Goodbye and Good Riddance To the 16:9 Aspect Ratio (theverge.com) 232
One of the biggest trends coming out of this year's CES wasn't something people will necessarily notice at first glance unless they look closely. From a report: After enduring years of cramped, "widescreen" laptop displays, it looks like we're finally starting to say goodbye to the 16:9 aspect ratio. [...] The aspect ratios you'll typically see on laptops are 16:9, 3:2, 16:10 (which, for whatever reason, is called 16:10 rather than 8:5), and (occasionally) 4:3. 16:9 is the most common option and also the one with the lowest amount of vertical space relative to its horizontal space. [...] But this CES showed that 16:10 and 3:2 displays are inching closer to the mainstream. These are some of the biggest laptops announced at the show that are offering non-16:9 display options:
HP Elite Folio (1920 x 1280, 3:2)
Dell Latitude 9420 2-in-1 (2560 x 1600, 16:10)
Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 2 (2560 x 1600, 16:10)
Lenovo Legion 7 and Legion 5 Pro (2560 x 1600, 16:10)
LG Gram 17 and Gram 16 (2650 x 1600, 16:10)
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (2560 x 1600, 16:10)
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga (2256 x 1504, 3:2)
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 and X1 Yoga Gen 6 (up to 3840 x 2400, 16:10)
Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable (1920 x 1280, 3:2)
Asus ROG Flow X13 (up to 3840 x 2400, 16:10)
That doesnâ(TM)t mean there are no 16:9 displays left â" plenty of laptops still use it, and probably will for the foreseeable future. And some of these devices, like the LG Grams, were 16:10 already. But it's significant that a large number of the flagships we'll be seeing in the first half of 2021 will be either 16:10 or 3:2. In fact, when you include MSI's 16:10 Summit E13 Flip and Razer's 16:10 Razer Book 13 (both of which were announced prior to CES), I can't think of a mainstream consumer laptop company that isn't now selling a non-16:9 flagship-level machine. It's clear that companies across the board are moving toward laptops with taller aspect ratios, and I fully expect to see more of them in the years to come.
HP Elite Folio (1920 x 1280, 3:2)
Dell Latitude 9420 2-in-1 (2560 x 1600, 16:10)
Lenovo ThinkBook Plus Gen 2 (2560 x 1600, 16:10)
Lenovo Legion 7 and Legion 5 Pro (2560 x 1600, 16:10)
LG Gram 17 and Gram 16 (2650 x 1600, 16:10)
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro (2560 x 1600, 16:10)
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Titanium Yoga (2256 x 1504, 3:2)
Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 9 and X1 Yoga Gen 6 (up to 3840 x 2400, 16:10)
Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable (1920 x 1280, 3:2)
Asus ROG Flow X13 (up to 3840 x 2400, 16:10)
That doesnâ(TM)t mean there are no 16:9 displays left â" plenty of laptops still use it, and probably will for the foreseeable future. And some of these devices, like the LG Grams, were 16:10 already. But it's significant that a large number of the flagships we'll be seeing in the first half of 2021 will be either 16:10 or 3:2. In fact, when you include MSI's 16:10 Summit E13 Flip and Razer's 16:10 Razer Book 13 (both of which were announced prior to CES), I can't think of a mainstream consumer laptop company that isn't now selling a non-16:9 flagship-level machine. It's clear that companies across the board are moving toward laptops with taller aspect ratios, and I fully expect to see more of them in the years to come.
Never understood 16:9 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Never understood 16:9 (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Never understood 16:9 (Score:5, Funny)
16:10 displays are twice as good as 8:5 displays! ;-) !
That's an easy mistake to make but they're actually FOUR times as good because both arbitrary numbers are doubled!
Re: Never understood 16:9 (Score:5, Interesting)
At 16:9 to 3:2, 4k resolution is just about perfect for displays up to around 28-30" diagonal. It's where you can display razor-sharp text down to ~4-6 points without astigmatism-like blur in enclosed areas (like "B" or "g").
Around 32-36", 4k doesn't quite cut it for viewing at 2-3 feet away. You don't really "need" 8k resolution at that point, but a small bump up to 5k or 6k is nice. Above 50", and definitely above 65-70", you really do need 8k to maintain the look and feel of 4k@27-30".
1280x720 and 1920x1080 were a HUGE step up from interlaced 640-720x480-540, a BIG step up from the same progressive resolution, and a night/day difference from broadcast NTSC & PAL (which was more like 160x280 or 160x300 when interlace flicker & the filtering necessary to minimize it was taken into account), but they were ALWAYS kind of mediocre resolutions by computer-display standards.
Even in the late 1990s, 1600x1200 was only moderately high end, and 1920x1600 was almost taken for granted by high-end computer users with 20-21" monitors. Hell, I was a broke student in 1996, and even *I* had a 19" monitor doing 1152x864@85hz (1280x960 had color fringing & maxed out at 60hz). By 2002, 1920x1600 was my NORMAL mode, with 2560x1920 once in a while just to prove I could do it (albeit with visible misconvergence, limited color depth, and only 60hz refresh).
For me, 1920x1080 was a HUGE step down, and I hated it for more than a decade. My 28" 3840x2160 monitor was the first time I felt like I've truly regained everything I had to sacrifice for LCDs AND genuinely moved up in every way compared to what I had circa 2007 (when I gave up my 21" flat-front Trinitron doing 1920x1600@85hz) for a wider-but-shorter LCD that could only do 1920x1080. Losing a third of my vertical resolution REALLY hurt.
May 1920x1080 burn in hell and be gone forever! Even at phone sizes, once you've experienced razor-sharp tiny text at 2560x1440, {anything}x1080 just feels like it's making your eyes bleed.
Before anyone brings up subpixel font rendering... (shudder) please don't. For most of Windows' history, ClearType never worked properly/at-all if you have multiple monitors, or wanted to use one/both in portrait orientation, or in non-identical modes. And until VERY recently, subpixel fonts on Linux were somewhere between "unsupported" and "really, really hard to get working" (here's why: http://david.freetype.org/clea... [freetype.org]).
Re: Never understood 16:9 (Score:4, Insightful)
You might be able to display tiny fonts like that without blur, but my tired old eyes won't be able to see them without blur.
Re: Never understood 16:9 (Score:5, Informative)
Find an optometrist with a high-end wavefront autorefractor, and get an objective analysis of your REAL astigmatism. After they scan your eyes, demand to see the raw numbers. Take a photo of them with your phone. Then, if the prescription the doctor hands you deviates significantly from it (especially if it alters the cylinder values), demand to know WHY.
If the autorefractor numbers deviate significantly from the numbers on the prescription s/he eventually hands you, decline to buy expensive new glasses that day. Go home, go to zenni.com, and order two cheap $6.95 pairs... one in the prescription you were given, and one that reflects the autorefractor's opinion. If you have presbyopia, order two additional pairs with the same prescription, but add 1.00 to each of the sphere components. To tell them apart, I recommend getting them in 4 different frame colors (these aren't you're "real" glasses, they're just a proof of concept experiment to show you the difference at this point).
You'll probably find after they arrive that the prescription you were handed IS "more comfortable" for all-around viewing (and probably no better than your old glasses), but ALSO find that the autorefractor-defined pair is a lot sharper when looking at your computer (but appears distorted when looking at everything else). Don't panic. The whole purpose of this exercise was to show you the sharpness you're missing by leaving your astigmatism under-corrected.
For the two pairs with a +1.00 add (for computer use/reading), I can almost GUARANTEE you'll prefer the ones based on the autorefractor's opinion.
The good news is, a lot of the awful distortion you're seeing in the autorefractor-defined pair is actually due to the shit-poor mass-produced lenses in the glasses. No, it's not because they're cheap and from Zenni... pretty much ALL low-end mass-produced lenses suck like that. There isn't just one way to make a lens for a given sphere/cylinder/axis prescription... and most of the cheap & common ones utterly suck, especially for "off-axis" viewing (ie, whenever you aren't looking literally straight ahead through the optical center of the lens). What you want are "atoric" (or "double aspheric") lenses. As a practical matter, that means you want lenses that are "freeform".
If the thought of spending $600-800 on the lenses alone doesn't make you blanche, seriously consider Shaw lenses. They're basically IOT's lens designs, but they go a step further when optimizing the lens design to equalize the magnification of the two lenses (sphere strength loosely correlates to magnification, but by altering the base curve and thickness, you can manipulate focus and magnification semi-independently of each other). My "computer" glasses (with +1.00 add, on top of my distance prescription) are Shaw, and IMHO were worth every penny. They're a joy to wear. My only regret is that I couldn't afford to get ALL my glasses with Shaw lenses.
Also, if you ever notice that wearing "reading" glasses (with magnification) makes things look like they're weirdly "shimmering", find an eye doctor who specializes in treating kids with strabismus & convergence disorders, and have them test you for latent heterophoria. For an easy way to check, look at something while alternating between covering your left and right eyes. If the two images are at different heights, and/or the left eye's image appears to be to the RIGHT of what the right eye is seeing, you might have heterophoria.
Mild/latent heterophoria is rarely diagnosed, because frankly prior to a few years ago, most doctors didn't really have the tools to easily diagnose small amounts of it, and glasses with prism correction were ENORMOUSLY more expensive compared to regular ones, so you didn't get glasses with prism correction unless you were LITERALLY crippled by double vision. With freeform lenses, adding a diopter or two of prism to lenses that are fairly tame to begin with is generally free, because it's just a mild tweak to the raytracing algorithm.
I personally HAV
Re:Never understood 16:9 (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because you think this is about work and computer screens. 16:9 and the manufacture of displays has always largely been driven by the movie / television industry. The trend there is to push wider, not taller.
I too prefer 16:10 screens.
Re:Never understood 16:9 (Score:5, Insightful)
I still have my old Dell Precision M90 from over a decade ago, with its 1920x1200 display (16:10), it was a much better aspect ratio for working on. It always annoyed me that there weren't more machines with squarer aspect ratios, especially in the more professional segments, so I hope this change lasts.
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Here's the app I'm looking for... give me 16:9 news mixed with a personal ticker in the 10th area...
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Can't say I disagree, especially on a laptop. On a big screen for coding I care less because with a sufficiently large 16:9 screen the columns get so long I don't want to fill out the whole thing. On a laptop though that's never the case.
I mean I guess if you're apple and all you do is show attractive, polished people watching achingly cool films in desirable locations then the black bars are a real downer.
Re:Never understood 16:9 (Score:4, Interesting)
I still find that I miss too much vertical space.
Hence why I'm running three 27" monitors in portrait mode.
Re:Never understood 16:9 (Score:5, Informative)
Because it is a standard for TV, and having the same standard for both computer monitors and TVs allow for economies of scale. That's how we got so many cheap 1080p monitors.
The TV standard was born as a compromise between film and video aspect ratio.
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Doesn't producing monitors and TVs of many different sizes squander that advantage?
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Doesn't producing monitors and TVs of many different sizes squander that advantage?
It doesn't. You make a large panel in a given aspect ratio and you can cut it into multiple smaller panels, including of different sizes, in that same aspect ratio pretty easily. You can also easily get divisions of that aspect ratio. But something in a completely different aspect may be impossible without wasting some of the large panel.
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For some definition of "marginal", but that 11% makes a big difference in usability depending on your use case. As portrait monitor, 16:10 is way better.
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I was going to get outraged that my nice 16:9 aspect ratio was being taken away from me, but I've just done the calculation and found that the aspect ratio that I have and have always had and prefer to any other is actually 8:5.
So yes, I say carry on.
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I wonder how much is due to the fact that 16:10 is the "standard" resolution that is closest to the Golden Mean
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I've always preferred 16:10 over 16:9 and most people seem to agree with me. This is a really welcome shift.
Well at least they aren't pushing glossy screens like they did 10 years ago.
Re: Never understood 16:9 (Score:2)
NeXTStep would have been good on a 16:9 screen due to the dock location, but Apple fucked that up for OSX.
reason it's called 16:10 rather than 8:5 (Score:5, Insightful)
Because people are idiots. [mentalfloss.com]
Re:reason it's called 16:10 rather than 8:5 (Score:5, Interesting)
False. Idiots (by formal definition) are the kind of dumb who can barely add. That said there's nothing about being an idiot or not which makes it instantly easier to compare a 16:9 vs 16:10 screen instead of changing both numbers and making people think.
Why make people calculate when it's not necessary to do so. I spend my entire frigging day buried in numbers, the last thing I need is to waste braincells on division when comparing marketing material on documentation. It's the same reason you publish specifications which could be readily calculated from other specifications. It doesn't matter how high your IQ is, customers don't generally want to solve logic puzzles to buy products.
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False: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
You are referring to the obsolete old definition.
You do have a point about comparability. Although a really generic approach would be 1 : 0.5625 vs. 1 : 0.625 or 1.778 : 1 vs. 1.6 : 1
I think this shows nicely that the problem is more difficult.
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Re:reason it's called 16:10 rather than 8:5 (Score:5, Insightful)
How much more vertical space do you have for a 4:3 screen compared to 8:5 or 16:9?
What about 16:12, 16:10 and 16:9?
That's why we say 16:10 rather than 8:5, and why I'd allow 16:12 to replace 4:3.
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The only other downside is that it makes expressing certain aspect ratios like 5:4 (
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By similar argument, you also need to consider the screen or pixel size. Having a zillion pixels isn't helpful if each one is only a micron across.
Speaking for my lazy self, I can more quickly understand the relative ratios between 9, 10 and 12 than between 1/1.77, 1/1.1.6 and 1/1.33.
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I think they should denote all screens in 16:X ratios. AFAIK, everything we use is a power of two one the X axis, so it works out well. And if it helps other people, I can totally handle that all fractions aren't reduced.
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It is because 16:9 is still common. So if you say pick form a 16:9 vs an 8:5 you will need to take the extra step to see the common number and multiply it by 2 to really see that 8:5 is taller than 16:9.
Being that the 16:10 ratio has more pixels than 16:9 and it makes these screens a bit more expensive. Allowing a person who may need to make a snap decision to pick between the two is much easier if you can see a common number between them.
Smart People don't always have the time to do crazy research in ever
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Because people are idiots. [mentalfloss.com]
In my kitchen sink I once found a 1 cup measuring cup and a 1/2 cup measuring cup. So I asked my wife if she had needed to measure 1.5 cups.
Yes, she had.
She's an elementary school teacher. She teaches fractions.
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Because people are idiots. [mentalfloss.com]
People are idiots cause they dont want to waste meat? Or eat less? or any other obtuse reason you seem to have skipped? Maybe it tasted like ass to some?
Your selected preference does not make them idiots.
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Um, the article pointed out that when questioned that many customers felt that 1/3 pound for the same cost as a 1/4 pound was a waste of money. Ie, they did not understand fractions. Or probably they understand the fractions if they stop and think about them, but most people just rely on gut feelings.
So 16:10 feels bigger than 16:9, and yet without knowing the actual dimensions you can't say for sure. You could make a tiny laptop with 320x200 which indeed be tiny despite being 16:10 :-)
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These are the same people as think a ton of feathers weighs less than a ton of lead perchance?
I don't get it (Score:5, Insightful)
What was wrong with 4:3 in the first place?
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4:3 (1.333) wastes a lot of vertical space when you try to view two pages side by side.
In the same scenario, 3:2 (1.5) wastes horizontal space. So does 16:10 (1.6) and 16:9 (1.778).
What we really need are monitors with a 1.414 aspect ratio [wikipedia.org]. Then you can view a single A3 sheet in landscape with no wasted space, or two A4 pages in portrait. But maybe that's just too practical.
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The problem is most computer displays fit the image of a computer.
A typewriter with a TV on top of it.
Early home computers were actually hooked up to TV's to make it more affordable for the masses.
After a while when graphics power allowed for 80 column text (needing around 640 pixel horizontal resolution) The TV was phased out for a dedicated computer monitor that can handle the higher phosphor count, without bleeding, which was still often just a Black and White TV, than the more expensive color displays.
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It didn't match Hollywood film production at the time HD standards were adopted.
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One reason, other than just being more TV like, is that a 16:9 screen of a stated diagonal size is a smaller area than a "same size" 4:3, so a 15" laptop could be made cheaper with a widescreen.
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For gaming, nothing. Professional CS:GO players still use it [prosettings.net]
For watching movies you want to preserve the varying wide aspect ratios they use. Every director has his "pet aspect ratio" and equivalent film width.
i.e. Movies displayed on IMAX use used 1.43:1, while most early US movies used 1.78:1 (16:9) or 1.85:1 but that has creeped up to 2.35:1 or 2.39:1. The 1927 movie Napoleon [wikipedia.org] used 4:1.
Here is a picture [ctfassets.net] showing the common aspe
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LCD economies of scale. 4:3 worked really poorly for DVDs (which ended up using 16:9 for the widescreen versions.) It was cheaper to buy the same aspect ratio screens. Then, software started being designed to take advantage of it.
TL;DR - 16:9 has economies of scale that 4:3 (16:12) does not.
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The ancient Greeks thought it was he best - so modern people decided it was "Old Hat"
In reality: Holywood invented "Wide Screen" to stop movies being watched on TV, so TV screens became "Wide screen" and the entire world was inconvenienced because Holywood are scum.
Re:I don't get it (Score:5, Informative)
TV was 4:3 first, because the first cathode ray tubes were round, and just had a rectangular screen mask, and 4:3 was close to the Academy format (35 mm prints), which most 35 mm cameras of the time used. Going further away from the 4:3 format would have been a waste of screen estate, as it is not easy to make cathode ray tubes whose screen differs too much from a circle (only in the late 1980ies, the first CRT screens with a wider aspect ratio than 4:3 appeared).
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16:9 is a more "natural" ratio; ie. it comes closer to how we see the world. This is useful if you wish to have an experience that fills your field of view as much as possible, like watching video or playing games.
However, while this fits our field of vision for just looking at stuff, it is totally different from our optimal field of vision when reading. Text can very quickly become too wide to read comfortably (or write), and having more text displayed vertically helps when scanning through a big body of t
Re: I don't get it (Score:3)
IMAX is way more natural.
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We humans seem to like objects that are expressions of the golden ratio (phi, about 1.618). 16:9 is closer to phi than 4:3 that's why they promoted it back in the day as more pleasing to the eye. 16:10 is even closer, It's strange why they didn't do that instead of 16:9.
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What was wrong with 4:3 in the first place?
Adding extra width to the monitors made it easier to work with multiple applications at the same time.
Less scrolling with 4:3 (Score:3)
If 4:3 is good, then 16:9 is good squared.
The real reason is that your field of vision is wider than it is taller. And a narrow screen doesn't make full use of it whereas a wider screen does.
I never got those people. I get that for awhile, it was a cool gimmick to play DVDs on your new 2001 HP laptop, but that was 20 years ago now. I don't need a wide screen. I write code all day. The margins are wasted. As a working professional, height is a huge advantage as it reduces scrolling. 4:3 is perfect in horizontal or vertical.
I realize it's subjective opinion, but I really miss 4:3 ratios. I love my ipad's screen. I wish I could buy monitors with the same ratio, but they stopped selling t
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No, that was the excuse. The real reason is that with a 16:9 ratio you need less screen surface to reach a particular screen diagonal. So, the manufacturer of the screens can produce more screens per square meter of screen panel. (Phrased differently, the number of pixels is smaller for a 16:9 screen versus a 4:3 screen with the same diagonal in inches.)
It was just a repetition of history, when apple sold a screen diagonal of 12” (actually useable screen),whereas PCs were sold with 13” screens (
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If 4:3 is good, then 16:9 is good squared.
The real reason is that your field of vision is wider than it is taller. And a narrow screen doesn't make full use of it whereas a wider screen does.
I never got those people. I get that for awhile, it was a cool gimmick to play DVDs on your new 2001 HP laptop, but that was 20 years ago now. I don't need a wide screen. I write code all day. The margins are wasted. As a working professional, height is a huge advantage as it reduces scrolling. 4:3 is perfect in horizontal or vertical. I realize it's subjective opinion, but I really miss 4:3 ratios. I love my ipad's screen. I wish I could buy monitors with the same ratio, but they stopped selling them long ago for that stupid watch DVDs on your computer trend. I haven't seen them in stores for 15 years now.
If 4:3 is good, then 16:9 is good squared.
The real reason is that your field of vision is wider than it is taller. And a narrow screen doesn't make full use of it whereas a wider screen does.
I never got those people. I get that for awhile, it was a cool gimmick to play DVDs on your new 2001 HP laptop, but that was 20 years ago now. I don't need a wide screen. I write code all day. The margins are wasted. As a working professional, height is a huge advantage as it reduces scrolling. 4:3 is perfect in horizontal or vertical. I realize it's subjective opinion, but I really miss 4:3 ratios. I love my ipad's screen. I wish I could buy monitors with the same ratio, but they stopped selling them long ago for that stupid watch DVDs on your computer trend. I haven't seen them in stores for 15 years now.
As someone who was doing a lot of development at that time - I loved 16:9 when it arrived on the desktop. Not because of movies - I don't think I've ever watched a normal movie on either a laptop or a computer screen. The big benefit was the space - it became way more practical to have multiple applications on the screen at once, e.g. both bugzilla and emacs, or email and whatever you were working in, or emacs and a ton of terminals.
Re: I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
16:9 might be good for movies and games, where immersion is important. But laptops are not used just for that.
For computer screens, where you mostly scroll up and down, more height is important, and when reading, your eyes need to quickly go from one side of the monitor to the other, without losing track of which line you're at, so wide monitor is actually a negative. Newspapers learned that lesson centuries ago, where even the normal width of a page is too much and they had to use columns. Heck, all textbooks and letters are taller than they are wide. Even most website are now wasting a lot of real estate on the left and right to limit the width of their pages.
Re: I don't get it (Score:4, Funny)
Most websites are wasting a lot of real estate by not providing anything useful. Instead, it's pictures of happy people doing something sandwiched between word salad.
It would be nice if when I went to a web site I could find information about the product, specific information, not hand waving, "These aren't the droids you're looking for" specifics.
Re: I don't get it (Score:5, Funny)
Most websites are wasting a lot of real estate by not providing anything useful. Instead, it's pictures of happy people doing something sandwiched between word salad.
Sir, this is the latest and most fashionable, and therefore objectively best ever trend in web design, and that makes you a backwards dinosaur obviously in need of re-training for criticizing it! :-P
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You can tell that it's ultra-fashionable because the text is light-grey on a white background, with the font-sizes and div widths etc specified in pixels. 12px looks great on a 1440p monitor, and even better on 4K.
here's a little poem that celebrates web design and web designers:
fuck grey text on white backgrounds
fuck grey text on black backgrounds
fuck thin, spindly fonts
fuck 10px text
fuck any size of anything in px
fuck font-weight 300
fuck unreadable web pages
fuck themes that implement this unreadable idiocy
fuck sites that don't work without javascript
fuck reactjs and everything like it
thank fuck for Stylus.
and uBlock Origin. and uMatrix.
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I never said that 16:9 was never useful. I'm using a dual monitor setup myself because it's more practical for my own use. But I argue that 4:3 is more useful in general.
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Bezels just mean that the size of the laptop doesn't match the size of the display. You can have bezels regardless of the chosen ratio.
If you have more bezel in one direction, it means the display ratio doesn't match the laptop size ratio. And nowadays, the bezel is mostly vertical, so even if your display is 16:9, your laptop is not.
And from my (limited) experience, when the laptop size ratio does match the display, it's usually at the cost of a smaller touchpad, which leads to other usability problems.
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Not sure why this got modded down. I run IT for a few hundred people and in my experience everyone that wants more monitor space wants wider or another monitor to go next to their current one. Taller might be good for coders working on one project at a time but I can't think of any other use cases. Most work loads call for multiple open apps and those go next to each other to be useful.
Re: I don't get it (Score:3)
In every OS/window manager that I know of, it is trivially easy to move the dock/taskbar/app launcher to any edge of the screen. Bottom is just the default, but if you are a power user and need to maximize vertical space, nothing is stopping you.
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production volume matters (Score:2)
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That's sadly very true. My ideal center monitor is a 27" 1920x1200, last time I wanted to upgrade it, I found out that aspect ratio is so rare now, good monitors are seriously expensive. No, 16:9 does not give me enough vertical space for work at that diagonal, if it is a higher resolution & larger size 16:9 monitor it makes my vertical monitor to the left of it move too far away.
You can get great quality monitors cheaply, as long as 16:9 is fine. At least that worked out for the vertical monitor, you g
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16:9 screens are used because that's the ratio for HD TV, so there are a lot of them being made, driving the cost down
other formats are going to be significantly more expensive as a result.
It is. Apparently there is a connection to standard glass-pane sizes, cutting and amount wasted.
Re: production volume matters (Score:3)
HD TV's aspect ratio is shit.
Let's change that then!
2.35:1 for movies. 1:2.35 for almost everything else. (Anything in list/text form.)
What we really need, is a screen that can rotate as easily as a phone's.
WTF with this headline? (Score:2)
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I know it was rough reading those two whole sentences but congratulations.
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It should say it's about laptops right in the headline. I came here outraged believing media companies are ditching 16:9 aspect ratio in media and replacing it with square or portrait.
It should. I am going to use 16:9 forever on my desktop, because it fits the comfortable part of my field of view nicely. I am also going to stick with FullHD for the foreseeable future. Same reason, works well. In the same spirit, I am going to use standard 80g/m^2 paper for writing on it unless something much better suited for the task comes along.
Finally (Score:3)
Now give me a 22" 4k display at a 16:10 ratio.
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I have seen (a long time ago) a 17" square 4096x4096 display. That one was really impressive. They had a finely printed street-map from "Falk Plan" on it 1:1 and it was perfectly clear. Not very usable though, the form-factor sucks.
Film theater screens (Score:2)
The only reason 16:9 was adopted was because it's the aspect ratio of most movie-theater screens, which means almost all movies are shot for it. When HD television came out they picked the same aspect ratio so movies wouldn't need pan-and-scan editing for television, and then computer monitors picked up on it because they could get cheap panels in that aspect ratio.
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Actually, 16:9 is cheaper to manufacture because TV sets use the same form-factor and LCD glass panes are optimized for that. 16:10 gives you more waste.
Today, it would probably have happened as you describe, but back then a lot more displays went into TV sets than into computer monitors.
Re: (Score:2)
Sorry but what are you smoking? That is completely and obviously false.
Go on Netflix right now on a 16:9 screen and start clicking on feature films. Virtually all of them will have letterboxing, because feature films are almost NEVER shot in 16:9.
Films are more commonly shot in 1.85:1 and 2.39:1.
16:10's a pain for gaming though (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Another reason to go with 16:9.
Re: (Score:2)
Lots? I've only bumped into a handful of those, and PC Gaming Wiki usually has a workaround.
The games don't break (Score:2)
Several thoughts ... (Score:2)
Wide screen also means short screen. It's funny to call them short screen when the use case needs a tall screen.
I have 1920x1200 monitors. I would never buy a 1920x1080 monitor. Glad they are going taller! (1920x1280).
For software development I don't want 4x3 but taller than 16x9 is awesome.
Movies are actually better going shorter than 16:9. 1.85:1 and 2.39:1 is better for movies. The reason is dialog among two actors can fit both on screen at once with a tighter headshot. To keep the x9 ratio ... th
HATE (Score:2)
I hate 16:9.
Not only on portable devices but much more on desktop systems. Right now I am using four displays (28 Inch, HannSG 281A to Z, 16:10, 1920x1200) but I would always prefer 4:3 or 3:2. They are 12 years old, their video quality is mediocre but I will still not replace them at any time soon because there is pretty much only 16:9 available for sane prices. Lets say I want 27 Inch 16:10 then I have to pay three times more.... and there are nada 30 Inch screens with 4:3 or 3:2 display...
Nope...
I can w
Re: (Score:2)
Even if they started offering 4:3 again right now I don't think your specs are really economical at $1k. Just quickly browsing Amazon shows 16:9 displays in that ballpark, which would be cheaper given they are actually smaller screens for the same diagonal measurement, are already pushing past that budget.
There are certainly cheaper examples but I'm assuming a certain quality level.
Apple is 16:10 mostly... (Score:2)
Kind of funny in a rundown of all kinds of laptops, not to mention that Apple has mostly stuck to 16:10 in laptops.
An amusing thing I found searching for this information, is that one of the top results on Google is Why doesn't Apple make a 16:9 aspect ratio MacBook [reddit.com]. I guess now we know, 16:9 was just too wide.
Can anybody explain to me (Score:2)
Total Pixels matter (Score:3)
If people think their monitor is squished because it's 16:9 then the issue is not using it properly.
The purpose of a wide screen monitor is to have more space for more windows. You can have two browser windows side by side. It helped mitigate the need for multiple monitors.
I blame Mac OS for the confusion with the really dumb idea to put the main tool bar at the top of the monitor. It's clearly designed for people who live in exactly one app and one full screen window for work.
For people who don't maximize applications and move them around side by side and above and below each other, we don't care what the ratio is, we care how many pixels there are.
What's the difference? (Score:2)
1080p matters, keyboards are a bigger problem (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't like it when laptops have a different screen ratio from everything else. 1080p makes the most sense for communicating across a wide range of devices. What happens when you plug a 16:9, 1080p display into a 16:9, 1080p projector? A perfect screen reproduction on the wall for conference rooms and classrooms and the like. Also, if the laptop screen resolution is not the exact same as any attached monitors and the laptop loses sync with the monitor for even a moment, all the windows will have been resized when the monitor resyncs again. But if every monitor is the same aspect ratio and resolution, the windows just move around to the primary monitor. Resizing windows repeatedly is a huge time sink. Moving windows back to where they were at is annoying but not as bad.
In short, I was quite fine with 16:9.
Laptop keyboards, on the other hand, are a much bigger problem. The arrow keys are shoved below the shift key and given half-height. The F1-F12 keys are inexplicably half-height and/or require finger dancing Fn + F1-F12 key to press. Home, End, PgUp, PgDown, and Delete keys are basically useless. There's no right-Ctrl key on most laptop keyboards. It's almost like laptop manufacturers asked the question, "Which important keys do users need to press to efficiently use this device?" and then decided to make a keyboard that makes it as difficult as possible to press those keys. And there's no excuse for half-height keys when there's about 6 inches of open space on the top and bottom of the keyboard region. Laptop keyboards basically render a laptop useless: Navigation is cumbersome, typing is cumbersome, editing is cumbersome, debugging is cumbersome, etc.
Powerpoint problems (Score:2)
Goodbye to small screens too (Score:2)
I recently tried to find some not-too-large desktop monitors for use on a desk that's space-constrained (have to be able to see over the monitors). Large retailers don't stock any below 21". NewEgg has a few smaller ones (15-17") at 3-4x the price of a 21"...
15:10, not 3:2 (Score:2)
Let's be consistent and keep numbers in the same scale, so we have 16:9, 16:10, and 15:10. But we're not going to be seeing 12:9 again anytime soon (4:3).
Ultrawide... anyone? (Score:2)
Apple I think caused it (Score:2)
Different use cases (Score:2)
Not much difference between 16:9 and 16:10 (Score:2)
Honestly, it doesn't make a lot of difference between 16:9 and 16:10. I'd prefer if they chose an aspect ratio and use it everywhere instead of having tons of similar (but not equal) ratios. 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 2:1 should be enough different ratios for all tastes. I don't think we need 16:10 as well.
You need more vertical space? Then buy a 16:9 monitor that can be turned to portrait mode and stop whining.
I prefer to have the same aspect ratio because it makes it better to use the clone mode when using two mo
Meh (Score:2)
I have seen people moaning about the general 18:9 phone resolutions. Mainly that they have black bars again and their prefered media player will not let them disfigure the vidieo to avoid it.
Same old.
Depends on size of the laptop (Score:2)
If the laptop is smaller than 14 inches, 3:2 is the best.
With 16:9 you donâ(TM)t have enough vertical room when youâ(TM)re dealing with a 13 inch display.
Who cares? (Score:2)
Is this those morons again, typing long columns of data into an Excel sheet instead of a fucking database?
I want 16:18 with two folds! (Score:2)
One screen on the outside, one screen on the inside, use as a tablet when closed, but when opened up, the outside screen can be opened up too so it sits on top of the lower one. Giving you proper screen space for anything list based, like websites, file management, databases/tables and writing coding, so the majority of tasks.
And why in the world does the keyboard not pop out to the sides, so the distance between tab and enter is actually the distance between your two pinkies when your arms don't grow out o
Marketing vs screen size (Score:2)
When you refer to a 15 inch or 17 inch screen, you are referring to the measurement from diagonal corner to corner, i.e. the longest straight line you can measure in a rectangle. However the area of two 15 inch screens with different aspect ratios is different.
A 16:9 15 inch screen is slightly smaller than a 16:10 15 inch screen, which is smaller again than a 3:2 15 inch screen. So a 16:9 aspect ration allows the manufacturer to sell a slightly smaller (and therefore slightly cheaper) screen but put exac
because you can't have infinite aspect ratios (Score:2)
finite decimal system doesn't have as many numbers as the finite rational number system.
so if someone wanted 5/3 aspect ratio you would wind up with 1.666 infninity.
then you end up having to round it. then you get people arguing over whether its 1.66 or 1.6667 and you also wind up with people having to program inventory systems using variations of 1.66 with various precisions.
and the worst part of all is you get flamebait comment threads where people try to argue whether 0.3333 is really equal to 1/3.