The official 16:9 screen protest thread

Quite possibly... I've got 3 exams coming up so I can't be bothered right now... but maybe I should try

Actually, NBR is possibly more accessible and more visible to the masses than a dedicated HP etc. forum - or Vaio forum for that matter.
And complaining in public does work wonders if its done right.
There was a nice article on a guy who complained on Twitter - the company was pretty quick to help him out

Simply because bad news spreads fast.

Also, I don't want to register on 20 forums... I couldn't even keep up.
And NBR is a pretty well known public laptop platform.

 

I am actually in support of this. If you can post here a sort of a template message I will gladly be sending them emails explaining them that there are many costumers asking for 16:10 screens.

 

Now you're tempting me

Even though I should be revising maths... I think I'll throw together a very rough draft right now - without spell checking!

 

Ok, here is a suggestion...

Possibly a few typing error... and you might need to modify it, but it's a start:

Bah: used notepad... formatting is a mess...

 

That's pretty good, I will work on it and post back again.

 

Thanks
I'll get back to maths...

First exam on the 13th...

 

I actually preferred the 4:3 ratio over anything else, hardly any websites are made for wide screen, reading was much easier on 4:3.

But yeah the screens are just getting wider and wider nowadays it's kind of ridiculous. I have a 16:9 13" notebook and it's fabulous, but sometimes it gets frustrating reading or doing stuff on a widescreen when I want more vertical space.

 

Yeah 4:3 is my favorite as well. TBH 16:10 was a good compromise but 16:9 is useless to me and is just suited for movies in high-res. I made the mistake of buying a low-res 16" widescreen laptop. OTOH the 13.3" Dell Vostro V13 is much better although I do prefer the vertical space if given the choice.

 

you know what though...i've noticed that FPS gaming works best on 16:10. therefore, it's not just a compromise between 16:9 and 16:12 (4:3). just based on my "natural vision" 4:3 isn't wide enough and 16:9 isn't tall enough.

 

The 4:3 to 16:10 transition wasn't bad for people because overall resolutions went higher. Most "high res" 4:3 screens had 1600*1200 with only a handful of screens with more. When 16:10 came along, those resolutions were bumped to 1920*1200, effectively not reducing the vertical space, but simply adding horizontal space on top of that.

However with 16:10 to 16:9, the "higher res" 1920*1200 became 1920*1080, netting an exact loss in overall screen real estate. I think if there were more options for the higher 2560*1440 like on the 27" iMac or the Dell U2711 people would complain less about the higher res market.

 

so it's been a few years that this 16:9 hype has been going on and in the past 2 years its getting into the laptop market and now even leaking into the business laptop section, look at Dell's E4310 for example.

I can't wait until this wave is over and we go back to 4:3, more readable, more usable, simply the right format to browse the web, and use just about any application.

I don't need a 16:9, 13/14/15" screen to watch movies, I do that on a TV, and when I really need to watch a movie on my laptop, I can live with just the 4:3 or 8:5.

This is crazy. I don't think it's too much of a consumers fault if we got here but more the manufacturers making the buyers think that 16:9 it's "better"

 

This is one of those things in life that will never be won. We will NEVER go back to 4:3. We are stuck at 16:9 or 16:10 for the forseeable future. I believe 4:3 is a relic of ancient times and should never be brought back to life. 16:9/10 give you a lot wider area to work with so you can have things side by side more comfortably. You also get enough vertical space provided you have a high enough resolution for your needs. Hence, why 4:3 will never return!

 

y'all need to remember where 4:3 came from....

Back in the deep/dark days of television, say the post-WW2 late-1940s, a 4:3 screen was ALL that the electronics of the day could manage. Scan rates, bandwidth, radio receivers, all of that was stressed to the limit of the then-current tech to produce a 30 frame/sec, b&w image in a 4:3 format.

(I am ignoring the 8 or 9 pre-war commercial TV demonstration stations. All of those stations were shut down in early 1942 and were not allowed to re-start until nationwide commercial TV was re-authorized.)

Yah, TV was demonstrated in the 1920s and 1930s. That was with circular CRTs too. One of the biggest things the commercialization of broadcast TV did was to square the original CRT circle. That required a huge pile of R&D on the part of the CRT makers. To bend those electron beams to be able to scan a square/flat surface required such high (for those days) energies that the typical 14" CRT had some 50 lbs (!!!) of lead shielding.

The addition of compatible color to the original b&w signals was only possible due to advances in electronics, in particular transmitter technologies, after 1955.

PAL tried to improve on the US/Japan NTSC system, but they were constrained by the same electronics and physics of the time. How did PAL come up with a 'better' color system? Mostly by reducing the frame rate from 30 to 25 frames a second. That freed up just enough RF bandwidth to allow for the encoding and transmission of more/better color information inside of the image information itself. This was of course at the price of the frame rate. PAL was famous for having nice image quality on stationary images, but smearing horribly with any kind of motion. People who were used to movies or NTSC television often could not get used to the better color/smeared image that PAL delivered.

Don't even get me going on SECAM.

People are married to 4:3 because it's what they grew up with. Not because it's good for anything. It was barely good enough 60+ years ago.

 

i tend to agree.

however, that logic doesn't also mean that 16:9 > 16:10. 16:9 is TOO short. and the handicapping of resolutions is only making the problem worse.

 

Most people do not have an issue with the actual 16:9 aspect. Their issue comes from the loss of pixels that comes from that move.

In some cases, that was actually a gain. There are a ton of 15.6" 1920x1080 laptops out there now, and the highest you used to be able to readily get in 15" was 1680x1050, and that was a pretty pricey upgrade.

Not everyone has lost from the aspect change.

 

I think you could argue the vertical pixels have more value as a lot programs are more portrait oriented. I much prefer the 1200 on my R60 without the higher pixel density. I'm not sure where the tv analogy fits. Long before tv was 4:3, movies were 4:3. Just watch a movie like Casablanca, the Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind. They're 4:3. If 16:9 is preferable, why aren't books or magazines formatted this way?

 

thanks for the historical reminder. I believe 16:9 is good for certain things, like pictures and movies.

I don't care if we dropp 4:3, but at least give us an option for 16:10, the problem is that I see less and less laptops offering 16:10, and just giving no choice but 16:9. I don't like the loss of vertical pixels

 

"good for"... not any better than 16:10 - unless black bars kill you instantly...

And if you have some 4:3 films, 16:9 is worse for films and video.

On another note - 16:9 is just plain ugly - you want to squash that laptop to make it either narrower to pull it apart to make it a bit higher...

Does anybody remember the golden ratio post on here?

 

It's a trick. They should call the damn thing "short screen" instead of wide screen. They don't take your existing screen and WIDEN it, they chop off a couple hundred pixels off the bottom till it's a rectangle and say ooooh aaaaah look how wide it is! 1280x1024 doesnt become 1920x1080 in the same size class... they break off a third of your monitor and give you this 1366x768 crap and then somehow spin the marketing so that it's new and improved and better for you. You know, since I read crap and work on excel charts sideways on my business class laptop... that I never watch any movies on... since I bought it for productivity and not entertainment. That's why we have HDTV's, don't put that ish on my laptop damnit.

 

I watched maybe 50 "1080P" movies since making this post, and only three were 1920x1080 (the average was 1920x816), so the other 47 or so would still have black bars on a 16:9 screen.

 

If they make screens even lower I really hope someone will take those screens and the resulting laptops and beats a few CEOs to death for this rubbish...

There was a member here once who started a thread as a joke, a 1440:1 screen... I guess that's when the industry will stop when the screen is by several magnitudes wider than it is high...

 

Hehe, that means I could have a laptop is wide as my bedroom, but as thin as a pencil.

 

yes. and the golden ratio is 1.618...

16:10 is 1.6

16:9 is 1.7

i'm just sayin....

precisely. don't give me that "16:9 means i don't have to deal with letterboxing" BS. i have to watch letterboxed movies all the damn time on my 16:9 tv.

p.s.

1366x768. a co-worker just bought a 15.6" laptop with that screen resolution. it took me forever to figure out why he paid only $900 for a laptop with a gts 360m w/ gddr5.

poor sob doesn't even know.

 

Which ratio (16:10 or 16:9) would you say is better for side-by-side multitasking, i.e. for having 2 programs open side-by-side on the screen? This would be useful for me to know as I shop for a new laptop. I'm still in 4:3 heaven as I've kept the same Gateway 450 ROG for over 6 years

But even though it's still working and probably will for at least a couple more years, I'd like to get something a bit lighter in the next few months. I often tend to work with 2 text files at once, or a text file and a webpage, and this is the ONE thing I think "wide-screen" has over 4:3 (other than watching movies, of course, which like others I prefer to do on my TV), because for once horizontal screen real-estate becomes an asset. So which is a better fit for side-by side apps, 16:10 or 16:9? And which res? 900 or 1018? (I'm still deciding between 14" and 15" sizes.)

 

Well, I've roughly completed the letter to send to companies in order to bring this issues into their attention. Before we start (if anyone is interested of course), I would prefer if you have a look over it.

I have already made a small list of emails where I want to send it to.
Here it goes:

Thanx

 

That sounds good Blacky

Just one point - but I am not a native speaker.
You write:
"the market does not offer them such option."

Shouldn't it be:
"the market does not offer them such an option."

But it sounds great - let's see what other people think, but its a great template

 

That's a very good effort and please provide the e-mail addresses as well or a guidance where to get the e-mail addresses of these people who enjoy shoving these ugly 16:9 on us, I will definitely send them my protest letter.

 

I don't like the "dear Sir/Madam", I would use "To whom it may concern" or "dear Dell customer service" or "dear dell business section" or whatev

 

I would say this would actually depend on which resolution you get. If you're going for the 900 pixel vertical resolution, I'd go for 16:9, as you'll be getting a 1600x900 screen then, compared to a 1440x900 screen. At that point, you'll obviously be getting more horizontal pixels and no shortage of vertical pixels. On the other hand, if you're going to go for Full HD (assuming your eyes can take it), then if you can find it (good luck!) I'd go for 16:10 instead of 16:9, as at that point, it becomes 1920x1080 (16:9) compared to 1920x1200 (16:10), so 16:10 obviously wins out by having the same horizontal resolution, and 120 more pixels in the vertical sense.

 

Actually 1600*900 replaces two "mid range" 16:10 resolutions: 1440*900 and 1680*1050. In one case there's gain, in the other there's loss.

In most cases 16:10 to 16:9 is a loss in vertical pixels(even the name of the aspect ratios denotes this). It's not a total loss persay as they've increased the average "low resolutioN" from 1280*800 to 1366*768 so as to minimize the losses, but it's still a loss.

As it's been stated numerous times in the thread the biggest gain is the widespread of 1920*1080 on smaller 15" screens.

 

Thanks Judicator and Forever Melody for the useful info, that clears things up. I still prefer the 16:10 ratio, even in the resolutions that add to the sides instead of taking away from the top. I just don't need that much horizontal real estate even for side-by-side apps, and 16:9 just looks too squashed.

 

Kind of a real world comparison of two 14inch laptops I have. Flickr Photo Download: 16:10 vs 16:9

Left: 1440x900(16:10) Right: 1366x768(16:9) Although it doesn't look like much, I feel cramped when using the 16:9 with two documents side by side. Other than that I don't see a huge benefit of having the 16:10. Work(16:10) vs play(16:9)?

 

Go 1600x900 on the 16:9 and you'll notice. I find it perfect for side-by-side. 1440x900 squished things too much: not enough horizontal space to have docs truly side-by-side. Going to 1600 horizontal makes it feasible.

Personally, I feel cramped with anything that has fewer than a 900 vertical resolution: just never enough room top to bottom.

 

I know, I think a 1600x900 would be golden on my 14inch, but Lenovo has other plans leaving me with a 1366x768.

 

HP is building an Envy with that resolution and size Should be starting at $999

 

Good, i thought the only places left to find 1600x900 were Dell and HP business lines...Dell used to be a bastion of 900-pixel availability, but it seems to have faded out of their consumer machines (still on the Latitudes though).

 

Wonder why 1600x900 isn't so popular? Seems like a huge step in resolution from 1366x768 or 1280x720 to 1920x1080. 1600x900 is a good middle ground for 14" and 15" laptops IMHO.

 

Because they can market 1366*768 as "720p" and 1920*1080 as "1080p". However "900p" doesn't ring a bell with the average Joe and seeing as the average Joe doesn't care that much, they stick with the basic stuff he/she knows and what they can market easily.

 

True, most BestBuy/WalMart/BuyMore/Whatever laptops are all sold with the base resolution whatever that resolution happens to be. And 720p is cheaper to slap on.

It's really a shame too: the world would be better off with HD+ as an option in-between HD and FullHD (Which is a bit of a silly distinction, yes). These days I buy that 'tweener resolution for all my company's laptops (once we went from Thinkpads to Latitudes). WXGA+ and then HD+. Just works a lot better, particularly on a 15 inch display (it kinda pushes it a little on a 14 inch). Got it myself too

 

To be honest, the whole nomenclature of "HD" for laptops is a bit silly to me seeing as the concept of interlace vs progressive is a non-issue in laptops LCDs for the most part.

But the majority of laptops have always come with the most basic resolution for the more recent years.

I recall back in the day where 1600*1200 1680*1050 was actually a common resolution O_O

 

and that just it. wuxga is an improvement from 1600x1200; 1080p is still an improvement--but not by much.

 

Well yes, the most common "high res" of 16:10 was still higher than the most common "high res" of 4:3, hence why the change was adopted without much issue. Although people with QXGA probably weren't happy of losing 300 vertical pixels lol

However, resolutions higher than 1920*1080 are still very rare on 16:9 LCDs so for the most part you're losing in the high res from going to 16:10(1920*1200) to 16:9(1920*1080).

 

and that's the whole point of this thread.

 

Wooo I'm not totally off mark

No but seriously, if there were more 2560*1440 I think people might complain less

 

1600x900 does not replace both, rather screen OEMs are too lazy to offer 2 options. 1600x900 only truly replaces 1680x1050.

 

Well it replaces both in the sense that the middle ground is now 1600*900 rather than both 1440*900 and 1680*1050.

I'm not going to go into what resolution is supposed to be what in one aspect ratio to another because even manufacturers aren't sure of that :/

 

I just go by this ratio list:

------------------------
16:10 standard :: 16:9 standard

1280x800 :: 1366x768
1440x900::...............
1680x1050 :: 1600x900
1920x1200 :: 1920x1080
...............:: 2048x1152
2560x1600::...............
------------------------

I see your point and am not trying to argue as what you say is 100% true. In their laziness and way of screwing us over to save a few pennies they dropped the 1440x900.

 

Technically 1280*800 is supposed to be 1280*720 in 16:9 and THAT is the actual "720p" resolution(as opposed to what they advertise as 1366*768).

2560*1600 would become 2560*1440(like on the U2711 and 27" iMacs).

i.e. all 16:9 resolutions should have similar length but reduced width(as the name implies: both have 16 units of length but one has 10 units of height while the other has 9).

 

+1
Bring 16:10 back.

 

I like this thread, looking for a laptop with usable resolution....

Unfortunately I think we were screwed by the netbook flood at the same time as widescreen became standard and noone seems to be able to fit a high enough resolution while keeping costs down (let alone differentiate in any way against competitors)

Now looking at Dell, they at least kept specs up and craftmanship, skills and quality at rock bottom - hooray