In common with many of today's digital content junkies, I get my daily entertainment fix from a computer screen and not a TV. Even if I could afford to buy into the jaw-dropping Ultra HD image quality I witnessed from the giant goggle boxes being showcased by Toshiba, Sony and LG at IFA 2012 in Berlin a few months back, they'd likely spend much of their time powered off. As such, the upcoming release of a 32-inch 4K2K computer monitor from Sharp would be of great interest, were it not being aimed specifically at the business community in Japan.
Sharp's PN-K321 32-inch LCD monitor's crisp and clear 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution (four times that of full HD) at 140 ppi pixel density should attract a spatter of appreciative applause from video/graphics professionals, CAD users and others looking to squeeze a large amount of information onto one screen without loss of detail. It features the company's proprietary IGZO technology which provides LED backlighting from the monitor's edges and in-so-doing allows the company to reduce the depth of the unit to just 35 mm.
The 4K2K monitor also benefits from a wide 176-degree viewing angle, a response time of eight milliseconds, 250-nit brightness and an 800:1 contrast ratio. The PN-K321 is compatible with the latest DisplayPort and HDMI specifications, allowing for single-cable PC connection. It also sports two integrated 2W speakers and 3.5 mm audio in/out jacks.
Sharp says that the new model will be introduced in Japan as of February 15. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, there's no official word on if or when the unit will be released elsewhere.
Source: Sharp
It's more than a decade ago I bought a 2048x1536 monitor and the monitor industry has always been moving at a snails pace - mainly because the average Tom, Dick and Harry's of the world that happily settle for "good enough".
All one has to do is hold up an iPad or a Galaxy Note next to a regular HD display to see the difference.
The monitor companies have definitely dropped the ball on this one. Maybe they were waiting for reasonably priced larger panels to be available.
Personally I am happy with the resolution of HD TVs at the moment, all it takes is to remember how bad old TVs looked, yiaaaackkk!! Also many newer HD TV buyers are going to be upset because the old TV standard lasted very long albeit a bit too long but the point is that they will feel that their investment in expensive HD gear will be betrayed because their TV sets will become obsolete too fast.
That's without counting the fact that if a new disc format is introduced shortly after that to cover Ultra HD format video their Blu-ray investment will be obsolete too, they won't like that and after Ultra HD what? Super Ultra HD at 8k or 12k or anything else 6, 8 years or so down the road? And there goes people's investment again.
And remember that the mainstream public, the bigger majority of people do not buy into such technology until a few years after it is released when it becomes more affordable so that's 2 or 3 years after the initial release when mostly high end buyers acquire such new technologies. So that translates into even less years of life for their product and faster obsolescence.
I remember our old 25 inches Panasonic CRT TV, it lasted a year for every one of its inches of diagonal size, yes 25 years of good service and at the end it still looked good and it wasn't obsolete, now what? 4 or 6 years and boom, obsolete and if you are one of those people that bough a high end 3D HD TV at thousands of dollars your are going to like that even less.
The older TV standard was too slow to change and I was glad that it finally evolved but this new one is going away way too fast.
Where I want to see this resolution now is on my 22 inches desktop PC monitor which is at the moment HD and because of that it has about 120 dpi but at Ultra HD desktop monitors of about that size will have about 240 dpi which will put them in the retina display ballpark so desktop PCs can finally enjoy the sharp text and graphics that the newer portable computers users have been enjoying for a while, and if they make them with 10 bit colors that would take care of the two most annoying current display problems: jaggies and banding.
Jaggies have been somewhat handled with anti-aliasing technology but not completely, notice how many people still complain about the quality of computer displays text even at HD resolutions. Now, at retina like resolutions anti-aliasing makes them virtually disappear.
Some people don't know a few things and they confuse this with something like a 300 dpi old laser but 240 to 300 dpi continuous colors (varying gradations of colors within a single pixel) are not the same cause with continuous colors anti-aliasing can smooth the edges of fonts and graphics and photos & videos are anti-aliased naturally so the output of something like this is way better than the output of a 300 dpi old printer except of course for continuous tone photo printers that use a different technique from inkjets and lasers which use halftones and dithering. The output and quality are more equivalent to that of much higher resolution printers.
Retina like 10 bit color displays for desktops. That's what I would buy, That's what I would like to see!!!