I'm sure many of you have noticed how difficult it is getting these days to find a standard ratio (4:3) display. About the only new TVs with 4:3 screens are CRT sets, and those that remain are all positioned at the low-end of the price bracket. If you've shopped for an LCD computer monitor lately, you've probably seen how it has become more and more difficult to find one in standard 4:3 ratio-- it's all about "widescreen" nowadays. Buying a laptop computer and want a 4:3 display? Good luck with that. Sadly, it seems that one of the few remaining 4:3 laptops in production is no more -- as of a few days ago, no longer can you buy the standard-ratio 14.1" Thinkpad T61 -- Lenovo only offers the widescreen versions now. See:
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/message?board.id=T_Series_Thinkpads&thread.id=5487

It's especially sad when you consider that when IBM still ran things, they *only* offered the Thinkpad T-series in standard 4:3 screens even as other companies started to move to widescreen displays. Now the only standard-ratio notebook offered by Lenovo is the X61 subnotebook (XGA only). Dell still offers the Latitude D530 (the cheapest Latitude model) in standard ratio, but I can't seem to find any other 4:3 models still out there.

I realize that this is technically off-topic, but given the past discussion regarding standard 4:3 versus 16:9 display formats, I figure this might be of interest to some folks.

I don't mean to be an "agua-fiestas" but what is the downside to going to widescreen???

:music:

000

I think the wide screen format could be good for things like having a browser window with your bookmarks listed on the left, or a browser plus an IM program.

The one really lousy trend I have seen is "shiny" LCD screens, whether on laptops or TV sets/monitors. Don't these stupid companies realize the non-glare screen is one of the reasons to pick an LCD over a plasma or CRT display? :mad:

(This message was entered on an IBM Thinkpad X31. Still from the "true blue" IBM days, but... Made in China.)

That is my point exactly. I am trying to get why we are bemoaning the loss of the 4:3 screen when I find the widescreens to be much easier to work with by having multiple windows open side by side - something I could not do in a 4:3 format.

Can you give me one advantage a 4:3 ratio has over the 16:9 on a notebook???

:music:

Despite the increasing amount of widescreen displays most stuff still seems to be formatted for 4:3 (I'm not complaining, I still run 21" 4:3 CRTs and have old 4:3 laptops). I don't use sidebars/widgets/gagdets, just a basic clean full screen layout so for most applications/web sites the extra width of a widescreen display is dead space.

I found a too good to refuse deal on a widescreen Toshiba laptop. I used it for a few days before selling it and going back to my old Thinkpad 600X. Despite the fact that Toshiba was much newer and faster for me it was unusable. The shiny LCD picked up glare at any angle. The keyboard felt awful and I just can't use a touchpad after years with trackballs and trackpoints. I think I'll just track down newer Thinkpads (real pre-Lenovo Thinkpads) as I find them.

What I find more frustrating about the transistion to 16:9 in general is that so much stuff that I've seen on TV lately has obviously been shot in 4:3 and then masked for 16:9. Not just background is masked out, but often the tops of peoples heads are masked out as well. If it was shot in 4:3, just show it in 4:3!

I don't mean to be an "agua-fiestas" but what is the downside to going to widescreen???

Well, aside from being annoying, and a useless change from an already established standard, the 16:9 format has other, more quantifiable problems...

Set size - think of it this way. What's at a larger premium in a house? Horizontal space, or vertical? Horizontal, of course. There's almost always room above and below your television, but not normally room to the sides. So, if you're replacing a standard 25" television, with a new wide screen set, a set the same width will be smaller! To get the same size picture you had before, you need to go a fair amount bigger. Now, this may not be a problem - you have room, you say. But, let's say you have one of those huge, wall-filling four foot wide sets. Now, you've still got space above and below the thing, right? Wouldn't it be even more awesome if it was 4:3 and gave you that bigger picture?

Program format - 90% of everything on television is 4:3. Even as things transition, there is, and will continue to be, a lot of 4:3 programming. And any reruns are going to be 4:3. Because of all the "standards" to choose from now, the picture will either be displayed with bars, cropped on the top, or horribly distorted and stretched. Programs that _are_ 16:9 sometimes don't even get handled properly. I've seen more than one 16:9 set displaying bars on all four sides, with a small 16:9 picture in the middle.

Usefullness of 16:9 - face it, very little actually takes advantage of the wide format. They shoot the same way they did before. The action is, as it should be, centered. The extra "stuff" at the edges of the picture isn't useful to the broadcast. Who needs to see an extra couple feet of desk to either side of the news anchor? What's the point of showing an extra couple of feet of a room or street - the actors are in the middle anyway. Very few movies even make use of this extra space. Pay attention, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Basically, there is NO REASON for broadcast television to be 16:9. Yeah, the format is fine and dandy for movies in theaters. But television? Come on!

On computers, the 16:9 display can come in handy for some. But, once again, there are drawbacks. The standard screen resolutions that have been around for years are meant for a standard screen. This isn't as big of an issue with computers though, because the "programming" you're "watching" changes with the hardware, and doesn't linger around in "reruns" too often.

Also, with laptops, it's especially silly. In an device that's intended to be small, do you really want this wider screen? I suppose you could say that the machine can be shorter in the other dimension for the same width, but once again, you lose screen area.

From a useability standpoint, the 16:9 can help in graphical environments, because you can now have two windows side by side. I give it that. Now, this seems like it would be nice... provided of course, that you're GAINING horizontal resolution with the 16:9 display - not simply losing vertical resolution. All too often, with these wide displays (the ones I've seen, that is), they don't provide more than 1280 pixels horizontally. So... OK... I do 1280x1024 on my 15 year old 17" CRT monitor. I could "upgrade" to an LCD panel, and get 1280x768. Ooh. It's nice and wide. And I get, wait a sec, I'm just losing vertical resolution! I now have LESS display space than I had before. And now I have glare.

I'm not even going to get into the loss of color definition and poor black levels of LCD displays...

-Ian

Actually my notebook (from where I am posting) displays quite nicely at 1920 X 1080 in a window to the right of a MS Access application I am building. Television is another story and not really a good comparison with a computer. Most of us use them for two very different things. Most people don't watch TV on their computers. My computer is a work tool, not a box to play games on or chat with a 100 friends. If I can keep multiple windows open with applications concurrently it is a definite advantage as I am often sharing information between them.

Notebooks were never designed with the intention to be "small" - only portable. I have a desktop in my office with more capacity, memory and features. My notebook allows me to sit out here on my deck and work, enjoying the sound and view of the Pacific ocean surf below me with my feet up and sipping coffee with two shots of Irish Creme. If the size of this thing ever exceeds the size of my lap we'll talk.

Life is good and I love the wide screen format on my notebook.

:music:

I still have the el cheapo HP vs15 monitor (4:3 LCD) that came with my computer 3 years ago, and I like it just fine. The max resolution that it will do is 1024x768, but I am not a gamer, and I don't tp graphics heavy applications, so a higher resolution is useless for me. The monitor 19,658 (no, no typos there) hours on it and still works like a charm. No plans to upgrade this.

I, for one, do not expect to go 16:9 anytime soon, as I have no more horizontal space to work with. Everyone wants to go widescreen, but I think that it's useless. Nothing works right, and most CRT's will give off a better picture, wnyways, IMHO.

I, for one, do not expect to go 16:9 anytime soon, as I have no more horizontal space to work with. Everyone wants to go widescreen, but I think that it's useless. Nothing works right, and most CRT's will give off a better picture, wnyways, IMHO.

I will bet you that my wide screen notebook at 1920X1080 takes up less of a footprint than your CRT. Based on the number of hours your CRT has logged it is just a matter of time before she goes. I suppose you can keep recycling other CRT's people throw out...

:music:

4:3 died at the movie theaters in 1954, it's just taken Television a while to catch up. :yes:

However you might feel about TV a 16:9 monitor makes a lot of sense, I've encountered Web sites that were too wide for a 4:3 monitor and had no way to scroll over! Scrolling back and forth is a pain in the arse anyway.

I will bet you that my wide screen notebook at 1920X1080 takes up less of a footprint than your CRT. Based on the number of hours your CRT has logged it is just a matter of time before she goes. I suppose you can keep recycling other CRT's people throw out...

:music:

Read closer my friend....that's a 15" LCD. :yes:

The one really lousy trend I have seen is "shiny" LCD screens, whether on laptops or TV sets/monitors.

I second that. The first time I saw one of those glossy-coated LCD screens on a laptop computer in a store, I thought it was a rather attractive effect. However, after seeing a glossy-coated LCD screen on a laptop in actual *use* (rather than on display in a store), it didn't take long before I thought "What the heck were they thinking?? This coating reflects glare like crazy!"

(This message was entered on an IBM Thinkpad X31. Still from the "true blue" IBM days, but... Made in China.)

Nice machine-- I love the little X-series Thinkpads. OT, but I think the X31 is kinda in the "sweet spot" of the X-series if you're looking for a used/refurb X-series subnotebook right now in terms of bang for the buck. It's got USB 2.0 built-in (unlike its immediate predecesor, the X30, which had USB 1.1) and it could have a proper video adapter in it (I think the X40 and later X-series models could only be had with "vampire video" (integrated graphics). Yes, I realize that integrated graphics does generally improve battery life though, which I'm sure is why they switched over to that for the X-series.

As for why anyone would want a 4:3 screen rather than a 16:9:

I will admit that for most buyers, the typical 15.4" widescreen display provided on new notebooks these days (WXGA, which is 1280 x 800) offers a much more flexible/useful resolution than the typical 14.1" standard-ratio display that was previously commonplace (XGA, 1024 x 768). It really does-- a 15.4" WXGA screen gives you more "real estate" than a 14.1" XGA, and provides a noticably larger screen, but still has a similar dot pitch so fonts and such still look about the same size.

However, if you want to maximize your resolution and don't object to having smaller pixels (higher DPI), yet want a more compact notebook computer, it's hard to beat a 4:3 screen. A 14.1" SXGA+ display (1400 x 1280) beats a 15.4" WXGA hands-down both in vertical and horizontal resoluiton, yet results in a smaller and more portable unit. (Yes, I realize you can get widescreen notebooks with higher resolution screens than WXGA.) In general though, a 4:3 ratio screen on a notebook is more space efficient in that it keeps the largest dimension smaller than it would be on a 16:9 widescreen notebook computer having the same amount of total screen area.

Some other reasons for 4:3 ratio computer screens. Most of these will not be important for most people (perhaps not even *me*), however.

- Applications tend to be optimized for 4:3 displays.
- Most digital camera image sensors (and picture formats) are 4:3 ratio. (there's even a lens mount/sensor standard used by some digital SLR manufacturers called "Four-Thirds"...)
- Most traditional film camera/print formats are closer to 4:3 than to 16:9.
- MS-DOS applications and other legacy full-screen apps are designed for 4:3 displays, and will look distorted in 16:9. Likewise, native resolutions for those apps are standard 4:3 formats that should scale better on 4:3 LCD screens, even if the native resolution of the LCD is higher than what the application runs in.

Also, I dabble from time to time with 3D modeling, and for that I prefer working in a square (1:1) workspace anyway.

Overall, it's not that I object to widescreen computer displays, but I do think their introduction seemed like more of a sales gimmick to me than anything else ("See, it's *Widescreen*, so it's better!"), and prefer being able to have the choice.


Okay, I'll make sure my next post actually has something to do with TV. :)

000