Everything now appears to be in 16:9 instead of 4:3 and I still don’t know what the real adavantage is.
I understand that watching a film at the theatre may be better in a wide format, but for a computer screen it doesn’t seen so advantageous. For the same width you get less height, meaning you read fewer lines. You get less screen area.
The really big ones enable you to read two pages more comfortably, but in a laptop or, say, 19" desktop screen I feel like I’m losing something.
Just my WAG but I think it just comes from the movies. Movie screens are wide and wider does look better. From then it migrated to TVs and PC monitors. Computers are often marketed as media watching machines, so they need to be able to show movies in the wider format.
It might also help that a wide screen is closer in shape to a keyboard, a factor for laptops.
You are right, though. I wish I could turn my screen on its side and have a tall narrow screen to read text. Some monitors did that a while ago.
Maybe is tablet PCs ever become the norm we might be able to see the screens like that.
It was the adaptation of the wide movie screen format to television. There is almost never a case where they studied what would be the best end product and they didn’t change it to fit what is already there to build on instead of starting from scratch.
It was adapted from the movies. For laptop users many claim that having the wide format allows them to resize their browser at 4:3 and have room left open on the right (or left) margin for other computer applications.
If you have trouble reading, VISTA allows you to rezise the DPI (dots per inch) as well as change screen resolution. (I am sure the other Windows systems do too, but not sure to what degree). Vista is great for lower vision. You can resize your DPI from 96 (default) to 200 DPI.
Yes I love being able to have two windows side by side at 1920x1200 (16:10). Wide-screen for monies is 16:9, for computer monitors its 16:10. That ratio was designed to be able to have two pages side by side. Also the human vision range is more wide than tall I believe so we see in wide screen natrually
When working with programs such as Indesign or Illustrator, the extra width in 16:9 (or 16:10) is helpful for all the tool Windows. When laying out my work, I like to see the sides of my page, and on a 4:3 screen, that was impossible without having to zoom the page out so far that you couldn’t read the type.
In the beginning movies were most or less 4:3. Then TV came and the movie people were nervous that people would watch TV instead of going to the movies. So the movie people invented wide screen. Now we could have sweeping visual epics that did not show up well on TVs. So people needed to go to the theater to get the whole experience. Then came VCRs and DVDs. Now a significant amount of money to the studios was coming from people watching at home. People wanted a more movie like experience at home and electronics companies were glad to sell people new wide screen TVs and the movie people wanted to sell you Lord of the rings box sets.
16:9 was chosen because if you take all the modern aspect ratios used in TV and film and superimpose them on top of each other, the most ideal rectangle that will allow all the ratios to fit happens to be 1.77:1 or 16:9.
As the story goes, using a pencil and a piece of paper, Powers drew the rectangles of all the popular film aspect ratios (each normalized for equal area) and dropped them on top of each other. When he finished, he discovered an amazing thing. Not only did all the rectangles fall within a 1.77 shape, the edges of all the rectangles also fell outside an inner rectangle which also had a 1.77 shape. Powers realized that he had the makings of a “Shoot and Protect” scheme that with the proper masks would permit motion pictures to be released in any aspect ratio. In 1984, this concept was unanimously accepted by the SMPTE working group and soon became the standard for HDTV production worldwide.
Also keep in mind 16:9 is closer to natural vision than 4:3 is. That is, we see more out of our sideways peripheral vision than we do above and below us. That’s one of the reasons 16:9 looks so much nicer.
Also the “for same same width you get less height” is somewhat backwards. Think of more as “for the same height you get more width.” That’s the basic concept behind it. Though I suppose if you really want to see it as half full, that’s your prerogative. =)
You can’t actually see any detail in peripheral vision, though. Having stuff going on in the periphery adds to the realism and sense of ‘immersion’ when watching movies (and playing games, I guess), but it has no other advantage. Indeed, it is actively distracting if you are trying to focus on detail.
I agree with the OP and Sapo. For working with text 4:3 is better, but even that was designed for movies and TV rather than computers. Monitors just inherited it from TV screens. For reading or word processing the ideal is probably something taller than it is wide - like a sheet of paper, in fact. Reading very long lines of text is difficult (you tend to lose your place). If you use a window the width of the screen on a 16:9 display you are scrolling all the time, and if you use a narrower window your text is liable to get tiny.
Come to think of it, a taller than wide aspect ratio would be better for looking at most nudie pictures too, since the human body is taller than it is wide.
Aesthetics alone is a great reason for the wide screen format. Again, for film and tv. Not saying it’s right for computer monitors, though I do like it. It’s like having two side by side 4:3 screens (not exactly, but kinda).
And as for nude pics… what if they’re lying down?!
:eek:
Typically smaller monitors still come in a 4:3 or 5:4 format. Larger monitors (20"+) tend to come in widescreen. Part of the reason for this is that once you have a monitor that size, you start having to move your eyes vertically more to see the entire screen. It’s easier to view things that are wider than taller. A 24" 4:3 screen would be hard to view all at once. So it’s at least in part a development of the prevalence of cheap, large monitors, IMO.
On a TV, the entire screen fits in my viewing area at whatever the aspect ratio is. My current TV (the only one in my house) is a 20" model that fits with little to spare in its space. So it is 12" high and 16" wide. To get the same 12" height, it will have to have a base of 21.3" and, even though less space is generally wasted on the side, will be a tight fit, if it fits at all. That has a diagonal of about 24.5", not a size I’ve seen, so I will have to look for a 26" model and measure carefully. To what purpose, I ask?
I find that, with the exception of reading, a wide-screen format is superior.
It’s easier to scan right and left, and while I have no data on this, it feels more natural; certainly the lateral rectus muscles of the eyes that control lateral movement seem the easiest to use.
My field of vision, while technical closer to a circle, seems to concentrate over an ellipse that is wider laterally; the fact that the two eyes lie in a horizontal plane also contributes to this. In short, I can take in information that has its focus at the center and additional fields to the side more easily than when the additional fields are top and bottom.
I think this is why the widescreen movie format became popular; I never saw a format where the screen was expanded vertically. As information becomes increasingly visual, it makes sense that all formats would move in this direction. The computer still allows for text to be centered in those cases where long and narrow lines become cumbersome.
I don’t use a laptop, but this is how I arrange my desktop. A 4:3 ratio for my browser (1280x960) gives me a narrow strip to the right where I can put things like my IM client, Notepad, or media player.
Not only were the movies trying to dfferentiate themselves from TV in the 50s-60s every way they could, but they were also trying to create the illusion that the viewer was “in” the picture. Makes for greater effect for horror events, among other things.
Which led to the extremes like VistaVision, Cinerama and Cinemiracle. When those were developed, the ideal vision area was considered to be close to humans, or nearly 180 degrees, but more practical considerations reduced that somewhat.
I remember going to the Cinerama theatre and finding the very few seats right in the middle of the room where the screen was not only covering your entire vision, but equidistant from the viewer’s seat. Of course there were other distortions since you were sitting too low to really be in the vertical middle of the image.
I had to explain to my friends, who wanted to sit in the balcony “because you can see the whole screen from there!” that the purpose of a super-wide screen is to NOT see the whole screen, at least not be conscious of where the image stops on the sides.
In my current 24" screen, widescreen is useful because I don’t want to be looking up and down vertically. This is about the max height that can provide for that. In everyday life, we do a lot more looking left-and-right than up-and-down.
In a laptop, the keyboard is inherently widescreen shaped. Using a wider, shorter screen allows you to make the whole footprints smaller, without decreasing the size of the keyboard.
