Next-gen MacBook Pro to shine brighter with new backlight tech

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  • Reply 61 of 101
    solipsismsolipsism Posts: 25,726member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by CoolHandPete View Post


    Yeah, what is that? I remember noticing that as a child, and I used to get my mom to try to "see it" with me because I thought there was something wrong with my clock radio.



    If that happens with these new LEDs, we're going to have a new generation of Mac users who are even crazier than we are!!



    I am so relieved I'm not the only one. Everyone thought I was crazy when I tried to explain it.
  • Reply 62 of 101
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    I can see most LED blinks, but usually not by just staring at them. If I ever glance in a direction of an LED, I can see the trail of dots. It's not something that bothers me though. The main kind of LED that bothers me are the blue ones, they are usually allowed to shine too brightly. I had a computer case with one that could shine through three layers of masking tape.



    It isn't that it's brighter, necessarily, but that the blue is more energetic.
  • Reply 63 of 101
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Splinemodel View Post


    Adding to JeffDM: No human can perceive discrete pulses anywhere near the frequencies commonly used for LED PWM (pulse width modulation). If you're curious, PWM is a simple concept and I bet there's a fine Wiki page on it. For the record, CCFL backlights are also pulsed, as are the actual pixels in displays.



    I think that some can. CCFL's smear their pulses, wheras LEDS do not, at least not so much that it matters to our perception.



    The pixels in displays don't pulse at the same rare
  • Reply 64 of 101
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by solipsism View Post


    I am so relieved I'm not the only one. Everyone thought I was crazy when I tried to explain it.



    Well, I'm sure that you are crazy, but in this, you are not the only one.
  • Reply 65 of 101
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    It isn't that it's brighter, necessarily, but that the blue is more energetic.



    I don't know which one it might be, but turn all the other lights off, and one can do shadow puppets on the opposite wall. Whatever it is, most blue LEDs I've seen can stand to use a bigger limiting resistor.
  • Reply 66 of 101
    boogabooga Posts: 1,082member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    I understand that. Just about every light source and display "blinks". Incandescent and fluorescent "blink" too, but they are less abrupt. Plasma, LCD, DLP generally blinks too. At least LEDs can be set to blink in the kilohertz range, where most other lights cycle at the same as their electricity, 50 or 60 Hz.



    Incandescent light bulbs don't blink. Fluorescent lights blink, but the phosphors don't fade fast and usually hold the light level fairly constant... they're a little annoying but not bad. An LED on the rear of a car that blinks to dim is severely distracting, and I fear the day that all cars use them. A monitor set to 60Hz looks like an old-fashioned flickering movie to me, especially newer ones with the quicker phosphors. (Ironically, actual movies don't seem to flicker as badly despite being at 24fps, and I'm not sure why that is.)



    Perhaps as the LED phosphors change to the newer, cheaper, less responsive plastic phosphors this will improve, and it won't bother me so much.
  • Reply 67 of 101
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Booga View Post


    Incandescent light bulbs don't blink.



    Yes, they do. Their brightness is not constant. It never goes black but there is a pulsing, about 120 times a second.



    IIRC, movies actually use a motion that keeps a film frame in one place as long as possible and advance the frames quickly between frames. I think most of them are now 48Hz, with each frame being doubled up.
  • Reply 68 of 101
    Dang. This tech likely won't make it to the iMac till at least like two more revisions, right? Come on, tell me Apple Inc.'s holding the new Cinema Displays just to come up with LED, very hi res screens in them, as well as the iMac and MBPs, all before May. Right? Dang.



    The only bad thing about moving to the Mac will be saying goodbye to my bulky, beautifully vivid (but needing replacement) ViewSonic CRT display.
  • Reply 69 of 101
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Booga View Post


    (Ironically, actual movies don't seem to flicker as badly despite being at 24fps, and I'm not sure why that is.)



    In movie theaters, a movie is actually presented at 48 or 72 fps, with each frame presented twice or thrice. It's still sometimes noticeable, though, and depending on my varying sensibility, can annoy the heck out of me.

    Computer monitors or televisions don't need to do that, because the next image can appear immediately after the previous, without needing a shutter to cut the light while the film moves. So there's no "interruption" between the frames.
  • Reply 70 of 101
    kzelk4kzelk4 Posts: 100member
    IMO the current design look of the MBP should be kept the same. Maybe change a couple things so less people complain (swappable hard drives, hinge, ports, edges(even though none of that really matters to me)). Perhaps they might come out with a black one? I'm not sure how that would look. What are the chances of having a blu ray/hddvd drive available at the end of the year or early next year?
  • Reply 71 of 101
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    Yes, they do. Their brightness is not constant. It never goes black but there is a pulsing, about 120 times a second.



    IIRC, movies actually use a motion that keeps a film frame in one place as long as possible and advance the frames quickly between frames. I think most of them are now 48Hz, with each frame being doubled up.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tych0 View Post


    In movie theaters, a movie is actually presented at 48 or 72 fps, with each frame presented twice or thrice. It's still sometimes noticeable, though, and depending on my varying sensibility, can annoy the heck out of me.

    Computer monitors or televisions don't need to do that, because the next image can appear immediately after the previous, without needing a shutter to cut the light while the film moves. So there's no "interruption" between the frames.



    Good heavens, children! It's not like film is that an archaic medium.



    Motion picture speed is expressed in fps (frames per second), not hertz.



    Said motion pictures in these United States are shot and projected at 24fps. The only exceptions are a few specialized applications which required modified projectors.



    Now if we're talking about digital projection, that's another matter (although still not 48 or 72 fps, ever).



    Maybe we're thinking about the various manipulations to get between film and video formats?
  • Reply 72 of 101
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    Good heavens, children! It's not like film is that an archaic medium.



    Motion picture speed is expressed in fps (frames per second), not hertz.



    Said motion pictures in these United States are shot and projected at 24fps. The only exceptions are a few specialized applications which required modified projectors.



    Now if we're talking about digital projection, that's another matter (although still not 48 or 72 fps, ever).



    Maybe we're thinking about the various manipulations to get between film and video formats?



    Much of the time, they both mean the same thing to me, different jargon to convey the same idea. The frame changes a certain number of cycles per second, silly me, that sounds like the definition of hertz. The film industry can keep its own little jargon, I'll keep mine, thank you.
  • Reply 73 of 101
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    Much of the time, they both mean the same thing to me, different jargon to convey the same idea. The frame changes a certain number of cycles per second, silly me, that sounds like the definition of hertz. The film industry can keep its own little jargon, I'll keep mine, thank you.



    Sure. And we can talk about an automobile engine's hertz, since it cycles a given number of times a second. They can keep their little "RPM" affectation.
  • Reply 74 of 101
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    Sure. And we can talk about an automobile engine's hertz, since it cycles a given number of times a second. They can keep their little "RPM" affectation.



    Why are computer people so fascinated with automobiles?
  • Reply 75 of 101
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by addabox View Post


    Good heavens, children! It's not like film is that an archaic medium.

    [...]

    Said motion pictures in these United States are shot and projected at 24fps. The only exceptions are a few specialized applications which required modified projectors.

    [...]

    Now if we're talking about digital projection, that's another matter (although still not 48 or 72 fps, ever).



    Okay, So maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough. What I meant was the following:

    Yes, movies are filmed and shown at 24 frames per second. However, the shutter on the projector operates at 48 or 72 Hz, showing each of the 24 frames 2 or 3 times.

    This came as an explanation as to why watching movies shot at 24 fps didn't cause us splitting headaches because of the flicker.
  • Reply 76 of 101
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    Yeah, I read that last year.



    I still don't see how a coherent image could be built up from such a design. What they are describing is a sensor that works somewhat like an insects eye. The problem with that is we have no idea how an insect's brain uses the many separate images the hundreds, or thousands, of lenses and sensory cells produce. How do they integrate them into one understandable field of view?



    Apple provided us with no information on that matter.



    I'm no expert on the matter, but I may have a solution to your POV/FOV problem.



    The concept is not like that of a compound eye, rather, it is something like spreading out a lens. If you take a digital camera, and look at the image, everything you see comes into the sensor in the one lense. But if you take a frame and place it a few feet in front of the lense, then what you see inside the frame is the Field of View from the lense's Point of View. you can duplicate the same image by spreading out all the pixels so that they are placed inside the area frame, at the angels neccesary to mimic the original PoV.



    But, you ask, how could that be done?



    Ever heard of ray-tracing? It simulates the position of the eye, calculates the virtual position of the 3D texture to be drawn, and colors pixels accordingly, which is far more accurate & realistic than anything a videogame can do (though they simulate it). A reverse of this could work; instead of calculating the virtual evironment, it would calculate the position of the "eye" and render in the resulting image from each photo sensor in such a way as to mimic the PoV from the eye.
  • Reply 77 of 101
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    Yes, they do. Their brightness is not constant. It never goes black but there is a pulsing, about 120 times a second.



    IIRC, movies actually use a motion that keeps a film frame in one place as long as possible and advance the frames quickly between frames. I think most of them are now 48Hz, with each frame being doubled up.



    Yes, 48 doubled frames has been standard for ages. It's there as you are hinting, to minimize the perceptual problems, such as headache, and eyestrain, that can be gotten from true 24 fps rates in the past.
  • Reply 78 of 101
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tych0 View Post


    Okay, So maybe I didn't express myself clearly enough. What I meant was the following:

    Yes, movies are filmed and shown at 24 frames per second. However, the shutter on the projector operates at 48 or 72 Hz, showing each of the 24 frames 2 or 3 times.

    This came as an explanation as to why watching movies shot at 24 fps didn't cause us splitting headaches because of the flicker.



    Ah, quite right.



    Crankiness withdrawn due to misunderstanding.
  • Reply 79 of 101
    melgrossmelgross Posts: 33,510member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by JeffDM View Post


    Why are computer people so fascinated with automobiles?



    Because it's such an absurd comparason, it's hard to argue.
  • Reply 80 of 101
    addaboxaddabox Posts: 12,665member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by melgross View Post


    Because it's such an absurd comparason, it's hard to argue.



    What, RPM and FPS? Not absurd at all. Both are bone standard terminology for cyclical phenomena, neither are typically talked about in terms of hertz.



    My point being that "film can keep it's little terminology and I'll keep mine" is silly.
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