Hi guys.
Just wanted to say hi because I disappeared from the forums for a long time, but good to see some familiar faces still around (new forum name for me).
But! To give a heads up on the 22" wide, it's no surprise that it has virtually the same dot pitch as the 19" wide. The general consensus was that a 17" (dot pitch of 0.264 mm) is too small while a 19" (dot pitch of 0.294 mm) is too big in terms of dot pitch. Thus the newest widescreens (19" and 22") are somewhere in the middle (0.282 mm for the 22" and 0.284 mm or 0.285 mm for the 19"), to get at a comfortable size for everyone, as well as a new option for everyone. So for those of you who were saying a year or two ago that the LCD market only has 15", 17", 19", how boring, now is when you get your wish as manufacturers have started providing more variety in order to gain market share, rather than the previous phase of just trying to target few (but safe) mainstream sizes.
There's another reason why the 22" will explode. Last year, the big item was the 19" wide. It just so happens that most were made by Chi Mei. At the time, Chi Mei's Fab3, which uses 1100 x 1300 mm glass, was ramping up. For this size glass, the most efficient cut possible is the 19" wide size, since it can (barely) squeeze in 12 panels of this size, the same as 17", while it can only hold 9 19" normal panels. This means that most of the glass is used into making the panels; very little "empty glass" that gets thrown away is left, hence efficient. Other panel manufacturers also have Gen 5 plants (same size glass), but only Chi Mei took the plunge and became the guinea pig to see if the market would accept this somewhat odd resolution (1440 x 900). Unfortunately for all other manufacturers, the market did, leading to monitor makers (who actually put the panels into their products) to line up in front of Fab3 to try to grab some of the panels coming off the factory floor. Okay, I'm kidding about the lining up part, but you get the point. Although other manufacturers eventually came out with their own 19" wide versions, Chi Mei still dominates the 19" wide market.
This year, it's Chi Mei's Fab4 that ramped up. Fab4 processes glass that are 1300 x 1500 mm in size. Guess what...it just so happens that for this size glass, a 22" widescreen size is one of the most efficient cuts possible (also barely squeezing in 12 panels per glass). So it should be no surprise that Chi Mei makes a large portion of the 22" widescreen panels, as it is the only manufacturer who uses this size glass in the world; it will also be interesting to see how other manufacturers respond to this, since using other size glass results in less efficient cuts and thus more wasted glass real estate.
I'm kinda surprised by the reports of backlight bleeding though. My understanding is that Chi Mei's backlights are back-mounted (directly behind the screen), which means a somewhat thicker panel but should mean a pretty even brightness throughout the screen. Side-mounted backlights (where the light tubes are actually on the top and bottom, and diffuser glass then spreads the light to the entire screen) are the ones who tend to have more backlight bleeding issues (it's actually that the diffuser does not spread the light evenly), but they're used more often by other manufacturers because then panels can be made very thin and look snazzier. Chi Mei isn't particularly into snazzy.