From our colleagues at Engadget: Alienware has presented the prototype of a curved screen that will be launched this year with a surprising resolution of 2880 x 900 pixels. The monitor was presented with the game Crysis. According to the reporter at Engadget (see video below), it’s a retro-projection DLP type screen (this is believable given the depth of the system). The manufacturer also took advantage of the occasion to mention something that will catch the eye of gamers, a 0.2 ms response time or a tenth of what the official fastest LCDs are capable of.
There are however a few things to consider:
it’s not too logical to speak of response time with a DLP – unless this is an indication of the max frequency of oscillation of the mirrors. In this case the 0.2 ms would correspond to the fastest transition for a layer of colors. For it to produce images a red, green and blue layer are needed as well as a white or even intermediate shades.
A DLP system has two enormous advantages over the LCD: the first is that there is almost no afterglow (at least this is the case for video projectors); second is that their contrast is much better due to a very deep black. On the other hand, they suffer from a large handicap, the "rainbow effect". Not everyone is sensitive to this but those who see a delayed image instead of the sum of RGB layers that succeed each other at great speed. These viewers see brief flashes of color which can sometimes be insufferable.
The last damper on our enthusiasm: the reporter seemed very excited about this screen being the equivalent of two 24 inch LCDs. In terms of size this is true but in pixels it is equal to a single one. Finally, if you take a looker at the video, you can see four panels joined together that make up this screen.
Either way, this is quite a feat and is an original and innovative product. It’s nice to see and makes us fantasize (a little) on the possibilities.
