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HDTV Almanac - iPad Display: Flawed Picture
By Alfred Poor
HDTV Professor
Posted on January 29, 2010
Category: General Interest


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Okay, I was determined to maintain the HDTV Almanac as an iPad-Free Zone, but Steve Jobs has forced me to break my resolution. There are many amazing points to pick out of Wednesday’s announcement, but I’m just going to focus on the video part. First, consider these quotes from the iPad promotional video on the Apple Web site:

“The iPad is the best… movie-watching experience ever.”
Phill Schiller, Senior VP, Worldwide Product Marketing

“This is an unbelievable device for watching video. The quality of this video is amazing.”
Scott Forstall, Senior VP, iPhone Software

And finally, from the text on the iPad Web site: “The best way to experience the web, email, photos, and video. Hands down.”

Widescreen movies and other video gets scaled down and letterboxed on the iPad screen.

Well, in my opinion it’s “thumbs down” on these typically hyperbolic claims by Apple. Even a momentary consideration of the specifications makes these claims dubious at best.

First, Apple gets all excited about the LED backlight and the IPS LCD panel. Hmmm… just about every notebook on the market these days has an LED backlight. There’s nothing amazing there. And IPS stands for “In-Plane Switching”, which is LG’s technology for wider viewing angles on LCD panels. It’s a good technology that has been around for a long time, but it’s hardly cutting edge.

A more stunning fact is that the iPad does not have a widescreen display. It is the same 4:3 aspect ratio as your grandmother’s Zenith picture tube TV had. Just about every netbook computer on the market has a 16:9 aspect ratio screen, but not the iPad. To make matters worse, however, the panel only has XGA resolution, which is 1024 by 768 pixels. Guess what? That’s not enough to even show 720p high definition images without scaling them down. And because the panel is not a widescreen, the result will be letterboxed. The best it can do is 1024 by 576, which is barely better than a widescreen standard definition format. And when letterboxed, the image size shrinks from 10 inches diagonal (actually, it’s just 9.7 inches) to a mere 8.9 inches.

How does watching a less-than-high definition 8.9 inch diagonal video image rate as “the best movie-watching experience ever“? Somehow, I would have picked a 1080p projector with a 100-inch screen and a 7.1 surround sound system in a home theater installation, or at least a 50-inch LCD or plasma flat screen HDTV. I don’t think a device like the iPad would ever occur to me.

Am I all wrong on this? Will you be trading your HDTV for an iPad as soon as you can? Let me know at alfred@hdtvprofessor.com.

Posted by Alfred Poor, January 29, 2010 5:48 AM

Reader Commentary

See Forum Topic: HDTV Almanac - iPad Display: Flawed Picture (19 replies)
Jan 29, 7:00am
Alfred - I agree they're overhyping, but you have to understand they're coming from a world of iPhones and iPods so this is a huge improvement over that. However I just noticed you can get a Dell Mini netbook with a 1366x768 widescreen display. I ju
Jan 29, 7:03am
Am I all wrong on this? Not hardly! Any new display with the potential for viewing just about anything that can't support high-def widescreen these days is old technology. Let's get with the program, Apple. :shock:
Jan 29, 9:02am
Alfred, Alfred, Alfred. > Am I all wrong on this? < First off, no, I don't think you got it wrong on the hype angle at all. It's totally bloated beyond al
Jan 29, 9:19am
Videograbber - the case couldn't be made any better. I will add that as an iPhone user, I too will be slow to add this to my tool set, simply because I am hooked into the case where I can put a laptop into my pocket. Yeah, the iphone screen is low res an
Jan 29, 9:19am
One thing I left out of my previous response was your claim that, > The best it can do is 1024 by 576, which is barely better than a widescreen standard definition format. < I'll contradict you on technical grounds h
Jan 29, 9:36am
I am in agreement with Alfred. I should clarify first that I love Apple's products, being the proud owner of a MacBook Pro, an Apple TV, 2 iPhone's, an iPod Touch and numerous iPods over the years. I won't be buying an iPad, but that shouldn't come
Jan 29, 9:39am
Tim, we agree on the facts; it's just the interpretation of where we differ. And even then we're not far apart. I will say that EDTV -- 850 by 480 -- is in fact wide standard definition TV. It looked much better because it used physical pixels (as oppo
Jan 29, 9:44am
> when letterboxed, the image size shrinks from 10 inches diagonal (actually, it’s just 9.7 inches) to a mere 8.9 inches. < > ...at least a 50-inch LCD or
Jan 29, 10:11am
Alfred, > ...with a digital source like a DVD, it was much sharper than any broadcast CRT could achieve. However, the widescreen format of the iPad has a pixel count that is 144% of EDTV. < I thought that EDTV was a
Jan 29, 2:05pm
Taking a different tack... One must remember the audience! These are the same folks that willingly listen to MP3 on their iPods (and why I don’t own one). Apple figures if they’re already willing to accept dumbed down a
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About Alfred Poor

Alfred Poor is a well-known display industry expert, who writes the daily HDTV Almanac. He wrote for PC Magazine for more than 20 years, and now is focusing on the home entertainment and home networking markets.