X61t Superview at reduced resolution???

[Jim K]

Has anyone with a Superview screen on their X61 tablet tried running it at less than the native resolution? How does it look at 1024 x 768? I want the brightness of the Superview, but the native 145 dpi of the Superview is probably going to be too small for the kind of heavy usage that I will give it... my R50p had 133 dpi, and that was about the max resolution that I find comfortable...

Thanks for any help or comments...

JK

[yggdrasil]

If you reduce the resolution to below the native resolution of the panel, the image will look "blocky" with some lines doubled and others not. In short it's quite ugly and not something you'd want to look at every day.

An exception: if you run at exactly 1/4 resolution, every line is doubled and you get a decent image (with every pixel of the image displayed by four LCD pixels). For the X61t SXGA+ (1400x1050), this would be 700x525 which is, a) too low a resolution to be useful, except perhaps for gaming, and b) not one of the normally available resolutions.

[Chaz]

I strongly recommend against getting an LCD display and running it at anything but its native resolution. Regardless of the display type/quality, LCDs do not scale well. If the SXGA+ is too small for you then you should go for the XGA without a doubt.

[mkozlows]

If you reduce the resolution to below the native resolution of the panel, the image will look "blocky" with some lines doubled and others not. In short it's quite ugly and not something you'd want to look at every day.

Have you actually seen that on the x61t, or are you speculating? Because that's not at all what I'd expect to be the case; modern hardware is really good at scaling, and running 1024x768 on a higher-res panel often looks better than running 1024x768 natively (the same way that a 480p DVD looks better upscaled to a 1080p display) -- but I don't know if there's some intricacy of the tablet sensing stuff that prevents it from scaling like normal hardware.

[yggdrasil]

Have you actually seen that on the x61t, or are you speculating? Because that's not at all what I'd expect to be the case; modern hardware is really good at scaling, and running 1024x768 on a higher-res panel often looks better than running 1024x768 natively (the same way that a 480p DVD looks better upscaled to a 1080p display) -- but I don't know if there's some intricacy of the tablet sensing stuff that prevents it from scaling like normal hardware.

I admit that I've never seen an X61 Tablet screen, but I'm also quite certain that an LCD screen will look its best when used at its native resolution and worse when used at a lower resolution.

This isn't the case with CRTs which work by projecting electrons onto a fine mesh; CRTs have no problem scaling to different resolutions.

LCDs on the other hand have a discrete array of individually controlled pixels which means that using a lower-than-native resolution will result in each line of pixels being "smoothed" or interpolated in order to stretch the image across all the pixels. This smoothing will be uneven because if you're trying to display 1024x768 on a 1400x1050 panel you are stretching each line of "image" pixels to the new width of 1.4 LCD pixels. Since LCD pixels cannot be divided further, this means performing some kind of blending or smoothing operation to stretch out 1 pixel onto 1.4 pixels. This blending is visual noise and does not contribute any new information to the image; in fact, it just makes the image blurry and reduces contrast.

The clearest image comes from running the panel at its native resolution, which eliminates the need to perform any blending or anti-aliasing.

[mkozlows]

I admit that I've never seen an X61 Tablet screen, but I'm also quite certain that an LCD screen will look its best when used at its native resolution and worse when used at a lower resolution.

Inarguably true. Running 1400x1050 on a 1440x1050 12.1" display will look better than running 1024x768 on that same display.

The question is, how will 1024x768 look running on the 1400x1050 display compared to 1024x768 on the 1024x768 display? You can get an idea by going to this link:

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tut...nlargement.htm

and looking at the dog pictures. The "nearest neighbor" is the equivalent of just upsizing your pixels (that is, only putting 1024x768 pixels into the same size that you could otherwise use for 1400x1050 pixels), and the bicubic interpolation is what a modern LCD does when it scales.

Or think of it by (very close) analogy: If you've got a 720p (1280x720) HD broadcast, does it look worse on a native 1080p (1920x1080) LCD/DLP/plasma than it does on a native 720p display? Sure as heck not.

That said, upscaling doesn't work so well with text as it does with images (as it does soften the contrast), but it really doesn't look worse than a heavy coat of antialiasing, a la Mac OS X. For that reason, I can't imagine getting the SXGA+ screen if you're always going to run it at XGA resolutions; but if it's something where you plan to switch back and forth, I wouldn't worry about it.

[BruinMan]

Make the text on your screen larger or smaller
Applies to all editions of Windows Vista.
Which edition of Windows Vista am I using?

You can make the text and other items, such as icons, on your screen easier to see by making them larger. You do this by increasing the dots per inch (DPI) scale. You can also decrease the DPI scale to make text and other items on your screen smaller, so that more information fits on the screen.


1. Open Personalization by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Personalization.

2. In the left pane, click Adjust font size (DPI). If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

3. In the DPI Scaling dialog box, do one of the following:

• To increase the size of text and other items on the screen, click Larger scale (120 DPI)–make text more readable, and then click OK.

• To decrease the size of text and other items on the screen, click Default scale (96 DPI)–fit more information, and then click OK.


To see the changes, close all of your programs, and then restart Windows.




Hide all
Show allHide all

To create a custom DPI scale
1. Open Personalization by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Personalization.

2. In the left pane, click Adjust font size (DPI). If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

3. In the DPI Scaling dialog box, click Custom DPI.

4. In the Scale to this percentage of normal size list, enter the percentage you want, and then click OK.

To see the changes, close all of your programs, and then restart Windows.


To make text and on-screen items clearer in programs that aren't designed for high DPI
If you set the DPI higher than 96, and you are running Windows Aero (the premium visual experience of Windows Vista), the text and other items on the screen might appear blurry in some programs that are not designed for high–DPI display in this version of Windows. You can avoid this issue by using Windows XP–style DPI scaling for these programs.

1. Open Personalization by clicking the Start button , clicking Control Panel, clicking Appearance and Personalization, and then clicking Personalization.

2. In the left pane, click Adjust font size (DPI). If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.

3. In the DPI Scaling dialog box, click Custom DPI.

4. Select the Use Windows XP style DPI scaling check box, and then click OK.


I hope this is what you are looking for.

[Jim K]

I admit that I've never seen an X61 Tablet screen, but I'm also quite certain that an LCD screen will look its best when used at its native resolution and worse when used at a lower resolution.

Neither have I seen an X61 Tablet screen... thank you for you're input, it is appreciated, but we can both theorize and speculate about this, but the real proof would be in what it looks like in the real world sense. I know quite a bit about how displays (and electronic equipment in general) work, from having been a design engineer for several decades. We both agree that some loss of sharpness will occur when choosing a lower resolution. The question really is, will this actually be apparent to the eye at typical viewing distances. To begin with, a text character displayed at it's native resolution 1024 x 768 will inherently be "blockier" or more pixelated than a text character displayed at its native resolution of 1400 x 1050. So I wouldn't expect the same sharpness from an interpolated 1024 x 768 character that I would see on a native 1400 x 1050 character, if you follow my train of thought here.

This isn't the case with CRTs which work by projecting electrons onto a fine mesh; CRTs have no problem scaling to different resolutions.

This isn't exactly how a CRT works... three electron guns fire electrons at a phosphor target on the back of the face of the picture tube. Before they reach the phosphor though, they pass through either a metal plate filled with triads of micro-holes (shadow mask) or rows of vertical slots (sony trinitron). The electron beams scans the raster and pass thru the holes or slots and where they strike the phosphors, the phosphors glow in the 3 primary colors of light. Effectively, each time a beam passes thru a hole or slot, this is the equivalent of a pixel site. This is the short version... I left out a lot of the detail of how the beams scan across the raster horizontally line by line from top to bottom and scan the odd lines first, then the even lines (interlaced display), or sequentially (progressive scan display). The beam intensities are modulated by the video signal corresponding to the brightness at any particular location of the raster. I could go on and on, by the main thing here is that while the mechanism for how the picture is created is quite different between CRTs and LCDs, once it is on the screen there are more similarities than differences; however, the one difference is that because CRTs are analog devices, and LCDs are digital devices, the individual pixel locations are much more sharpley defined in LCDs than they are in CRTs. As far as scaling goes, CRTs don't really scale at all, they just reproduce the analog signal that is put into them. LCDs have scaler circuitry that attempt to interpolate combinations of pixels to reduce sawtooth edges on diagonal portions of objects being displayed that are a result of the square or rectangular pixel structure used in LCD panels. Some scaler ICs are more effective than others, and the ability to scale varies greatly from one manufacturer and model to another depending on who's scaler circuitry was employed in the particular LCD panel's manufacture. I've always wondered why LCD manufacturers don't employ the same pixel structure that Fujinon Photo employs in some of it's camera sensors... instead of a square pixel structure, Fuji uses a hexagonal structure which is very effective at minimizing jaggies on diagonal portions of objects, allowing them to interpolate the image size up much more effectively than sensors which employ square pixel bayer pattern structures. Perhaps the LCD panel manufacturers just don't care how well their LCD panels scale... they just expect them to be used at the native resolution.

LCDs on the other hand have a discrete array of individually controlled pixels which means that using a lower-than-native resolution will result in each line of pixels being "smoothed" or interpolated in order to stretch the image across all the pixels. This smoothing will be uneven because if you're trying to display 1024x768 on a 1400x1050 panel you are stretching each line of "image" pixels to the new width of 1.4 LCD pixels. Since LCD pixels cannot be divided further, this means performing some kind of blending or smoothing operation to stretch out 1 pixel onto 1.4 pixels. This blending is visual noise and does not contribute any new information to the image; in fact, it just makes the image blurry and reduces contrast.

The clearest image comes from running the panel at its native resolution, which eliminates the need to perform any blending or anti-aliasing.

No argument here.

[Jim K]

Running 1400x1050 on a 1440x1050 12.1" display will look better than running 1024x768 on that same display..

The question is, how will 1024x768 look running on the 1400x1050 display compared to 1024x768 on the 1024x768 display? .

Exactly- that is exactly the question. Part of the answer lies in how the picture actually looks at the desired viewing distance. Many of us have probably seen HDTVs or have at least one... when very closely, the pixel structure of displays based on DLP, LCD, Plasma, and others is very obvious. However, when you move away from the display to a normal viewing distance, the pixel structure, any jaggies etc are no longer seen. What I'm looking for is an answer to much the same question. Yes, we know artifacts and jaggies will be generated when downscaling the image. But what is really important to know is are these artifacts sufficiently small to be insignificant at normal viewing distances. And THAT is the real question. To answer it begs for someone who has a Superview display to actually try it, and preferably several people, as the answer to this question will be somewhat subjective.

Or think of it by (very close) analogy: If you've got a 720p (1280x720) HD broadcast, does it look worse on a native 1080p (1920x1080) LCD/DLP/plasma than it does on a native 720p display? Sure as heck not..

That's an interesting (albeit, not very good) analogy. Your example is an exact multiple of the orginal resolution... the Superview question is a bit more complicated because it's a fractional multiple.

That said, upscaling doesn't work so well with text as it does with images (as it does soften the contrast), but it really doesn't look worse than a heavy coat of antialiasing, a la Mac OS X. For that reason, I can't imagine getting the SXGA+ screen if you're always going to run it at XGA resolutions; but if it's something where you plan to switch back and forth, I wouldn't worry about it.

Well, I take your point here, but remember, part of this is weighing whatever the quality (loss) of the downscaling against the obvious advantage of a brighter, more contrasty display that can be see more easily in higher ambient lighting conditions.

[Jim K]

Make the text on your screen larger or smaller
Applies to all editions of Windows Vista.
Which edition of Windows Vista am I using?

Thank you for posting, BruinMan, it's great information, and I appreciate you taking the time to post such a detailed answer. It's a great solution for those who are using Vista (I am not, it is not supported by our corporation, nor by the software we use which is our bread-and-butter); maybe when Microsoft releases Vista SP2 or SP3, but I'm not holding my breath.

We currently support XP and Linux, but my answer to this question should be based on what the hardware can do, not on the operating system.