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The pentile matrix debate

L

lilB

Lurker
With all the debate going on about the Pentile matrix displays being used on newer smartphones I decided to create a little experement.

This page has an image I created to simulate the Pentile matrix on a RGB display, so that people can find out at what DPI they cannot see the missing sub-pixles, "crosshatching", or "Screen Door" effect.

I did this by turning off half the green subpixles on one of the images, then readjusting the colors.



At about 250 DPI I can no longer see the "crosshatching"

If the image appears purple, click it to zoom to 100%
 
There's a flaw to your setup. I moved back until at half-arm's length, the diagonal of the image was around 4" tall. I could still see jagged edges. But then as I moved back more, I realized I was no longer using my near vision. My far vision isn't perfect, so the image started to blur.

i suppose I could have grabbed my glasses, but...

in reality, the distances you stare at your phone screen is well within your near-vision, so the only way to test this accurately is to do it on a screen that actually is pixel-dense, so you don't have to back up so much.

Also, based on many of the threads debating PenTile, it's pretty obvious that vision is not always the cause of PenTile artifact perception. People with vision better than 20/20 are known to not see the effects of PenTile RGBG at WVGA resolution and ~4" screen.

I tend to think people post-process the incoming image differently... it has to do with the brain...
 
novox77 said:
There's a flaw to your setup. I moved back until at half-arm's length, the diagonal of the image was around 4" tall. I could still see jagged edges. But then as I moved back more, I realized I was no longer using my near vision. My far vision isn't perfect, so the image started to blur.

i suppose I could have grabbed my glasses, but...

in reality, the distances you stare at your phone screen is well within your near-vision, so the only way to test this accurately is to do it on a screen that actually is pixel-dense, so you don't have to back up so much.

Also, based on many of the threads debating PenTile, it's pretty obvious that vision is not always the cause of PenTile artifact perception. People with vision better than 20/20 are known to not see the effects of PenTile RGBG at WVGA resolution and ~4" screen.

I tend to think people post-process the incoming image differently... it has to do with the brain...
Click to expand...

Good point about near and far vision. There are lots of other flaws with this test too. Its not really a perfect test its just more or less intended to give an idea of how Pentile might look at any given DPI.

I loaded this image on my iPhone 4 and zoomed in to a 1:1 ratio and with the phone close to my face I could just barely make out some of the pattern (only on some areas) but the phone had to be really close. I think if your eyes are good at picking up interference patterns like this pentile might be noticeable at resolutions higher than 300 DPI.

A lot of this has to do with the brain as well. Some people might automatically filter out the pattern and might not be able to see it, or they cannot perceive what they are seeing. I know a lot of people who have the old galaxy s and no matter how hard I try I cannot get them to see it but at 800 x 480 its super noticable.

I think Pentile gets a bad rep because people have seen these lower res displays and now they can spot the pattern easily even at higher resolutions because they know what they are looking for.
 
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