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Comment by DanBC | Hacker News Reader

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DanBC·

There are greyscale monitors. These tend to be very expensive and used for medical imaging. I've never used one.

http://www.necdisplay.com/category/medical-diagnostic-displa...

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

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We have a workstation with 4 EIZO monochrome medical monitors at work (to test radiology software ofc) and the resolution is astounding as is the 10-bit greyscale image. The price tag however, well, it's the greater than the sum of all the other monitors we have...

Why are these so expensive? You could get a top-of-the-line new 5k iMac for that greyscale 2048 x 2560 monitor. Presumably it's all the calibration and certification that goes in, but wow those are pricey.

These typically have many bits of grey and a calibrated response curve that is stable over time. Specialty stuff.

The linked greyscale monitor above only had 8-bit greyscale, but describes it as "256 levels of gray out of a palette of 3826". Does that mean anything significant?

Yes, it means the monitor has an 8-bit host interface but each value on the range [0,256) is mapped to a range of levels [0,3826) that the panel can actually produce. The number seems weird, I'm not sure why it would be 3826. Maybe someone can explain.

Because insurance is paying for it anyway, so why not develop unnecessary specialty stuff that uses all proprietary connectors, power supplies, etc.

Economies of scale.

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