Why are all LCD monitors now widescreen?

[sanctified Veteran]

Because that its the natural way our eyes work.

[Minimoose]

In games you can see if people are playing on a 4:3 screen since they walk straight past you when they are practically looking at you :)

[Andre S. Veteran]

Widescreen is awesome for working with Visual Studio, and playing recent 3D games.

However, I hate how LCDs in general and widescreen LCDs in particular cannot adapt to old games with low resolution like 800x600 or 640x480. They look like crap compared to what they looked on CRTs.

[Volatile]

As it may have been stated before.. widescreen (16:9) is the new standard. The inch description is actually calculated from corner to corner which makes the widescreen appear smaller than phasing 4:3 monitors. You actually do not lose any real estate, its just longer versus wider.

I use dual widescreen at work and at home.. and other than finding dual wallpaper 2880x900.. I love them.

[shakey_snake]

As it may have been stated before.. widescreen (16:9) is the new standard. The inch description is actually calculated from corner to corner which makes the widescreen appear smaller than phasing 4:3 monitors. You actually do not lose any real estate, its just longer versus wider.

I use dual widescreen at work and at home.. and other than finding dual wallpaper 2880x900.. I love them.

You contradicted yourself. :p

(2880/900)/2 = 1.6:1

You have 2 16:10 monitors.

16:10 aka (8:5) seems to be the new standard for monitors.

16:9 is the new standard for HDTV.

[Volatile]

I always considered widescreen 16:9 which is 1.7 where computer monitors' widescreen AR is 1.6 which still does not equate the 8:5. Possibly a question of resolution verus aspect ration.

Regardless.. I prefer the widescreen.

[shakey_snake]

"Widescreen" is any screen wider than 1.37:1 (35mm, 4-perf film).

16:10 is widescreen.

Super 35 (1.66:1) is widescreen

16:9 is widescreen

Anamorphic (2.35:1) is widescreen

etc.

[Volatile]

By the way I have always consider box set 4:3 and widescreen 16:9 so the whole 16:10 is baffling to me. As I have been searching since your post to find information about this to see that others are questioning it themselves.

Interesting though.. about to pull out the ruler and measure the screen. :p

http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/38217/117/

[_dandy_]

Widescreen is awesome for working with Visual Studio, and playing recent 3D games.

However, I hate how LCDs in general and widescreen LCDs in particular cannot adapt to old games with low resolution like 800x600 or 640x480. They look like crap compared to what they looked on CRTs.

It's the other way around. It's up to software to adapt to whatever hardware you use it on.

[MECL]

I love my 21" widescreen, I really want to get another, but I may wait a little.

From what I heard from a co-worker, there is a industry wide shortage of glass or some other material. Cutting a widescreen template from thier glass sheets is more effecient and produces less excess waste material. Clients of ours have a hard time buying 19"s, or at least they are slightly more expensive than they used to.

Anyone else hear this?

[dreamz Veteran]

i prefer widescreen because it gives me space on the side for other things, e.g., miranda contact list.

i didn't realize how strange normal screens looked until i saw a laptop that didn't have a widescreen. it looks huge and bulky.

[basix]

I could care less either way in terms of space, find me a quality LCD that compares in specs to my 2 23" Trinitron CRT's (without me having to sell a limb) and I'll move to WS.

[Andre S. Veteran]

It's the other way around. It's up to software to adapt to whatever hardware you use it on.

...Not software made 10 years ago. Besides, tell me how Baldur's Gate is supposed to "adapt" to 1650x1080 resolution and not look ridiculous.

[EnzoFX]

4:3? Eww

[Sam]

The 16:10 has a number of advantages. In video editing, the user can view a much more extended timeline. This format also allows you to view two A4 sized pages in a word processor, or two separate windows simultaneously.

According to manufacturer NEC: The vision of humans naturally moves horizontally rather than vertically, and ergonomics experts have recommended a broad format for a long time. In a professional setting, the use of large screens better facilitates execution of the tasks on the screen and thus contributes to increased productivity.

[ViperAFK]

Widescreen is awesome for working with Visual Studio, and playing recent 3D games.

However, I hate how LCDs in general and widescreen LCDs in particular cannot adapt to old games with low resolution like 800x600 or 640x480. They look like crap compared to what they looked on CRTs.

If you have a DVI connection you should be able to use the ati/nvidia control panel to pillarbox them. Of course my cheap LCD is VGA so I can't :(. You can also try widescreengamingforum.com which has ways of getting old games into widescreen.

[Andre S. Veteran]

If you have a DVI connection you should be able to use the ati/nvidia control panel to pillarbox them. Of course my cheap LCD is VGA so I can't :(. You can also try widescreengamingforum.com which has ways of getting old games into widescreen.

Even when it works (and drivers don't always work as they should), LCDs use linear interpolation to achieve non-native resolutions, which simply put, looks like crap. Text can become almost illegible.

It's a case where supposedly superior technology is actually less flexible than the old. LCDs are able to look great at ONE resolution and fail at every other.

[Ajapi]

I don't like widescreen monitors because I surf a lot and the internet is not designed with them in mind. Pages are meant to be viewed in 4:3 or 5:4 aspect ratios; the empty spaces are quite distracting to me.

That being said, widescreens are great for watching videos. My favorite (and current) monitor is a 20.1" sporting a 1600x1200 resolution. I have enough real estate to do everything I want without webpages losing their intended proportions.

[Dc'1]

I like widescreen better :) but it makes people on TV look fatter :p

[Tuffgong4]

you can also cut more panels out of the really big panels that are made in the manufacturing plants. It is cheaper and easier to make widescreen monitors than it is to make 4:3. Also with people using computers to watch movies and hd content it is better to just make widescreen monitors.

[PyX]

Well it became a standard in cinema, in televisions, on camcorders, so there's only one kind of "screen" remaining, which is the computer...

Yeah, it's smaller, but I still think we can do better arrangements that way (aka horizontal menus take A LOT more space than vertical menus because of the text, but if we talk widescreen, it's more feasable to do horizontal menus), and video cards can perform better :D

[_dandy_]

...Not software made 10 years ago. Besides, tell me how Baldur's Gate is supposed to "adapt" to 1650x1080 resolution and not look ridiculous.

Yes, even software that was made 10 years ago should have been written from the get-go to anticipate any strange resolution that might not have existed at the time is was written. It's called hardware abstraction--the drivers and the OS isolate you from these sort of things. Since Windows has had a graphical interface, the API has been there to get the screen resolution, no matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's 640x480 or 4096x4096--you work with what's available, not with "common presets".

[Andre S. Veteran]

Yes, even software that was made 10 years ago should have been written from the get-go to anticipate any strange resolution that might not have existed at the time is was written. It's called hardware abstraction--the drivers and the OS isolate you from these sort of things. Since Windows has had a graphical interface, the API has been there to get the screen resolution, no matter what it is. It doesn't matter if it's 640x480 or 4096x4096--you work with what's available, not with "common presets".

I'm not sure you get the point. Windows and DirectX and whatever are not responsible in any way for old 2D games looking bad on LCD monitors. The Infinity Engine, that renders all the Black Isle games, was written with 800x600 resolution in mind. Contrarily to 3D models, 2D sprites don't scale; when you change the resolution, you change their size. Short of re-drawing Baldur's Gate graphics with higher resolutions, it is impossible to make this game display the way it was meant to on a display that has a fixed resolution of 1680x1050, 1920x1200 or whatever.

A CRT monitor doesn't mind displaying in 320x240 or 1600x1200; it can display exactly the number of pixels you want it to display. It is flexible. LCDs, on the other hand, have a fixed resolution; try to render 800x600 on a widescreen 22" display, and you end up stretching those 800x600 pixels across the 1680x1050 physical pixels of the LCD.

How software is supposed to make up for this, I wonder. :rolleyes:

[theyarecomingforyou]

A CRT monitor doesn't mind displaying in 320x240 or 1600x1200; it can display exactly the number of pixels you want it to display. It is flexible. LCDs, on the other hand, have a fixed resolution; try to render 800x600 on a widescreen 22" display, and you end up stretching those 800x600 pixels across the 1680x1050 physical pixels of the LCD.

How software is supposed to make up for this, I wonder. :rolleyes:

You go into the driver control panel and enable fixed aspect scaling (available with nVidia and ATi drivers - I've used them both). You can choose to stretch the image to fill the whole screen, stretch it to fill the vertical axis (while maintaining the aspect ratio, borders at the sides) or centre it using the exact pixel resolution (displays borders at the top, bottom and sides). I installed Worms World Party last night and had to enable that option in the ATi control panel to stop it looking funky - it should really be enabled by default.

[The_Decryptor Veteran]

Old games were really stupid when it came to using hardware, the good thing about it though, is that technology has improved and people are getting smarter at fixing things.

Like a custom hook for DirectDraw that makes a full screen only game run in windowed mode.