post by jrabone »

mortenjorck wrote: post #149

Something to keep in mind is that this is effectively a Windows monitor, not a Mac one. The reason for this is PPI: Most Apple displays are in the 100-110 PPI range, with Retina Display Macs doubling that to 220 PPI. At 28", a 3840 x 2160 panel has a PPI of 157, which sits right between Retina and non-Retina densities. This means that on a Mac, you’ll have to use it one of two ways: Either at 1x, where the higher PPI…

Wait, what? Windows has got full custom DPI control and has had for years. Under Windows 7 there's a dialog box to set it under the Appearance & Personalisation / Display control panel. You can toggle XP scale mode for compatibility with older apps.

Seems rather more flexible than pixel-doubling - I thought that went out with underpowered games consoles, but apparently not.

Where there is an issue is with icon scaling - since these are just multi-resolution bitmaps, if the person who made them didn't include the larger sizes you're going to have an ugly time at non-standard DPI settings.

Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#178

Post by ajross »

wmf wrote: post #173
rsync wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain why this isn't just a continuous dial ? That is, why are there discreet "steps" in monitor scaling for these elements that you are talking about ? I would think that if I have 157 PPI or 220 PPI or 400 PPI that I would just adjust the dial to fit the element size I want. What's up ?

App developers cannot write code that correctly renders at an arbitrary multiplier. It's been tried and it never works. Having 1x mode and 2x mode does work, which is why Apple uses that approach.

Considering that every 3D game qualifies as an app that renders correctly under arbitrary multipliers, that argument seems a little suspect.

The real answer is that there is an industry of designers accustomed to doing per-pixel tuning of their art assets and this work is worthless if the assets are going to be scaled anyway. Selecting integer multipliers (so far: "2") allows those assets to continue to render as designed on retina displays.

Surely there are aesthetic reasons to prefer this in many cases, but it's not nearly as cut and dry a point as some people tend to think. Most recent Linux desktop themes are using vector assets, for example, with quite good results.

Whether the Mac/iOS world is a community of pixel-exact perfectionist artistes or a bunch of dinosaurs who refuse to use modern tools is a flame war for a different thread.

Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#179

Post by jrabone »

wmf wrote: post #173
rsync wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain why this isn't just a continuous dial ? That is, why are there discreet "steps" in monitor scaling for these elements that you are talking about ? I would think that if I have 157 PPI or 220 PPI or 400 PPI that I would just adjust the dial to fit the element size I want. What's up ?

App developers cannot write code that correctly renders at an arbitrary multiplier. It's been tried and it never works. Having 1x mode and 2x mode does work, which is why Apple uses that approach.

Despite being told for fucking YEARS to use dialog-box scale units (twips) instead of hard-coding things, pretty much everyone on Windows took the "pragmatic" approach. Can't blame Microsoft for not trying, but they gave up around VB.Net.

Re: Dell Wasn't Joking About That 28-Inch Sub-$1000 4K Monitor; It's Only $699

#180

Post by timr »

jbri wrote: post #92
timr wrote: post #77

Am I the only person for whom that many pixels in a 28" display sounds like overkill? Maybe I'm just getting old, but the resolution on a cinema display is more than sufficient to make things unreasonably small. And getting closer to my desktop screen isn't really appealing either (again, maybe I'm getting old, but to see the pixels on my current screen I have to get my nose almost right up to the display, which I'm…

> again, maybe I'm getting old, but to see the pixels on my current screen I have to get my nose almost right up to the display, which I'm never going to do The point of going to higher and higher resolutions is that eventually, you don't see the pixels. Pixels are an implementation detail, what you're really wanting to see is the image they represent.

Gee, thanks. All these years, and I've been looking at the pixels and not noticing the image! You've changed my life!

ahem...

Condescending explanations aside, you know that there's a limit to the human eye's ability to resolve detail, right? We can resolve up to about 150ppi at 2ft. The Apple Cinema Display is at 109ppi. There's room for improvement, but not 60% more...

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