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Comment by spartango | Hacker News Reader

In the medical monitor world there are higher pixel density displays at a a much higher price: the 5-10MP (21-30") displays from Barco and NEC cost between $12,000 and $20,000, and slightly more for 510(k) approved models. Some of them are grayscale only (mammography), but increasingly we're seeing good IPS displays with 30bit color for pathology.

It's not that the technology doesn't exist, but the device yields for these parts are so low that only people who absolutely need the pixel density (life or death decisions) are actually able to afford them.

Would you drop $20,000 on a monitor?

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I don't buy this line of argument. I'll accept that the flawless yield goes down, but a few dead pixels amongst millions isn't the end of the world, especially if they're very small pixels. We have pretty perfect small panels (the Nexus 7 has the same resolution as the 24" on my desk).

If the yield y is high enough on those small panels to make them as cheap as they are, and on the slightly bigger panels that go into laptops, why would the yield on a display n times larger be lower than y^n? Because they would need to be lower than that IMO to justify 5 figure prices.

I think the TV industry has made 1080p panels so cheap from mass manufacturing that they've created a big price / performance gap, and manufacturers have believed that consumers don't want the higher quality enough to pay the premium considering this competition.

It doesn't help that most of the software ecosystem hasn't been ready for scaling.

Fabrication of any kind of semiconductor is full of fixed costs. Not only are the yield rates low, but your cost per panel increases dramatically since you have fewer units to spread over all your tooling and fab buildout.

It's also risky as hell - making a high-DPI LCD panel isn't like making a rocking chair in your garage, there is an enormous startup cost.

It takes a large measure of guaranteed demand for anyone to drop that kind of cash. The only people who have been able to move the needle on this sort of tech and fab are Apple, Google, Samsung, et al. They're the only ones who can go up to a OEM and say "I want you to build this brand new part, to these specs, and I can guarantee you millions of units".

Short of that the risk is insanity, and the OEMs themselves are unable to create a market for these new parts themselves. If they came up with an innovative, new LCD panel, they'd still have to wait for someone else to throw it in a shipping product before real demand materializes. I think there's a rational reason why the big, vertically integrated companies are the ones driving new panels.

Woah, wat? Who's dropping $20,000 for a monitor in pathology? Are these Leica branded to go with their new Aperio scanners? I work with some of the researchers who helped aperio develop get their first studies. let me tell you, they aren't using $20k monitors.

Heh, you caught me. Barco is trying to market these fancy monitors for pathology as the slide scanner wave rises. Really these are rebranded versions of the displays they sell for mammography/radiology applications.

There are a few deployments of these things, but mostly the smaller (cheaper) displays[1]. I think Ventana (formerly Bioimagene) also used to ship Barco displays with their Virtuoso package[2]

Nobody says that the display vendors have been successful with this marketing so far; the people I've worked with are also not buying these things. 17-19" Dell 2MP will do...

[1] http://www.barco.com/en/News/Press-releases/barco-delivers-c...

[2] http://www.barco.com/en/News/Post/2013/6/4/barco-and-ventana...

Actually, I'm not sure the pixel density is higher on those... here is a 4096x2160 diagnostic monitor:

http://www.eizo.com/global/press/releases/htmls/RadiForceRX8...

and it is 36.4" diagonal.

NEC has 21.5" 5MP (2048 x 2560) displays[1], and Barco[2] and EIZO have 30" 10MP (4096 x 2560) displays. These come out to 154 and 161 PPI respectively; you're right that it's not the 180-200ppi target listed, but it's still higher than anything consumer grade.

[1] http://www.necdisplay.com/p/medical-diagnostic-displays/md21...

[2] http://www.barco.com/en/Products-Solutions/Displays-monitors...

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