Why Widescreen?
Gary Brown
Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage?
I would prefer to get taller, not wider.
Thanks,
Gary
UCLAN
> Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage?
> I would prefer to get taller, not wider.
Stop eating. Put yourself on a "rack" daily.
Seriously, most films are shot in an aspect ratio close to 2.35:1. The
HDTV aspect ratio of 16:9 (1.78:1) is closer to this than is the CRT's 4:3
(1.33:1) resulting in narrower vertical bars when viewing theatrical DVDs.
Add to this, the ATSC SD/HD specification calls for 16:9. All HDTV is
16:9. A 4:3 monitor will have those vertical bars on the top and bottom.
Bug Dout
up and down...hence the shift to screen wider in both TV and monitors.
--
The essence of drama is that man cannot walk away from the
consequences of his own deeds.
- Harold Hayes
William
wrote:
>It's more natural for people to scan (move their eyes) side-to-side than
>up and down...hence the shift to screen wider in both TV and monitors.
Also, it is exactly how we see.. our natural vision is a kind of super
widescreen.
Best useful objects are the ones that resemble human perceptions.
A controller is made to be used by a human hand, as example, a
torchlight is made that way because it's easier to focus the light in
a specific direction with a simple movement.
There's a huge list of examples that can be made.
--
http://shop-for-computer.com
Special prices, best deals, refurbished computers.
Cliff
"Gary Brown" <garyj...@charter.net> wrote
> Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage?
Mutiple programs open and available at the same time. I can open word and
excell at the same time, resize the windows and copy and paste data twice as
fast (or more) and still keep an eye on my e-mail for new mail.
Cliff
~misfit~
Clue:
He said monitor, not TV.
Some people use their computers for more than just watching downloaded
movies and TV programmes.
--
Shaun.
"Give a man a fire and he's warm for the day. But set fire to him and he's
warm for the rest of his life." Terry Pratchet, 'Jingo'.
~misfit~
> Hi,
>
> Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage?
> I would prefer to get taller, not wider.
Almost all LCD monitors on the market today use a technology called TN, for
'Twisted Nematic'. They use this technology becuase it's far cheaper than
the alternatives such as IPS.
The biggest downfall of TN is the narrow viewing angle which makes colours
look different if you change the angle at which you look at them. This is
worse in the vertical plane than in the horizontal plane. Therefore, as
panels get taller the problem gets much worse. Depending on your distance
from your monitor the angle at which you see the bottom of the monitor
compared to the top can significantly change hues and shading.
The answer? Make the panels wider instead of taller. The effect isn't so bad
in the horizontal plane and also our eyes don't notice subtle differences so
much in out peripheral vision.
It all comes down to price. (almost) Everyone wants the biggest screen for
the least money so TN is pretty much the only option. Almost all of the
factories have switched over to TN and it's getting harder and harder to get
an IPS screen. Then even if you can get one the chances are that it'll be
widescreen now as it's the accepted standard. It's a case of the limitations
of the prevalent technology dictating the dimensions.
(I have an IBM/Lenovo ThinkPad T60 with a 'tall' 4:3 ratio screen that uses
IPS technology and has a 178 degree viewing angle. However Lenovo can no
longer offer IPS screens as they simply aren't being manufactured. Sad. I'll
be babying this laptop to get it to last as long as possible. Other screens
really look crap when you're used to an IPS.)
http://www.pchardwarehelp.com/guides/lcd-panel-types.php
http://www.lcdresource.com/lcdtech/
HTH.
kony
I suspect there are many contributing factors.
1) Not all apps need a tall narrow window, so if they stuck
with 4:3 then any given inch spec results in more pixels, a
more expensive screen.
2) TN panels are the highest volume sellers, you can't go
very tall on them without significant contrast and hue shift
due to the increasing change in viewing angle.
3) Widescreen makes more sense in a laptop made to minimal
dimensions since the keyboard is also wide and shallow.
4) Movies and TV shows are now often, perhaps usually,
widescreen because of #5
5) Our eyes are oriented horizontally side-by-side and
combining that with gravity and that we can't fly of our own
innate ability, we orient ourselves moreso with left and
right rather than up and down.
6) You can tile two windows side by side.
I'm not really defending widescreen, I'd just as soon have
the same number of pixels and pixel pitch in a 4:3 monitor
because even if it can rotate 90' on it's stand I wouldn't
want to keep rotating it to do something common like surf
narrow webpages that are oh so common these days.
Some video cards/drivers can run multimonitors with them
both rotated 90' and set side-by-side, or not rotated and
set one atop the other. People who can get past the big gap
in the middle seem to enjoy them. Those who can't, can opt
for three instead of two so the gap isn't centered anymore,
or just one really huge monitor and ignore the space on the
sides.
Sjouke Burry
> It's more natural for people to scan (move their eyes) side-to-side than
> up and down...hence the shift to screen wider in both TV and monitors.
Now why dont they do that in newspapers?
And even on websites you find narrow columns
of text.
So its not as natural as you suggest.
~misfit~
They do it that way with text, in columns, so you can go back and find the
start of the next line easilly. If you've ever seen anything written with a
few hundred letters to the line you'll know what I mean.
John McGaw
capable of rotating by 90-degrees into a tall "portrait" configuration. Any
modern video card should be able to rotate its output to make the screen
read properly.
Or you could purchase a larger monitor to get the height you desire and
then mask the edges with black gaffer's tape to gain whatever proportions
you find desirable. This is the computer analog of putting black tape over
the "check engine" light in your car...
--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com
Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps)
> Hi,
>
> Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage?
> I would prefer to get taller, not wider.
1. hd movie/tv format
2. workspace
--
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GT
news:7p29tq...@mid.individual.net...
You (and most other people nowadays) presume that a PC monitor needs to be
suitable for viewing films. Personally, I have a 40" widescreen TV for this
and I use my PC for work, games etc. This is the reason why I'm still using
a trusty CRT 19" screen at 1600x1200! There are very few LCD panels out
there at a reasonable price that can provide a vertical height of 1200 -
ideal for document reading and general PC use!
Using a widescreen monitor for normal PC use is the equivalent of having
huge bars at the right and left of the screen - useless space!
GT
news:k3vni55959uvv62ut...@4ax.com...
> On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 13:59:20 -0800, Bug Dout <bug...@mailinator.com>
> wrote:
>
>>It's more natural for people to scan (move their eyes) side-to-side than
>>up and down...hence the shift to screen wider in both TV and monitors.
>
> Also, it is exactly how we see.. our natural vision is a kind of super
> widescreen.
Really? My eyes are round!
GT
news:hgifsd$825$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs Sjouke Burry wrote:
>> Bug Dout wrote:
>>> It's more natural for people to scan (move their eyes) side-to-side
>>> than up and down...hence the shift to screen wider in both TV and
>>> monitors.
>>
>> Now why dont they do that in newspapers?
>> And even on websites you find narrow columns
>> of text.
>> So its not as natural as you suggest.
>
> They do it that way with text, in columns, so you can go back and find the
> start of the next line easilly. If you've ever seen anything written with
> a few hundred letters to the line you'll know what I mean.
Ahh - you mean like a book - the lines are the full width of a tall and thin
page. Actually wait a minute, I don't have any trouble reading a portrait
document either on paper or on my screen. In fact I prefer a screen that can
display a full portrait document, rather than having to scroll up and down
all the time.
GT
> Somewhere on teh intarwebs UCLAN wrote:
>> Gary Brown wrote:
>>
>>> Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage?
>>> I would prefer to get taller, not wider.
>>
>> Stop eating. Put yourself on a "rack" daily.
>>
>> Seriously, most films are shot in an aspect ratio close to 2.35:1. The
>> HDTV aspect ratio of 16:9 (1.78:1) is closer to this than is the
>> CRT's 4:3 (1.33:1) resulting in narrower vertical bars when viewing
>> theatrical DVDs.
>> Add to this, the ATSC SD/HD specification calls for 16:9. All HDTV is
>> 16:9. A 4:3 monitor will have those vertical bars on the top and
>> bottom.
>
> Clue:
>
> He said monitor, not TV.
>
> Some people use their computers for more than just watching downloaded
> movies and TV programmes.
Seconded!
GT
news:hgh25g$j6f$1...@news.eternal-september.org...
Funny, I can do that on my 4:3 screen too - its 1600x1200 pixels, so ample
room for 2 full portrait document side by side. This is not a supporting
reason for widescreen PC displays.
GT
message news:hgku8p$kk2$2...@news.eternal-september.org...
> On 19-Dec-09 03:54, Gary Brown wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage?
>> I would prefer to get taller, not wider.
>
> 1. hd movie/tv format
Not required for most PC users
> 2. workspace
Wasted workspace - Most letters and documents are not widescreen.
Neither of these 2 points support usage of widescreen displays on a PC.
Help me please - I'm turning into Rod Speed. I'll start insulting people
next and calling them children etc.
Cliff
>>> Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage?
>>
>> Mutiple programs open and available at the same time. I can open word and
>> excell at the same time, resize the windows and copy and paste data twice
>> as fast (or more) and still keep an eye on my e-mail for new mail.
>>
>> Cliff
>
> Funny, I can do that on my 4:3 screen too - its 1600x1200 pixels, so ample
> room for 2 full portrait document side by side. This is not a supporting
> reason for widescreen PC displays.
Sure, at 1600 x 1200 anything is possible. But from experience it is far
easier with a widescreen. Then what you have on the screen is actually
visible and the text is not is not the size of ant tracks.
As for not being a supporting reason that may be your opinion but one that
is not supported by the facts and direct experience. All of our office
systems have been switched to wide screen for this reason alone.
DevilsPGD
Your eyes might be, but your field of vision isn't.
kony
True... but it isn't a 16:9 rectangle either, that's just a
nice ratio for a cheap screen plastered onto the end wall of
a movie theater.
kony
It is generally accepted that once the # of characters per
line go beyond a certain amount it becomes more difficult to
read someting. What that # is depends on who you ask,
generally it is 90, 80, even 60 characters or less per line.
I agree it sometimes seems preferrable to have a lot of
content on a screen without scrolling, but part of the issue
there is that the monitors are wider than taller. You could
have same content without scrolling if only the monitor were
rotated on most webpages.
kony
It's not far easier necessarily, it all depends on the dot
pitch. Granted, unfortunately today's cost effective larger
diagonal screens come in widescreen format, but suppose a
~24", 1920 x 1440, or 2048 x 1536, 4:3 ratio display... you
could have readable text, side by side document or app
windows viewable, and not lose so much vertical real-estate.
kony
Unfortunately we are stuck with widescreen on most larger
monitors these days, so although I would rather have more
usable vertical workspace, I'm still liking having more
horizontal workspace at ever plummeting prices per total
pixel count and screen area.
GT
news:lj35j5lerknrn0ign...@4ax.com...
I was just having a day of grumbles - ignore me!
I still don't like widescreen for a PC tho - I have a large TV for
widescreen films and a PC to do my work, which is portrait text based!
Jim T.
My motivation is non-technical. There are times when it is convenient
to have two apps open and visible at the same time, particularly when
I am copying bits of data from one to the other.
DevilsPGD
<sp...@spam.com> was claimed to have wrote:
>It is generally accepted that once the # of characters per
>line go beyond a certain amount it becomes more difficult to
>read someting. What that # is depends on who you ask,
>generally it is 90, 80, even 60 characters or less per line.
This is exactly why I love my 24" widescreen. It's wide enough to have
a couple windows ideally sized for readability side by side with a spare
column, it's perfect for keeping a mail client open while I look
something up in a browser window.
~misfit~
Same here, although I don't have a UXGA monitor I'll settle for my SXGA+.
Even though UXGA was available on this model of ThinkPad to my way of
thinking it's just *too* many pixels per square inch. It's only a 15"
display after all, 1400x1050 is just right for me.
BTW, IBM actually put a 2048x1530 15" display in limited numbers in some
R51p ThinkPads!
Man-wai Chang to The Door (24000bps)
> Help me please - I'm turning into Rod Speed. I'll start insulting people
> next and calling them children etc.
Unfortunately, movie watchers dominate the market, not hardcore PC
people. You can't change the ecology in the monitor world. :)
BTW, I heard that the next ratio would be 21:16; the next movie film, 65mm!
--
@~@ Might, Courage, Vision, SINCERITY.
/ v \ Simplicity is Beauty! May the Force and Farce be with you!
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^ ^ 13:59:01 up 3 days 21:13 1 user load average: 1.09 1.09 1.15