Billions and Billions

MIT puts out a nice Technology Review Magazine.   I'm always learning new stuff there, like about this new Ultra resolution video display:
Samsung has shown off a prototype of an ultra-high-definition 3-D television. The 70-inch prototype uses a novel electronic circuitry to control eight billion pixels. It's not likely to go into volume production soon, and there isn't any content to display on it, says Paul Semenza, a senior analyst at Display Search. But at last month's Society for Information Display conference in Los Angeles, the display drew crowds and garnered a best-in-show award.

I can certainly understand why. Eight billion pixels is a lot, even on a 70 inch screen - roughly 6000 per mm^2, if my math holds up. The smallest resolvable objects ought to be on the order of 25 micrometers on a side.

Eight billion, by the way, is about 4000 times as many pixels as an HD-TV. You can't really call this display "retinal" though, since the fovea of the human eye packs in cones at 20-40 times that density.

I wonder if they should teach more math at MIT. Maybe they meant 8 million pixels.

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