Why Widescreen?
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From: ~misfit~ on 18 Dec 2009 19:03 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. -- 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'.
From: kony on 19 Dec 2009 01:43 On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 14:54:07 -0500, "Gary Brown" <garyjbrown(a)charter.net> wrote: >Hi, > >Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage? >I would prefer to get taller, not wider. > >Thanks, >Gary > 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.
From: Sjouke Burry on 19 Dec 2009 02:06 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.
From: ~misfit~ on 19 Dec 2009 07:10 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. -- 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'.
From: John McGaw on 19 Dec 2009 12:40
On 12/18/2009 2:54 PM, Gary Brown wrote: > Hi, > > Most monitors nowadays are widescreen. What is the advantage? > I would prefer to get taller, not wider. > > Thanks, > Gary > > If it is really that bothersome, you can purchase an LCD monitor which is 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 |