Talk:Computer display standard
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[edit] Connectors
This article is almost exclusively about resolutions, but for someone trying to work with monitors and cards, I think it's important also to mention the connectors used (DE-15/DB-15HD, DVI, HDMI, and the whachamacallit three-connector ones) and their capabilities (analog, digital, limits). Preferably as a links to the relevant articles from the table. --Treekids 17:01, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
- OK, so here are the connectors I've seen available for the resolutions I've used. Others, please fill in so we can add this column to the main article table...
| Video standard | Connector(s) |
|---|---|
| MDA | DE-9 |
| CGA | DE-9 |
| Hercules | DE-9 |
| EGA | DE-9 |
| Professional Graphics Controller | DE-9? |
| MCGA | DE-15? |
| 8514 | DE-15? |
| VGA | DE-15 |
| SVGA | DE-15 |
| XGA | DE-15 |
| QVGA | N/A (built-in LCD) |
| QQVGA | N/A (built-in LCD) |
| WXGA | DE-15 |
| SXGA | DE-15 |
| WXGA+, or WXGA, (or WSXGA) |
DE-15 |
| WSXGA+ | DE-15 |
| UXGA | DE-15 |
| WUXGA | DE-15, DVI |
| 2K | ? |
| QXGA | ? |
| WQXGA | DVI |
| QSXGA | ? |
| WQSXGA | ? |
| QUXGA | ? |
| WQUXGA | ? |
| 4K | ? |
| HXGA | ? |
| WHXGA | ? |
| HSXGA | ? |
| WHSXGA | ? |
| HUXGA | ? |
| WHUXGA | ? |
| 480i | HDMI |
| 480p | HDMI |
| 576i | HDMI |
| 576p | HDMI |
| 720p | HDMI |
| 1080i | HDMI |
| 1080p | HDMI |
| 1440p | HDMI |
[edit] What VGA can really do
VGA can do a lot more than just 640x480 and text (it's highly programmable); it could really use its own page. —-lee 21 July 2003 00:29 (UTC)
- Yes — VGA. —Anonymous
[edit] Common resolutions
The Psion 5 page mentions "640x240 pixels with 16 greyscales, also known as half-VGA." I think mentioning "640x240 pixels (VGA)" would better link to a brief list of (other) common resolutions (and their "marketing name"), rather than a bunch of technical details about VGA hardware in particular. This page seems to talk more about historical development ... is there some other page that is just that brief list ? —DavidCary 05:31, 28 Feb 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Not sure VGA=MCGA
I mean to have read that VGA and MCGA isn't the same at all. IIRC, MCGA was a lesser-featured version of VGA, used on some low-end IBM PS/2 models in the late 80s/early 90s. —Wernher 00:39, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- MCGA was IBM's original design of what was to become the VGA standard. The differences were really rather minor. This did end up causing some confusion: Some computer games from the era call their VGA mode MCGA mode, etc. etc. I think the subject is adequately treated; MCGA is really a minor note in the history of graphics arrays, and the MCGA article is correspondingly short. —Alexwcovington 01:24, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
- The differences are far more than minor. MCGA introduced the 18-bit color pallet and 256-color 320x200 graphics mode that VGA also used, but there's where the differences end; MCGA utilized only 64k of frame buffer memory, and did not have all the high-res graphics capabilities of VGA; there was no 320x240x256color mode (or higher), at 640x480 it was limited to black and white whereas VGA could do 16 colors.
- According to Scott Mueller's book, MCGA was introduced the same year as VGA on PS/2 modesl 25 and 30 - it looks more like a stunted "cheapitized" version of a display adapter with a little bit of VGA compatibility. Hard to believe that the difference between 64K of video RAM and 512K of video RAM once made hundreds of dollars difference in the price point, but that's the way it was in 1987. —Wtshymanski 21:45, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Related slashdot thread
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=126622&cid=10594433
VGA etc., alphabet soup (Score: 0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 21, @09:59PM (#10594433)
Wasn't VGA 640x480 at a mere 256 colors? And didn't it imply a particular ISA (Industry Standard Architecture) bus interface as well? Plus, who can keep track of what WUXGA and QWVGA and UHDWMRXGA all mean? Was somebody just leaning on the keyboard,
VGA was 640x480x16 color, and it MEANT MCA (IBM's MicroChannel Architecture) with VGA bus lines, and PS/2 (not Sony, like your keyboard port rather) VGA BIOS. It also was 320x240x256; MCGA, meant ISA at 320x200x256.
Q - quad, just multiply everything by 2 (2x2=4).
W - take the vertical resolution and do the 16:9 to it to get the horizontal.
DSCGA/DCGA - double scan CGA, no increase in addressable resolution, but dump it on a QCGA screen.
Name - Horz x Vert x Colr CGA - 40 x 25 x 16 MDA - 80 x 25 x 4 CGA - 80 x 25 x 16 EGA - 80 x 43 x 4 VGA - 80 x 50 x 4 CGA - 132 x 25 x 4 EGA - 132 x 43 x 4 VGA - 132 x 50 x 4 CGA - 160 x 200 x 16 CGA - 320 x 200 x 4 MCGA - 320 x 200 x 256 EGA - 320 x 240 x 16 VGA - 320 x 240 x 256 EGA - 320 x 400 x 16 CGA - 640 x 240 x 2 EGA - 640 x 350 x 4 PGA - 640 x 400 x 16 VGA - 640 x 480 x 16, used to be called SuperEGA/SEGA HGC - 720 x 348 x 16
MDA - 80 x 25 CGA - 320 x 200 MCGA - 320 x 240 SCGA - 640 x 240 EGA - 640 x 350 PGA - 640 x 400 VGA - 640 x 480 HGC - 720 x 350 SVGA - 800 x 600, SuperVGA EVGA - 1024 x 768, ExtendedVGA, now called XGA UVGA - 1280 x 1024, UltraVGA, now called SXGA XVGA - 1600 x 1200, ExtraVGA, now called UXGA
Note that VGA is also 8512/A; and XGA was preceded by 8514/A, at the same resolution.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=126622&cid=10594470
Re: I'm Confused (Score: 2)
by Animaether (411575) on Thursday October 21, @10:09PM (#10594470)
It's really not that difficult - if you're into this sort of thing.
But fear not... I've already seen flat panel display manufacturers label their screens in megapixels - to match digital cameras, I'm sure. That should satisfy your quest ... maybe. Assuming that all screens remain at a 4:3 aspect ratio anyway. Wouldn't want them to become 2:3 to match traditional photos, or 16:9 for widescreen or 16:10 to match widescreen laptop displays, or 2:1 because the movie industry keeps stretching the da*n image horizontally to 'outperform' TV screens. *urgh*
And that's not even taking screen size (hello!), or dot pitch (if CRT) / matrix spacing (if LCD/etc.) into account. I'm not quite sure how only listing the resolution will make things easier. That said, I don't know of any site which lists *only* the acronym. Most actually seem to only list the pixels WxH.
For the curious, here's a list of acronyms and their common resolutions and such - can't say I'm familiar with UHDWMRXGA though ;) :
Horz x Vert Acronym ---- Name ---- 320 x 200 CGA Color Graphics Array 320 x 240 QVGA Quarter VGA 400 x 300 QSVGA Quarter SVGA 640 x 350 EGA Enhanced Graphics Adapter* 640 x 480 VGA Video Graphics Array 720 x 350 MDA Monochrome Display Adapter* 800 x 600 SVGA Super VGA 1024 x 768 XGA eXtended Graphics Array 1200 x 800 XGA-W (Wide Laptops)* 1152 x 768 Apple Powerbook G4* 1152 x 870 Apple Macintosh* 1152 x 900 Sun MicroSystems* 1280 x 1024 SXGA Super XGA* 1400 x 1050 SXGA+ (Laptops) 1600 x 1024 SXGA-W (Wide)* 1680 x 1050 SXGA-W (Wide Laptops)* 1600 x 1200 UXGA - Ultra XGA 1920 x 1200 UXGA-W (Wide)* 2048 x 1536 QXGA Quad XGA 2560 x 2048 QSXGA Quad SXGA* 3200 x 2048 QSXGA-W (Wide)* 3200 x 2400 QUXGA Quad UXGA 3840 x 2400 QUXGA-W (Wide)* 5120 x 4096 HSXGA Hexadecimal SXGA* 6400 x 4096 HSXGA-W (Wide)* 6400 x 4800 HUXGA Hexadecimal UXGA 7680 x 4800 HUXGA-W (Wide)*
Then there's the movie industry 1k/2k/4k/etc. resolutions, and NTSC's specs inluding QCIF as well as the PAL spec QSIF not to mention a few dozen resolutions introduced by digital cameras and so forth and so on... ick.
"Note: Thread contributed by Anonymous, and structured/layout-fixed by —Wernher 00:04, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)"
Why hide both of these excellent lists on the talk page? The information in them are much closer to what I expected when I came here.
[edit] 2560 x 1600
What would be the standard for the size of Apple's 30" Cinema HD Display? I think logically the name would be QWXGA, since 2560 x 1600 is the quad of 1280 x 800, which is WXGA.
Should QWXGA be added to the list?
—RadRafe 11:38, 14 Nov 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Removed duplicate content that's at display resolutions
By this page's own defition a computer display standard is that those include both color depth and resolution. Most of the information here is simply on "display resolutions", not "computer display standards" (according to the defititions I have read here). I left those resolution standards that included color depth ... thus... I have removed the "display resolution" standards that lack these.
Edit: I'm also adding resolutions that weren't at display resolutions to there... since that is the more appropriate spot. —Ctachme 02:26, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)
[edit] All the world is not an IBM PC
This article effectively only talks about IBM PC-descended video standards. Are there any Mac users in the audience? I understand that later Macs tended to use "PC-compatible" monitors because it was convenient, once the PC world caught up to Macintosh's capabilities. But it would be nice to have a different perspective here. At this rate Wikipedia will be teaching the kids that Bill Gates invented the PC in 1995 to showcase Gate's new Windows operating system... —Wtshymanski 21:42, 23 May 2005 (UTC)
- Actually, it's okay, because it's about resolution standards, which are just handy labels for the common combinations of resolutions and colour depths. Mac displays have had many of the same resolutions. The tech specs just don't list these names. For instance, Apple "could" call their 23" Cinema HD Display a WUXGA screen, because its resolution is WUXGA. They just don't, for marketing reasons. —RadRafe | t 10:58, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
- I'm pretty sure Apple doesn't make the screens in their displays anyway. Just like Dell, I believe they buy them from one of the few manufacturers that actually make them (mostly in Japan). So it's not just that they want compatibility with PC standards, but that they need to go with what is available to them. Microsoft does little to set graphics hardware standards. This is done independently, and MS follows along like Apple does now. —Sethhoyt 11:31, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
-
- Many earlier Macs did support unnamed formats such as 832 x 624 and 1152 x 870. —Toytoy 23:59, 29 November 2005 (UTC)
- The old compact Mac (up through SE/30) had 512x342, the only 3:2 monitors I know of (I think the later Classics changed to 512x384). PLATO IV's plasma display was 512x512. —Tamfang 03:30, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
-
- Macs are one of the only places you see 3:2 monitors, including the one I'm typing on right now (15" Powerbook G4) - the only way to watch DVDs at native aspect ratios! —Atchius 02:17, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
This article indeed suffers from an untolerable level of PC-centric POV. I was planning to write something on display modes, with a much more generic point of view and some coverage on notable historical/non-PC hardware and the techniques/resolutions used there, but I just got redirected here. Now, I think we basically have two options:
- A) Rename this article to "PC-compatible display standard" or something, so we don't need to include non-PC stuff here.
- B) Don't rename, just mark PC-specific information where it exists and do considerable expansion to non-PC world.
Opinions? —Viznut 20:21, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Made it a table
I just edited the page rather heavily to make the definition list a table. I felt I had a hard time finding out the factual bits of the standards in the descriptions when browsing the list, so I thought this was a bit better. It condenses the list too by not having the names alone on a line. I tried to carefully remove some parts of the descriptions where no information would be lost due to the new columns, so the description cells didn't get unecessarily large and wordy. I hope I didn't goof up anywhere and this is OK with you. :-)
Some additional thoughts on this is that the (excellent!) right-aligned picture consume a lot of space for the entire table, which was a bit annoying, especially if a new column would be added in the future. It would maybe cram the table together a bit much with that space lost. —Jugalator 01:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
- I added a "'<br clear="all"/>'" tag to force the table below the image, which allows the table to expand to a more useful width. (I think both the bullet- and definition-style lists would not have this problem, but the table "is" useful.) I also severely trimmed the image caption to reduce its vertical space consumption. Unfortunately, that still leaves a lot of whitespace between the text and the table at higher display resolutions and browser window sizes. Perhaps someone could expand usefully on this section before the table? Explaining the image might be useful, and is probably better than a cryptically terse but still lengthy caption. —Jeff Q (talk) 07:49, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Refactoring
"Display standard" is a pretty vague term. I think the page needs to be rewritten (and maybe combined with other pages; I haven't checked) to define the "protocol stack" involved. in other words, to explain that a display standard could refer to a resolution and bit depth combo (or a set of them), an API, internal chipset interfaces, a monitor electrical interface, or some combination of all of these, and also to be way less PC-architecture specific.
[edit] Ambiguity of display standards
Some articles about display hardware (e.g. CGA, VGA, EGA, etc.) also talk about the resolutions. I suggest we reduce the ambiguity by splitting them into article namesakes following CGA (resolution), CGA (hardware) (or maybe Color Graphics Adaptor (resolution) and/or Color Graphics Adaptor (hardware)). —Nintendude userpage | message 16:51, 30 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Refresh rates
As far as I know, refresh rates are just as an important part of a PC display standard as resolution and color depth.
[edit] DVI
Aren't DVI and HDMI widely used nowadays? Should they get a mention in the text, or at least a link? —Jim.henderson 02:05, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] WSVGA & monitor resolutions
Wide SVGA is featured in "ultramobile PC" devices such as the Samsung Q1U. It is listed in the image but not in
| Name | x (width) |
y (height) |
Pixels (x1 Million) |
Aspect Ratio |
Percentage of difference in pixels | Widescreen Version |
Typical screen sizes |
|||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VGA | SVGA | XGA | XGA+ | SXGA | SXGA+ | UXGA | QXGA | |||||||
| VGA | 640 | 480 | 0.31 | 1.33 | 0% | -36% | -61% | -69% | -77% | -79% | -84% | -90% | WVGA | |
| SVGA | 800 | 600 | 0.48 | 1.33 | 56% | 0% | -39% | -52% | -63% | -67% | -75% | -85% | ||
| XGA | 1024 | 768 | 0.79 | 1.33 | 156% | 64% | 0% | -21% | -40% | -47% | -59% | -75% | WXGA | 15"/ 38cm |
| XGA+ | 1152 | 864 | 1.00 | 1.33 | 224% | 107% | 27% | 0% | -24% | -32% | -48% | -68% | WXGA+ | 17"/ 43cm |
| SXGA | 1280 | 1024 | 1.31 | 1.25 | 327% | 173% | 67% | 32% | 0% | -11% | -32% | -58% | WSXGA | 17-19"/ 43-48cm |
| SXGA+ | 1400 | 1050 | 1.47 | 1.33 | 379% | 206% | 87% | 48% | 12% | 0% | -23% | -53% | WSXGA+ | |
| UXGA | 1600 | 1200 | 1.92 | 1.33 | 525% | 300% | 144% | 93% | 46% | 31% | 0% | -39% | WUXGA | 20"/ 51cm |
| QXGA | 2048 | 1536 | 3.15 | 1.33 | 924% | 555% | 300% | 216% | 140% | 114% | 64% | 0% | WQXGA | 30"/ 76cm |
nor in the text of this article!? Where does one edit
| Name | x (width) |
y (height) |
Pixels (x1 Million) |
Aspect Ratio |
Percentage of difference in pixels | Widescreen Version |
Typical screen sizes |
|||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VGA | SVGA | XGA | XGA+ | SXGA | SXGA+ | UXGA | QXGA | |||||||
| VGA | 640 | 480 | 0.31 | 1.33 | 0% | -36% | -61% | -69% | -77% | -79% | -84% | -90% | WVGA | |
| SVGA | 800 | 600 | 0.48 | 1.33 | 56% | 0% | -39% | -52% | -63% | -67% | -75% | -85% | ||
| XGA | 1024 | 768 | 0.79 | 1.33 | 156% | 64% | 0% | -21% | -40% | -47% | -59% | -75% | WXGA | 15"/ 38cm |
| XGA+ | 1152 | 864 | 1.00 | 1.33 | 224% | 107% | 27% | 0% | -24% | -32% | -48% | -68% | WXGA+ | 17"/ 43cm |
| SXGA | 1280 | 1024 | 1.31 | 1.25 | 327% | 173% | 67% | 32% | 0% | -11% | -32% | -58% | WSXGA | 17-19"/ 43-48cm |
| SXGA+ | 1400 | 1050 | 1.47 | 1.33 | 379% | 206% | 87% | 48% | 12% | 0% | -23% | -53% | WSXGA+ | |
| UXGA | 1600 | 1200 | 1.92 | 1.33 | 525% | 300% | 144% | 93% | 46% | 31% | 0% | -39% | WUXGA | 20"/ 51cm |
| QXGA | 2048 | 1536 | 3.15 | 1.33 | 924% | 555% | 300% | 216% | 140% | 114% | 64% | 0% | WQXGA | 30"/ 76cm |
