High-end LCDs arriving this year

You've seen our reviews in the last few days, where we've taken a good look at two large, high-resolution LCD monitors from two major vendors (IBM and Philips) at opposite user targets and price ranges. Here in Singapore, in the region where most of these displays are made after all, I can see a massive proliferation of large UXGA LCD units, some of which (the 19-inch range) go for as low as US$ 900.

Even the new ultraslim 20-inch IBM L200 UXGA monitor retails on their Web site at a standard US$ 1350 price, and you can imagine that IBM's real street price will probably be quite a bit lower than this. And that is from a vendor considered to be expensive.

The features are getting better too: S-Video input is seen more often, allowing you to connect your digital video camera, S-VHS video or DVD player directly to the monitor for quality display without TV flicker. Bulky AC power adapters are rarely seen, often integrated into the monitor casing.

Interestingly, the marketspace this year seems to be "standardising" on several size and resolution formats, rather than a mishmash of various choices.

For instance, the dominant sizes now seem to be 17-inch and 18-inch SXGA and 20-inch UXGA. Samsung does offer 21-inch UXGA and 24-inch HDTV 1080i compatible UXGA-W 1920x1200 monitors, and Viewsonic has 23-inch ultralarge UXGA monitor, too (they also OEM the IBM T221 under their own name). Who knows, 30-inch LCD models could be on the cards this year, too.

IBM decided to cut their unique 21-inch T210 QXGA 2048x1536 model as it was hard to get the graphics drivers to create custom ~45 Hz refresh for the DVI input, which is simply too slow for anything above 1600x1200 60 Hz or 1280x1024 75 Hz.

And that's where we come to one potentially major problem: the 160 MHz DVI bandwidth limitation. We already saw the problem with the IBM T221, a monitor ahead of its time, where even if you combine four DVI inputs into the single monitor (quad-tile or quad-stripe approach), you would only get something like 45 Hz refresh. And, please, find me one good real-time 3-D card with four DVI connectors right now...

So, as UXGA 1600x1200 becomes a performance PC & workstation mainstream standard later this year, what will be above it as the top-range norm? While creating some short-term price competition for itself, IBM did make a good move by OEMing the huge 3840x2400 QUXGA-W 22.2-inch LCD to Viewsonic, as this could propel this resolution level to the next super-res standard for LCD, maybe even at larger sizes (25 inch and above).

This would also give impetus to the creation of a high-speed successor to DVI, hopefully with at least six times the bandwidth to drive monitors like T221 and beyond at decent refresh rates. 1+ GHz digital video bandwidth, anyone?