Question for you.

[andrewducker]

Widescreen monitors are now most definitely in.  But does anyone know _why_?

I can understand them on laptops.  And clearly widescreen TVs are better for films.  But why monitors?

Comments

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I think it's all about films, and probably that panels are made for both so making one aspect ratio of panel is cheaper. Arguably it is better for computing as well, as it allows 2 A4 ratioed sheets of paper to be displayed on screen at once.

Presumably the old 4:3 computer screen ratio was because video was in that ratio, so it's no surprise that when the ratio for video changes to ~ 16:9 screens do also.

[nojay.livejournal.com]

There are a number of reasons for monitors to be following TVs into the widescreen arena. One is that flat-panel displays don't have a big glass valve, the cathode ray tube to worry about. A CRT has to have a squarish aspect ratio (usually 4:3) as it is an evacuated glass vessel under pressure from the atmosphere. The wide flat bottle needed for a "widescreen" display would be more prone to cracking under that pressure and so it would need to be made from thicker glass and be a lot heavier. With flat-panels that's not a problem.

The factories making TV panels also make monitor panels and it's easy to repurpose a TV panel with a 16:10 or 16:9 aspect ratio as a monitor; indeed some monitors are now coming with TV connections and even built-in DVD drives and tuners to act as occasional desktop TV sets. There's no reason to build large 4:3 flat-panel displays any more except for a few specialised customers. For the same convergence reasons nearly all 23" - 28" TFT displays have a screen resolution of 1920 x 1080 (16:9) or 1920 x 1200 (16:10) as that is capable of displaying standard 1080p HDTV images, the highest quality currently being broadcast or supplied on Blu-ray disc or streamed via broadband from network sources.

Widescreen displays are also preferable as they put more information in front of people without them having to look up and down all the time. Our eyes are designed to scan left and right with less effort than up-and-down. Try it -- if you keep your head still and look up you'll notice muscle movements lifting your eyebrows whereas your eyes can move left and right without the extra effort. Lions hiding in the savannah grass are more dangerous than drop-bears, basically. A 4:3 ratio 1600 x 1200 display on a CRT (what I'm looking at right now, oddly enough) is missing a 320 x 1200 vertical column of dataspace compared to a 1920 x 1200 16:10 TFT display, and if you give people screen area to play with they will use it up by keeping more windows open or maximising the ones they already have.

[andrewducker]

I have massive borders in my LJ friends page setup, because reading more than 6" wide is very hard - I can't track successfully onto the next line.

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

You don't have to run your browser in a maximised window.
That is just a hang over from the days of small screens.
As displays get bigger the applications it is desirable to run full screen are going to become fewer and fewer.

[andrewducker]

But then I end up dragging it round the screen and getting the window set up. Much easier with Windows 7, admittedly.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

You're running Win7 now, right? If so, just drag the browser window off one side of the desktop and it'll snap into a half-screen. That leaves your page margins suitable for LJ (&etc) and leaves the other half of your monitor free for other uses.

-- Steve's running a fairly-elderly 19" 4:3 cube-o-glass monitor right now, so he doesn't use the splitscreen function too much.

PS: I'm thinking of migrating up to a 22" or 26" 16:9 LCD in the future. If I do, I'll definitely use that feature a lot more.

[andrewducker]

I know about that (see further down) - but I use XP at work.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

I have no need or requirement for home purposes, but some of the applications I'm using in the office definitely benefit from widescreen access as I can see more on my screen and don't have to keep scrolling horizontally, especially the detailed point and click and join the lines type stuff - i would suspect the closest easily available to anyone to see what I mean app woudl be Microsoft Access in a database view.

If you need to aks the question I suspect you're not using the apps I am(Actually i know you're not as otherwise you'd be sitting beside me or talking to me about work all the time) Email etc looks awful widescreen - you have to use windowed view or everything streeeeetches horrifically.

[feorag.livejournal.com]

Makes me happy - I now have space for whatever document I'm working in in Adobe CS, and have the palettes off to one side, not covering my work.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I would love a widescreen monitor for work/play so I could more easily have windows next to one another to move between things.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Marketing crack, I reckon.

Mostly pointless, given all our reading is vertical.

[red-phil.livejournal.com]

So speaks someone who doesn't need to read from one document while editing another.
Wide screens make having 2 documents open side by side more practical.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

And/or someone who doesn't have a widescreen monitor that rotates 90 degrees so you get a nice long "A4 page" on your screen!

At work I have a mix, the laptop is wide screen but the 19" monitor attached is 4:3 so I have many small windows open on the laptop (currently instant messenger, outlook, and a couple of others) and I have my main apps open on the big 4:3 screen.

At home I use two 4:3 19" monitors next to each other to get a 2560x1024 double screen (so an 8:3 monitor!) and about half of my "TV" watching is done on the computer screen as I watch my US TV downloads there.

[tanyad.livejournal.com]

@ Work its a definite plus because I can have several documents open for side to side comparison, work in multiple applications, copy and paste from one document to another.

@ Home, because I'm a gamer. With the 17" monitor I'm using at the moment I don't think I'm getting all I can out of my shiny new video card. The max resolution can only go so high and frankly I enjoy the bigger screen so I can get the most out of my card and games.

I'm no pro but that's why I love wide screens.

[odheirre.livejournal.com]

In VS2008, I can still have the solution editor on the side and the code doesn't wrap around.

But really, I'd guess NetFlix is behind it all.

[andrewducker]

Oooh, that will be nice!

[e-halmac.livejournal.com]

For me, movies, and to have multiple windows open.

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

On top of the previous replies, a 20" screen in 4:3 ratio has about 8% more area than a 20" screen in 16:9 ratio.

So if the marginal manufacturing cost is closely related to area, but consumer choice and marketing efforts are even a little bit more biased towards the diagonal screen measurement, that would explain it. Lots of hypotheticals in there but it doesn't seem too unlikely...

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

My eyes are about 18cm from left-edge to right-edge, and about 2cm tall from top to bottom. So obviously the correct aspect ratio for displays is 9:1.

I remember arguing with someone in the early 90s about whether OHP slides - remember those? - should be portrait or landscape. I argued portrait, on line-length readability grounds, but they argued landscape, on the grounds that billions of TVs couldn't be wrong. They convinced me.

[andrewducker]

TVs were square. They're now widescreen because cinemas are widescreen. Cinemas are widescreen because the original ones were converted theatres, which have stages which are wider than they are tall.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

wrong on most counts. the original aspect ratio for silent film was a consequence of the width of a film strip between the sprocket holes, and the height of for sprocket holes [the academy format]. widescreen didn't come along until considerably later.

[andrewducker]

Aha! Thank you. I've clearly been listening to urban myths.

So - why _did_ widescreen come about?

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Not entirely clear, in short.

The introduction of sound possibly started it with the first change from the silent aspect ratio; the sound track for conventional full-frame sound-on-film 35mm film (Academy format) lies between the perforations and the picture, which gives a more square picture (1.37:1) than the original silent format (1.33:1).

This stayed the standard until the introduction of Cinerama in 1952. Cinerama used three 35mm projectors (projecting separately the left, centre and right of a wide picture - 2.59:1) and a modified fourth projector containing a fully coated 35mm magnetic film for the sound (seven tracks - five behind the screen and two surround tracks).

Cinerama was a gimmick - as Fritz Lang would later say of Cinemascope "it's only good for funerals and snakes". However, it effectively stirred the studios into innovating in widescreen in the same way that the introduction of affordable synchronised sound post WWI (with Phonofilm) spurred a wave of improvements (Movietone, Vitaphone, Photophone, etc).

The chief drawback of Cinerama was that it required three (plus one) expensive, special purpose projectors, a curved screen, and three times as many cans of film for a feature. The format was also notoriously hard to configure (alignment on screen between the three images had to be near-perfect), and sensitive to damage (all three film strips had to be the same length - damage a section of one strip, and you need to remove the corresponding sections of the other strips to keep all three images in sync).

The alternatives to Cinerama all opted for a single projector system that could also screen Academy prints. Each studio backed a different aspect ratio (acheived by matting out part of the image area of each 35mm frame - effectively sacrificing resolution for image width). In 1953, Paramount went for 1.66:1, MGM for 1.75:1 and Universal for 1.85:1 (the latter two are still common, and projectionist error in selecting the wrong aperture plate is probably the cause of most of the boom shots you're likely to see in the cinema).

Fox went in a different direction, however. They used the full Academy frame, but compressed the image horizontally on the film (so objects look thinner and taller) and then projected through a special lens (an anamorphic) to expand the image on screen. This was Cinemascope (2.55:1, later 2.35:1). Again, you could use your existing projector. You could also use your existing lenses, provided you could fit an anamorphic on the front (many projectors of the period have a swing mount for an anamorphic).

The next innovation was the move to 70mm film stock in 1955, which allowed for higher resolution images (like Cinerama) but out of one hole (like the 35mm based formats) and without an anamorphic (which could introduce chromatic aberration and other distortions). This was Todd A.O. (2.21:1), also known as Super Panavision 70. Unlike 35mm films, which had four perforations (sprocket holes) per frame, Todd A.O. had five, so giving better vertical resolution as well.

The first Todd A.O. features (Oklahoma! and Around the World in Eighty Days) both used a frame rate of 30fps (as opposed to the 24fps that had been the standard since the silent days)...but that's another ramble entirely.

[andrewducker]

Thank you, that was very interesting and informative!

[nmg.livejournal.com]

ps. sorry for bad typing - dead batteries in the wireless keyboard, so i'm entering text with a mouse via the keyboard viewer.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

See, you wouldn't get that problem with a fountain pen.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I have two 19 inch monitors at home and I love them so, but sometimes I wish I had one 24 inch monitor. Less screen space for programming but better for watching films and the like.

In a perfect world I'd like 2 24 inch monitors, though I can't decide if I'd want them side to side or stacked vertically. Maybe side to side but rotated 90 degrees for coding and just move one behind the other to watch films on the front one.

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

With all due respect Mike, your geekery outgeeks your brother! And I had you listed as the least geeky of the clan!

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I don't think having dual monitors is geeky. It is necessary! :D

Ask me to connect up my tivo to my PC (or some of the wacky things Andy does) and I'd have no chance.

No, wait, I could probably google it and get stuck half way through. Maybe 2% chance.

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Two monitors definitely ... I was sick in bed recently and having to work from one laptop screen and it was total hell :-)

My plan is to put one of my video projectors in the computer room as a third screen so that I can watch TV/Movies on that, and the rest of the time it would be a parking space for windows I'm not currently working on so I can pull them back into the central focus when needed.

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Now projector monitors would be cool. You just want to have everything connected to everything so you can just say "I'll use my monitor, my projector, my microwave and my iPhone as monitors please".

As will happen in the future!

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Yes! And with cloud computing, so you can be working on a document on your machine at work, decide to head home, drag the open window onto your iPhone and keep working on it on the train and when you get home, drag it onto your home theatre screen!

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

Now that _would_ be magic.

[andrewducker]

You can do that with Google docs, for a simple doc.

Or if you want your whole session then Remote Desktop will do it. I do that all the time. LogMeIn has an iPhone client...

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

but that would be doing entirely *too much damned work* and rather defeating thepoint of going home methinks....

[andrewducker]

You can do that with Google docs, for a simple doc.

Or if you want your whole session then Remote Desktop will do it. I do that all the time. LogMeIn has an iPhone client...

[andrewducker]

Tivo's aren't actually geeky. SCART cable from cable box to Tivo, SCART cable from Tivo to TV. Phone line from wall to Tivo (so it can download the EPG). That's it...

[drainboy.livejournal.com]

I could connect it to my TV, sure...but don't you have yours connected to your PC as well?

[andrewducker]

I don't actually have the Tivo any more. I do have an Apple TV hooked up. That's got an HDMI lead hooked up to the TV. And a WiFi connection that I had to give my WiFi key to.

Other than that, I just had to follow the instructions here to install XBMC:
http://xbmc.org/wiki/?title=XBMC_for_Mac_on_Apple_TV#HOW-TO_install_XBMC_on_your_Apple_TV

It really was dead simple :->

Techwriter paradise...

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Can have the app running on the right, document open on the left. Woo.

[cheekbones3.livejournal.com]

Fit more on! I've had one for years. Couldn't afford big normal proportions I think...

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

My two reasons are for UI and for information. UI, when properly designed, can grow to use the space provided, and the more space there is, the more you have to work with. My World of Warcraft custom UI is much more efficient now that I'm in widescreen.

As for information, the only hindrance I find is in reading text. In terms of actual absorption of information, like video and images and surfing through a web page, the widescreen format does a much better job. And a much better job than the letter layout that an earlier monitor manufacturer tried.

I can't remember who, but someone released a monitor that was on a base that could let you twist the monitor, rotating it 90 degrees, in order to display full pages. It didn't make for a good workspace, in my opinion.

[lpetrazickis.livejournal.com]

I think there might be something cognitive or psychological underlying the preference for widescreen. Given a choice, I prefer 16:9 over both 16:10 and 4:3.

One idea that comes to mind is that our eyes are side-by-side, giving us more horizontal viewing range.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

I have a 30" Cinema display. Mostly because I thought I could afford it at the time, and I'm a huge cinema fan. I also tend to have at least 10+ apps open at any time and had a total bugger of a time keeping track of them with my old iMac [20"]

I know I don't *need* 30", but it is damned nice.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Some of the early monitors were 'portrait'. My friend peterwright has one, though I have no idea if it's functional.