K
kony
19" screens? If so, what make and models?
19" screens? If so, what make and models?
S
Sjouke Burry
a scala from 1995 to today,I have a problem withkony said:
chucking earlier generations
(IBM-xt, BBC_b, arc310,186 ,286, 486,p200 ,p200 ,celeron2.7GHZ,
with their screens of the day)
K
kony
a scala from 1995 to today,I have a problem with
chucking earlier generations
(IBM-xt, BBC_b, arc310,186 ,286, 486,p200 ,p200 ,celeron2.7GHZ,
with their screens of the day)
I have no idea what the above is supposed to mean, they're
only CPU/system names.
The topic was 19" LCDs. I only wrote "screen" above though,
certainly most 19" CRT are 4:3 but we were talking about
LCD, and if you know of 4:3 19" LCD, which specific make and
model of monitor, not system, they were.
M
Mxsmanic
kony said:
One was new. The others of indeterminate age.
This is good news for me. It was always a source of irritation with
CRTs.
M
Mxsmanic
Sjouke said:
I think 4:3 is still overwhelmingly the dominant aspect ratio.
M
Mxsmanic
Garrot said:
Television sets tend to be a blurry mess compared to computer
monitors. I can't believe that so-called HDTV still has only 1080
rows (on a 70-inch screen??) and--worst yet--that it still interlaces
them.
What television calls HDTV today was old hat on computer screens ages
ago. (In fact, HDTV is old hat ... I remember seeing demonstrations of
it at least 15 years ago.)
K
kony
Well you still have that problem if using non-native
resolution and stretched screen mode, but personally I never
have the inclination to use non-native. Hopefully it won't
be too long till LCD tech advances more and 17/19" 5:4 fades
away, replaced by 4:3 1600:1200 in that size... although,
I've been seeing more of those 20" 1400:1050 displays, which
are also 4:3 and getting down close to the price-points of
the average 19". 1400:1050 is just a rare resolution
though, I don't recall ever seeing a game that supported
that but then again I haven't ever looked for it either.
G
Garrot
Thomas said:
Yes, but I specifically said 17" and 19" which are the most common sizes
purchased these days.
M
Mxsmanic
kony said:
I also prefer 1600x1200; that's what I have now with a 20" display.
I don't care much for widescreen formats. They may be fine for
watching movies, but there are a lot of other things you can do with a
PC besides watch movies, and screens that are too extreme in their
proportions tend to be a pain to use for ordinary applications.
Plus, as you point out, there's a lot of software written specifically
for 4:3 that just won't work or won't look right with other aspect
ratios. I personally don't see anything bad about 4:3.
R
Roger
Mxsmanic said:
Wikipedia says the 5:4 ratio dates all the way back to the VIC-2 and the
IBM-PC Jr. I have read the 4:3 ratio goes back to Thomas Edison's labs
where it was used as the standard aspect ratio for film.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Display_resolution
I personally find the 5:4 ratio better for web surfing and text
processing because it is easier to read text in long narrow columns
rather than wide short columns. I have been looking at the 1600x1200
pixel monitors, but only those that can be rotated to display at
1200x1600.
NewEgg shows 10 different resolutions with 1280x1024 being the most popular.
Roger
L
Larc
| Plus, as you point out, there's a lot of software written specifically
| for 4:3 that just won't work or won't look right with other aspect
| ratios. I personally don't see anything bad about 4:3.
Speaking of which... Does anybody know of ANY software written for a 5:4
display? A 4:3 picture will always have to be stretched or squeezed somewhere
to fit on a 5:4 screen. Otherwise, keeping a true 4:3 perspective would result
in unused vertical space if the horizonal is full or an overscanned horizonal if
the vertical is full.
Larc
§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§
| for 4:3 that just won't work or won't look right with other aspect
| ratios. I personally don't see anything bad about 4:3.
Speaking of which... Does anybody know of ANY software written for a 5:4
display? A 4:3 picture will always have to be stretched or squeezed somewhere
to fit on a 5:4 screen. Otherwise, keeping a true 4:3 perspective would result
in unused vertical space if the horizonal is full or an overscanned horizonal if
the vertical is full.
Larc
§§§ - Change planet to earth to reply by email - §§§
R
Roger
Roger said:
Oops, the VIC-2 and IBM PC Jr were 4:5, not 5:4. The Acorn and Amiga
were 5:4.
Roger
M
Mxsmanic
Larc said:
A lot of everyday software doesn't care. Documents in Microsoft word
or spreadsheets in Excel will still turn out okay in 5:4. Graphics
programs like Photoshop don't care, either, as long as the pixel
dimensions match the physical aspect ratio of the screen.
However, anything that uses full-screen images needs to know about
aspect ratios or things will look odd. I don't know how many games
can handle this. I tried Flight Simulator on a 5:4 monitor today and
it showed distortion in panel displays that are bitmapped--these were
adjusted to fit the aspect ratio but this distorted some of the
elements in the panels, such as circular instruments on the instrument
panel. It was hard to tell whether or not the game adjusted the
scenery correctly.
I have other games but they are all installed on 4:3 systems, so I
don't know how they behave on 5:4 systems. For games that generate 3D
environments from scratch and don't depend on full-screen bitmaps, it
should be trivial to adapt to most aspect ratios, but a lot of games
have static controls and things that are bitmapped and must be
designed to fit the aspect ratio.
I think it is certainly much safer to stick with 4:3 if possible.
M
Mxsmanic
Roger said:
In log data for my site, 1024x768 seems to be the most popular today,
with 800x600 close behind.
Wallpaper images are going to be a problem. You can prepare images in
1280x1024, but how do you know the actual aspect ratio of the
destination monitor? An LCD might be truly 5:4 (in which case the
image must be recropped from original source material), but a CRT
might in fact be 4:3 running at 1280x1024 (in which case the image
must be stretched and compressed, but not cropped differently).
K
kony
Most software does fine, is in either fixed size window
smaller than whole-screen resolution or in a dynamically
sized window.
Even on an software that was poorly written to target only
4:3, at most it means you have horizontal black bars. While
that is not ideal, until recently it has cost substantially
more to move up to 4:3 ratio higher-res screens.
For video playback, it is not so bad actually... It's not a
big deal having the black bars and some players also support
a zoomed mode that crops off the left and right borders to
fill entire screen, somewhat like some modes on widescreen
TVs. Since very little happens at the extreme edges of
videos, it is not much of an issue, plus in general I find
that for regular DVD/etc wide-screen playback, it is just as
well to have a TV for that and a computer display more
optimal for the legacy computer formats closer to 4:3 than
to higher ratios.
K
kony
1280x1024 is a commonly supported gaming resolution.
1440x900 and other wide-screen resolutions have far less
support, moreso on newest games perhaps but only a minority
on even the most popular of aging titles.
K
kony
Yep, we often forget what the *average* system in use today
is really like. Quite a few people are using 17" CRT and
hoping it runs forever. I on the other hand could not go
back to 17" CRT today, would rather use a 800MHz Celeron
system on a good LCD than a state-of-the-art system on an
old 17" CRT... except perhaps for gaming, but that is not a
priority.
C
Christopher Range
Same here.David said:
D
David Maynard
Garrot said:
That wonderfull, and all, but 1280x1024 was around long before LCDs were.
M
Mxsmanic
kony said:
I see "average" systems regularly and they are far behind the bleeding
edge. Many people are using systems that are several years old--not
because they are poor or deprived or anything, but simply because the
old systems do everything they require and have more than enough
performance to do it all quickly. There's no reason to upgrade the
hardware.
Indeed, it's hard to find a reason to upgrade any hardware nowadays,
unless one plays certain kinds of video games. Everything else runs
quite fast. When things don't run fast, it's usually the consequence
of poor access time for disks or network delays, neither of which can
be improved with any type of upgrade.
I spend a lot of time in front of a PC, and having a good monitor is
extremely important. I'm amazed at what some people put up with when
it comes to monitors. And, unlike the rest of a machine, monitors do
deteriorate significantly over time (especially CRTs), and upgrading a
monitor often brings a visible and obvious improvement.
Then again, I used my last CRT monitor until it was so worn out that
it would no longer come on even after 2 hours of "warm-up." But that
was a question of budget, not any reluctance to upgrade. The new
monitor had to provide at least the quality of the old monitor, and
that meant spending a great deal on the monitor.