Alienware Curved Monitor, a Concept at Present

Alienware, the far-too-expensive boutique gaming computer company that was acquired by Dell, is showing off this surprisingly attractive (and potentially even useful) curved DLP monitor at CES 2008.

This is something like the Flight Simulator Game Chair that lets you sit in a deep bucket seat and control an on-screen plane from the comfort of a simulator that will ensure you never get laid. Well, Alienware’s oddly cool, but wildly curved monitor is more of this same concept — something hardcore gamers would love to have, but will probably be expensive.

This curved DLP (Digital Light Processing) display, which is only a concept at present, is about three feet long and consists of four separate screens stitched together seamlessly. This 2880x900 resolution monster is well over three feet wide and is said to have an other-worldly .02ms response time. Again great for gaming, but what about those who work on graphics or print? Big and flat is probably better. You can see the seams between the monitor's four segments, but that flaw will be gone by the time this hit the market in the midst of 2008. The blacks look a bit washed out to our eyes, too. Price is yet to be determined.

I wonder how many games nowadays support that kinda resolution? And even if they could, I'm not sure whether the hardware could with that many pixels to take into consideration. The roughly 2 million pixels (1920x1080) resolution itself does take a toll on a lot of gaming machines today. I can only imagine adding another 500,000 pixels (2.5 million for the 2880x900) resolution might just explode them. Secondly, flexible displays are around the corner and can be replaced by something thinner, more resolution, and may even drain less power.

It's appealing, but I don't think we're ready for it yet.