A digital window into an analog world
What are High Definition Displays?
There was a war fought between 2006 and 2008 that went almost entirely undocumented. There were victors, there were losers, and the battle irrevocably changed the lives of every single person on the planet. It changed the sounds we heard, it changed the images we saw, and it changed the way we received information. Most importantly, it changed the way we looked at ourselves.
Between 2006 and 2008, the high definition optical disc format war was fought between Blu-ray disc and HD DVD technology. Though it was a largely civil battle fought in the sacred halls of department stores and shopping malls, Blu-ray ferociously defeated its competitor and secured itself as the high definition disc format of the future.
High definition (HD) display technology is a tongue-in-cheek principle. Ask anyone what HD means, and they’ll tell you that HD refers to anything that’s a higher quality than standard definition (SD). So arbitrary is the HD moniker that anything that produces an image with a greater display resolution than 480p is considered “high definition.”
How do High Definition Displays Work?
When it comes to high definition displays, there are three basic principles to understand: aspect ratio, display resolution, and pixel density.
Pixels, of course, are the atoms of the image world; they’re the smallest physical element of an image. Images are made up of multiple pixels, and how many pixels are present determine an image’s clarity. Traditionally, the more pixels present in an image, the clearer and “better-looking” an image will be. That is to say, the higher a display’s pixel density, the clearer and better-looking an image will be.
Aspect ratio refers to the proportional relationship between an image’s width and height. Unlike pixel density, which determines an image’s clarity, aspect ratio simply refers to the size of an image. What’s interesting about aspect ratio is that it doesn’t subscribe to a set of standard units, so an image with a width of 16 metres and a height of 9 metres (16:9) has the same aspect ratio as an image that has a width of 40.89 inches and a height of 23 inches, as well as an image with a width of 8 centimetres and a height of 4.5 centimetres.
Display resolution is a value that refers to the amount of pixels that can be displayed along the width and height of a screen. It was said earlier that HD has a higher quality than SD – that’s because high definition displays have a higher display resolution than standard definition. Since they can display more pixels, the image is clearer, sharper, and better-looking.
The iPhone 6 is a phone with a high-definition display; its screen resolution is 1334×750, while its pixel density is 326 pixels-per-inch. Finally, due to its screen resolution, its aspect ratio is 16:9.
Why are High Definition Displays Important?
Higher acuity, clearer images, and better-looking entertainment notwithstanding, better displays are actually important because of the methods used to create content for them. An image is only as good as the device used to capture it, and a camera is only as effective as the photographer using it.
There is an entire philosophical component to photography; some schools of thought argue that photographs and images are the only objective representations of the world that humans can produce, while others argue that photographers create their own realities the moment they capture a subject.
For the sake of simplicity, I’m going to argue that high definition displays are important so we can capture and share a better view of our universe. Doctors need HD images to better study disease, physicists need HD images to better study the stars, and chemists need HD images to better identify compounds.
What is the Future of High Definition Displays?
As image technology advances and matures, HD displays are going to come closer to representing an image captured by the human eye. There is no amount of hyperbole and rhetoric in that statement; the best display humanity can create is one that reflects our own eyes.
As always, I’m looking forward to the absurd possibilities. Recently, Apple announced the iMac with Retina 5K display. This is a machine with a 16:9 aspect ratio, a 5120×2880 display ratio, and 220 pixels-per-inch. Consider the audacity of this computer: regardless of how close you’re looking at the screen, there is no conceivable way that your naked eye can distinguish a single distortion in any image produced by this machine.