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posted by janrinok on Monday June 25 2018, @03:32PM   Printer-friendly
from the clearly-not dept.

Monitor manufacturers may be putting 4K UHD (3840 × 2160) panels in some 1440p QHD (2560 × 1440) monitors. This can cause blurriness since one pixel would be mapped onto one and a half pixels:

Citing sources close to panel manufacturers, German website Prad.de writes that the costs of producing a 27-inch 4K 3840 x 2160 panel is often lower, or at least the same price as, creating a 27-inch 2560 x 1440 QHD panel. As such, some companies have reportedly been producing monitors that use 4K panels despite being advertised as 1440p. This is said to happen often when panel supplies are low, or monitor demand is high.

[...] Prad.de included a simulated monitor test image in its report (below). It shows native 1440p on the top and 1440p scaled to 4K on the bottom.

Also at TechPowerUp.


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  • (Score: 2) by frojack on Monday June 25 2018, @07:51PM (5 children)

    by frojack (1554) on Monday June 25 2018, @07:51PM (#698331) Journal

    Actually the article is all about a simulated monitor test image.

    If this is in fact such a big problem why couldn't they arrange a side by side photograph?

    And how sure are you that the monitor in question doesn't support driving it at the physical resolution?
    A lot of monitors set the default resolution lower than the physical because otherwise you can't read text on the screen because its too small to even find the controls to set your virtual resolution in Windows Control Panel.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Monday June 25 2018, @09:35PM (3 children)

    by urza9814 (3954) on Monday June 25 2018, @09:35PM (#698405) Journal

    And how sure are you that the monitor in question doesn't support driving it at the physical resolution?
    A lot of monitors set the default resolution lower than the physical because otherwise you can't read text on the screen because its too small to even find the controls to set your virtual resolution in Windows Control Panel.

    This is talking about advertised resolution, not default resolution. I was just looking at displays today; a 4K screen goes for nearly $100 more than a QHD of the same size. So do you really think they're going to advertise it as having lower specs than it actually does and skip out on that extra hundred bucks in profits just to confuse people or something? It takes a lot of processing power to drive a 4K display; if the panels don't cost any extra then it's going to be the electronics that have the difference -- it's probably got a 4K panel but doesn't have a fast enough processor to drive that at full resolution.

    • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:51AM (2 children)

      by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:51AM (#698662) Journal

      So do you really think they're going to advertise it as having lower specs than it actually does and skip out on that extra hundred bucks in profits just to confuse people or something?

      It is not impossible. E.g. if you have cash flow issues, $x today may be better than $x+100 in a week time.
      If you want to saturate the market with your stuff rather than your competitors' you may do the same.

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      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday June 26 2018, @03:32PM (1 child)

        by urza9814 (3954) on Tuesday June 26 2018, @03:32PM (#698802) Journal

        So do you really think they're going to advertise it as having lower specs than it actually does and skip out on that extra hundred bucks in profits just to confuse people or something?

        It is not impossible. E.g. if you have cash flow issues, $x today may be better than $x+100 in a week time.
        If you want to saturate the market with your stuff rather than your competitors' you may do the same.

        $x today might be better than $x+100 in a week...but they can get $x*y today by putting the actual specs on the box and getting more sales by selling a low cost 4K display. They don't *have to* raise the price by $100, if they can already sell it for a profit then they ought to do even better if they can sell the same product with the same cost for the same price but with better specs on the box.

        And what better way to saturate the market than to sell a better product at the same price? You can't saturate the market if you aren't giving people a reason to buy your product over the competitor's...

        If it's capable of 4K but they aren't selling it as 4K, then they're just sabotaging their own product. The only way I can see that making sense is if it's a form of binning -- they take the 4K displays that aren't quite fast or stable enough, underclock it to fix the issues, and then sell it as a 2K display. But then it's not *actually* capable of 4K resolution and it shouldn't support it either.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 28 2018, @07:09AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 28 2018, @07:09AM (#699704)

          It's called capitalism. You make more money their way in the long run.

          Your way: more people buy a 4K TVs/displays for $100 cheaper, and only buy a new one when their TVs/displays die 3-5 years later, with just smaller percentage going to 8K.

          Their way: people buy a 1440p TVs/displays for the same price ($100 cheaper than a 4K), and for the next few years might be tempted to upgrade to a 4K one that's up to $100 cheaper, or a 8K for more; even if their existing 1440p is fine.

          To me this is a sign that competition in this market isn't strong enough (and thus the sellers stand to make more). Not enough manufacturers are willing to offer 4K for cheaper yet.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:27AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 26 2018, @08:27AM (#698658)

    A lot of monitors set the default resolution lower than the physical because otherwise you can't read text on the screen because its too small to even find the controls to set your virtual resolution in Windows Control Panel.

    That's because Windows still doesn't do DPI right.

    Try printing the same 10pt font on a 300 DPI printer and a 1200 DPI printer. It will be the exact same size. Because unlike Microsoft, printer manufacturers actually know how to do DPI right.