Toshiba recycles nine Mpixel LCD screen

RECENT NVIDIA presentations showed something the firm interchangeably calls Quad HD, XHD2 or the "next level in graphics resolution".

We're talking about QWUXGA, or, in human lingo, 3840x2400 resolution. This nicely maps all current resolutions to near or full screen on integer pixel multiplies (when every input pixel is precisely shown as 2x2 or 3x3 or more), rather than the blurry interpolations we mostly suffer with today.

Nvidia bangs on about "director's cut" games, not to mention PhotoShop at " true" photo quality, or 3-D AutoCAD at drawing resolution. It makes it sound as if this is something humanity will see for the first time, thanks to Nvidia.

Well, it is no thanks to this Green Goblin - neither is to due to Toshiba which has pompously announced a 22-inch 3840x2400 monitor at a price of a gazillion yen.

Toshiba's monitor, which was highlighted in so many Nvidian PPT slide art pieces, is just a regurgitated version of a five year-old IBM T221DG5. This monitor has the same Japanese-made panel and resolution of 3840x2400 at 48Hz movie-rate refresh, using twin dual-link DVI's in parallel. Viewsonic also offered a less dolled-up 41Hz refresh version as the VP2290b.

I had that one at home in 2003 for three months and even today's 30-inchers look pale in comparison to its image quality. Yes, it had something like a 30ms real response time, but it was enough to just look at still-life - zero fps - Renaissance painting reproductions on it, to feel utterly enchanted. The reproductions looked like the original paintings, all the detail was there.

Then, four years ago, despite all the dual x dual DVI mess, I could still run that display off most Matrox, Nvidia Quadro and ATI FireGL cards and, with some refresh sacrifices, some high-end Geforces and Radeons.

And, if you searched deep enough on eBay or whatever, you could get a hold of one of these babies for around five thousand dollars - or even less if opting for the Viewsonic variant

Now, the revamped US$ 18,000 (yes, no typos) Toshiba unit supposedly - but unconfirmed as of today - could handle up to 60Hz. No big deal to me, as most GPUs today would have a hard time providing more than 30 fps gaming at nine megapixels. However, the Tosh only works with a single PCI graphics card, which is provided by that self-same Toshiba for "only" US$ 3,000, give or take a few London dinner costs.

Not to mention, the 235 nits brightness, 120 deg viewing angle and 300:1 contrast ratio are not only way behind most current LCDs, but also worse than the half-decade old IBM unit at 400:1 contrast and 170 deg viewing angle - and, of course, waiting another half a year or so to see them shipping.

I'd personally still recommend the IBM T221DG5 flavour, if you can find it - in the meantime, let's pray for the 30-inchers based on this resolution, letting you at least (barely) see the pixels. Two DisplayPort or HDMI B links in parallel should support 60Hz on nine megapixels, anyway.

For more of the experts' opinion and some quite joyful discussion on hi-res matters, you may want to join and make new friends on http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IBM_T2X_LCD/links

Our Japan-based friends from that Yahoo group discovered a supposedly rebadged Viewsonic nine Mpix version of this monitor in the Land of the Rising Sun, lovingly branded as ADTX MD22292-C2 and selling there for just 198,000 yen, or roughly 900 quid / US$ 1900.

Do take a look how tiny the Windoze desktop bar is, you can imagine the screen's fine 204 ppi resolution.

So, if you really want to enjoy nine Mpix photo edits and (maybe 20 fps?) super duper photo realistic gaming right away today, the entry ticket just became cheaper... let's hope the 'XHD2' 30-inchers come out soon too. µ