display

Refresh rate, motion blur a nonissue on modern LCDs?

I've been testing LCD monitors consistently for the past two years. In that time, I've run various tests designed to evaluate a monitor's response time. I've used games, movies, and the occasional scientific test to confirm if a manufacturer's claimed response time is accurate.

To be perfectly honest, I have a very difficult time seeing motion blur in movies and games. In fact, I'm not sure I've seen it any repeatable evidence of it on a modern monitor during a game or movie.

So it should go without saying that DisplayMate's recent findings on LCD response times come as no big shock to me. The findings come via an article by DisplayMate founder Raymond Soneira.

Here are Soneira's major conclusions based on tests conducted by DisplayMate on LCDs from major manufacturers.

1. A manufacturer's claimed response time specifications are not a scientifically accurate or a meaningful indicator of picture blur.

The motion blur DisplayMate measured on the HDTVs tested was more than 40 milliseconds. According to the article, this is more than a factor of 10 greater than the manufacturer's published specifications.

2. LCD manufacturers have made a big deal about refresh rates in the last couple of years with the jump from 60Hz to 120Hz and now 240Hz. CNET's own David Katzmaier suspected that benefits with the jump to 240Hz were dubious already, but here's more evidence to back it up. … Read more

Netbooks rise, notebooks fall

Netbooks continue to soar in sales at the expense of the venerable notebook, according to a new report from DisplaySearch.

Revenues for Netbooks, or mini-notebooks, rose to $3 billion in the second quarter of the year, a leap of 264 percent over the second quarter of 2008, according to the new "Quarterly Notebook PC Shipment and Forecast Report" released Thursday. With those gains, Netbooks now enjoy an 11.7 percent share of the portable PC market.

Though traditional notebooks still command an 89 percent slice of the market, their second quarter sales fell to $23.2 billion, a 14 percent decline from the second quarter of 2008.

Measuring 2009's second quarter against the prior year's quarter, sales fell in all subcategories of the portable PC market, including ultraportables and desktop replacements, the report noted. PCs in the 13-inch to 16-inch range managed to eke out a gain, but only measured against the first quarter of 2009.

The low prices of Netbooks appeal to consumers looking for a second PC and to those in emerging markets who don't need the rich and costly features of a large laptop. The market has also been buoyed by cable and telecommunications providers who have doled out Netbooks to customers who sign up for lengthy contracts.… Read more

Sales of OLED displays at record high

Energized by their widespread use in cell phones, worldwide sales of OLED displays hit a record high of $192 million for the second quarter of the year, according to a report released this week by DisplaySearch.

Second-quarter sales of OLED displays rose 22 percent over the same period last year, and 32 percent over the first quarter of 2009, noted DisplaySearch's latest "Quarterly OLED Shipment and Forecast Report," which came out Monday.

The report said that shipments of AMOLED displays were especially strong thanks to their use in mobile phones, with more than 15 different AMOLED cell phone models released in 2009.

AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screens use less energy than PMOLED (passive-matrix) displays, making them better-suited for portable devices such as phones and MP3 players.

"AMOLED displays have become an important differentiating feature for high-end electronic products," said Jennifer Colegrove, DisplaySearch director of display technologies, in a statement. "This technology is not only used for mobile phone main displays, but has also penetrated the market for portable media players, digital still cameras, and other applications."

Making OLED TVs has been a costly, time-consuming challenge for most manufacturers. Despite demonstrations of flashy new products from several companies, Sony remains the only firm with an OLED TV on the shelves. … Read more

Intel debuts concept notebook with four displays

SAN FRANCISCO--Talk about extreme multitasking. If two displays on a notebook, like Lenovo's ThinkPad W700ds' Side Panel, don't do the trick for you, Intel's about to up the ante with four. Yes, that's four--one primary LCD screen and three auxiliary OLED screens above the keyboard. The aim here is to allow the user to organize information the way he or she prefers it.

Touted as the world's first multitouch, multiscreen concept solution, the prototype (code-named Tangent Bay) was unveiled at the Mobility Meetup, an Intel Insiders event for bloggers here. We got Intel rep Renuka Awasthi to demonstrate the touted seamless interaction between the main screen and auxiliary displays.

Intel's Mobile Product Line marketing manager for Greater Americas showed some music files being dragged and dropped between the OLED panels using a finger, as well as flipped video files being moved up to the main LCD display from the auxilliary panels with ease. One could also contract, zoom, scroll, and pan content from one screen to another.

After the jump, blogger Nicholas Khoo has more photos and videos for Crave. … Read more

Google hoping history repeats itself with display ads

With a new display ad exchange developed by its DoubleClick subsidiary, Google is hoping to give its one-trick pony another act.

Google has turned into one of the Internet's largest and most influential companies on the popularity of its search engine and the profitable text ads it sells alongside those search results. This business generates the vast majority of its revenue and profits and gives Google the resources to tackle a variety of other projects from Google Apps to Chrome OS to Google Books.

But like just about anything, that business can only grow so fast. Google will need … Read more

Google rolls out revamped DoubleClick Ad Exchange

Updated September 18 at 10:40 a.m. PDT with Yahoo comment.

Having conquered the Web's text-based ad market, Google is setting its sights on graphical display ads--a market dominated by rival Yahoo.

The search giant on Thursday took the wraps off a revamped DoubleClick Ad Exchange, a public exchange that allows publishers to offer excess ad inventory they can't sell to advertisers looking for a bargain. Google said the exchange will meld DoubleClick's ad exchange with Google's own technology.

"Better technology can help make display advertising work better for all involved," Neal Mohan, … Read more

Simple PDF tool

Abdio PDF Reader provides a way to quickly and easily view PDF files. With a simple setup that allows users to instantly feel comfortable, this program is sure to compete with more established programs.

Thanks to our prior experience with Adobe's PDF-reading programs we jumped right into this program, since its interface felt similar and just as logical. All the command options were laid out just the same as with Adobe, thus we felt like we'd been using this program for years. Like Adobe's reader, we opened our PDF and were able to flip through the pages … Read more

Future AMD chip boasts 'human eye' reality

On Thursday, AMD demonstrated graphics chip technology that the company says approaches the arc and clarity seen by the human eye.

Eyefinity is a multi-display technology that will be part of future Radeon graphics chips designed to use up to six connected high-definition displays that can achieve "up to 12 times 1080p high-definition resolution, which approaches eye-definition optical clarity," the company said in a statement.

The goal is to create virtual environments so detailed that they seem optically real to the human eye. In a single PC, this yields a resolution of 268 megapixels, roughly equivalent to the … Read more

Unsure of what kind of display adaptor you need?

Over the years Apple has used several display connections with their laptop computers. Older Mac models had full-size VGA and DVI ports, which easily connected to external monitors through standard display cables. In recent years, Apple has conserved space in laptops by using a variety of smaller connections that require adaptors in order to use external displays.… Read more

Snow Leopard showing up in black and white on televisions when connected via DVI to S-Video adapter

Users have expressed frustrations with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard appearing in black and white when they connect their computers to their televisions with Apple's DVI to S-Video adapter.

Apple Support Discussions user "irfanhab" reports:

"I use a DVI to S-Video adaptor (bought from Apple Store) to connect my macbook pro (Feb 2008 model) to a Digital TV. Every time I connected it used to work fine and I could instantly play movies. However in Snow leopard, every time I connect the TV display is Black and White, and I have to restart my … Read more