Am I the only one unhappy with the trend in LCD sizes?

I'm really annoyed with the trend in laptop LCD panels to shorten the vertical resolution(s) available for a given screen size and wondered if anyone else felt the same way.

ok / ranty mode on - indulge me here

Yeah, i get it... screens are going wider. first it was 4:3 ratio, then 16:10 and now 16:9. and at the same time pixels have been getting bigger.. But do they have to get shorter at the same time??? Last time I checked, most of the things I, and I'm presuming other people, use laptops for - reading web pages, writing, programming, etc benefit more from increased vertical resolution than horizontal resolution. I don't see these forums listing its topics horizontally anytime soon...

I don't really object to the shift to widescreen aspect ratios... rather it's my inability to find a 16-inch (or smaller) laptop with more than 768 pixels vertically. And resolutions available for a given screen size have shrunk. Looking at HP under 17 inches, only the Envy 15 can do better than 1366x768, and that's optional. And what exactly is making the 1366x768 resolution so popular anyway? It's not an HD standard used by any media.

/whew: rant over.

I'm think going to keep my DV5t with it's 1680x1050 LCD for a long time. It's screen is already an antique.. replaced by 1680 x 945.

(to be fair, I do a lot of programming on my laptop)

 

Search the forum...you aren't the only one

 

There's a 16:9 protest thread somewhere. But yeah I agree. Having 16:9 for movies is great. But for 90% of the other stuff it sucks. If they could make screens that rotate easily, it would be better, but still, 16:10 is the thinnest I'd like to see it personally.

 

I don't mind 16:9 i actually like how it has adjusted the overall shape of the laptop, they're more portable and bag friendly (at least my bags) and at 1920x1080 I have enough real estate to get my job done. Keep in mind this is coming from someone who just upgraded from a piece that was 1180x800 (if I remember correctly) and maybe I would feel differently if I went from 1600x1200 to 1600x900

 

The size of the laptop hasn't changed from 16:10 to 16:9 only the aspect ratio of the screen. 1280x800 is now 1366x768, 1440x900 and 1680x1050 has been replaced by 1600x900, and 1920x1200 to 1920x1080. So you get fewer pixels vertically in a same width dimension as 16:10.

 

1280x800 I had one, too. I can work with 900 vertical pixels... I would never want to work with less than that again. I don't mind my Envy with the high-res screen, but there are way too many laptops with that 1376x768 or whatever the heck it is resolution, and that is just a useless setup. I can only see it in a 14" or smaller laptop... I can't imagine why people would buy those things as a 15"+ machine. But then again, many people only use their computers to watch movies and IM, not for "real" work. And they don't care about having to scroll all over. Those are the kinds of people who buy notebooks without even caring that boards like this exist... and those are the majority of people, which means that's where most of the manufacturers concentrate their efforts, unfortunately.

 

hmmm well all my old laptops were more like squares and now they're more rectangular so i enjoy the form factor update.

yeah, unfortunate it is. I'm still surprised people go to places like best buy for advice on what computer they should buy, I guess they're oblivious to the fact that in the end organizations are looking out for themselves not the customer and indeed buyer beware. In terms of the envy I think we can all agree its not marketed for much more than something to make you look cool and give you portability for your multimedia library.

 

So you probably had a 4:3 or 5:4 aspect (i.e. 1024x768 or 1280x1024). That is the much older standard. 16:10 was standard for about five years and quickly replaced by 16:9.

 

If the new 8540 had 16:10 screen I would be buying one right now , as it stands I wil keep my 8510 as long as it lasts . Also bought a few 16:10 22"and 24" monitors for the house so I'm not stuck in a year or so having to buy 16:9 screens .

 

Both my laptops are 16:10 and i find this to be the ideal ratio, minus the little black bars at the top and bottom of HD movies, but you can simply zoom it in since the loss of detail at the sides is negligible. Nothing wrong with 1280x800 on 15.4" in my book.

I had an Acer with 16:9 display in my hands for a while, and it just looked wrong. Btw, the only resolution with 5:4 aspect was 1280x1024, which IMO sucked in every aspect as it became a standard for 17" LCDs, and if scaling wasn't bad enough already, try 1024x768 (which has remained a standard office resolution as things are easier on the employees' eyes) on a 1280x1024 LCD. It looks fugly.

I wasn't aware that 16:9 became the new standard. Heck, i still have my 4:3 CRTs... Anyway, anyone knows what was the deal with aspect ratios in the first place? When TV was invented, it was intentionally made in 4:3 ratio so that people would still go to the wide screen cinemas for the full experience. And it kinda stuck along, for quite a while.

 

Movies are 2.39:1 actually, so even 16:9 would be letterboxed. Granted most films these days are mastered for HD in 1080p.

 

lol who figures out this stuff? 2.39:1?? come ooon! about about 2.4 or 2.5?

 

Hmm, for some reason i knew of 2.35:1. Are you sure?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)#Previous_and_presently_used_aspect_ratios

There are lots of aspects out there 2.35:1 was common pre-1970, but 2.39:1 is the most common currently. And if you read, they're often the same thing when you take differing anamorphic characteristics into account...

 

^^^
Thanks, I should have linked that as well. Yes there are lots of standard but there's only a few common ones, and those are 2.39:1 for movies, 16:9 for TV's and PC's & 16:10 for PC's and the older PC standard 4:3 and 5:4.

So @altoid, if there weren't standards we'd have a gazillion different screen resolutions and that wouldn't be good. 2.39:1 is just the ratio of width to height is all, in pixels, mm, cm, inches, feet whatever.

 

I know what the op means. I'm so glad I got my dv5t before it got discontinued. Yeah all these new laptops have great specs, but what we look at literally all the time is the display. I love my 1680x1050, its just 30 px shy of 1080. The closest res I can find to replacing a display like this is the 1920x1080 displays, which HP has none of except I think on the envy series (Dell has em though, so I'd probably go Dell if I had to). These 768 verticle are just dismal for me. I can't work like that.

 

Well yeah I know that, but how does one decide 2.39:1 is a good choice? Why not 2:1 or 1:1 or 3:1, two decimal places just seems arbitrary.

 

Because the original decision was made on film, and by compressing the image horizontally by a factor of two into the existing aspect of 35mm film, you end up with that ratio: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/35_mm_film#Widescreen

 

I'm pretty happy with the new 16:9 screens. Ok i lost 120 pixels if i compare to my "old" 15'4" WUXGA laptop 16:10.

But.

Having a hug resolution like WUXGA in a 15'4" laptop wasn't so confortable. I prefer by far my new laptop 18'4" 1920x1080.

The point of the 16:9 is that is more "human". We don't see in 4:3 or in 16:10 or even in 16:9 but wider is the screen, more comfortable is for us. A square screen is just not really made for a regular human view.

So, i don't understand why the new form factor 15'6" is not available in a better resolution than 768 pixels high (for this reason i bought a bigger laptop) but i understand why there is a new form factor and like it a lot.

 

To me it's not a matter of 4:3 vs 16:9, it's more 16:10 vs 16:9. Again, the size of the screen is the same horizontally but shorter vertically, thus allowing less screen real estate for windows. The web and pretty much every other document is read from top to bottom, the fewer pixels vertically, the less visible text, graphics, whatever is shown, more scrolling, more annoying.

 

Right on.

If they had gone from 16:10 to 16:9 via an overall increase in resolution, that would be fine with me. More pixels usually is better. But going from WUXGA to 1080p -- losing 120 vertical pixels -- is not an upgrade. Rather, it's lines of code that I can't see. It's part of a web page I'll have to scroll to.

Thankfully, at least there are still a few WUXGA machines left on the market.

 

I didn't say you are wrong.

I just said that i prefer the ratio 16:9 (form factor) more natural.

The only problem (for me) with this form factor are the vertical resolutions on the small screens (on the bigger screens, i don't feel a big difference between 1080 and 1200).

But i'm like you, more pixels i get, better i feel.

 

If trending towards entertainment protocols continues, next, they'll probably mandate 3D screens. Then we're going to have to deal with text popping out at us.

 

It depends, peripheral vision is nowhere as precise as seeing directly in front of you. For a movie wide screen is good because of the immersion, but when you need to see text on the leftmost and rightmost sides of your screen you'll quickly notice that the wider the screen, the more eye movement you must make.

For me 16:10 seems to be the perfect ratio.

 

The main reason of the new screens are not really entertainment but more economic.

It cost 15% less to produce a 16:9 screen than his predecessor in 16:10.

Something about how they "cut" each screen from the base or something like that.

On what i understood, this is not really a decision from HP or DELL. They are just "invited" by screens manufacturers to use the new screens.

I hope anyone understand my poor english.

 

While that is true, it's one of those situations where it lends perfectly for entertainment as well as profit. With 4:3 and 16:10, there are bars (top and bottom) when watching HD content which may people disliked. The fact that it costs panel makers less to manufacture 16:9 than 16:10 is only a bonus for them. Not the main reason why 16:9 is the new black.

If the majority hated it (16:9), it wouldn't matter if it were cheaper for manufacturers as the demand for 16:10 would more than compensate.

But as it is, 16:9 is de facto and will be going forward.

You're English is perfect BTW.

 

The problem for us is that the majority doesn't even see any advantage in a bigger resolution.

They start to be aware of pixels now because of the Full HD marketing on the TV's. But even like this, they don't realy care of computer screen resolution.

One of my friends started a small business with his brother, they bought computers with 19" screens (the old ones). One day when i visited them, i saw one of the screen forced in 1024x768 instead of the much better native resolution... The guy using this computer doesn't have any problems, he is young but he just doesn't know anything about computers (like many people) and he turned the resolution to get bigger letters even if everything was looking so bad (blury fonts, etc)

When i bought my first 15'4" WUXGA laptop, off course everything was small on the screen but i was so happy to get this resolution (like anyone here). But anytime i showed my computer, my friends or my family said, you can not set the screen to see better? Yes it wasn't very comfortable to read small letters but for anything else and for daily work it was just fabulous. But i was the only one (on my entourage) thinking like that...

 

I'm with you Accipio. I'd rather deal with smaller, sharper letters than with larger, blurry ones. Apparently, we're the weird ones... heh

 

I'd rather have a CRT and run whatever resolution i please in maximum sharpness. But yea in a laptop this isn't quite possible.

To keep the high resolution and its benefits, one can simply increase the DPI setting in Windows. That way your friend can have both large and sharp fonts. Suggest that to him. DPI scaling did have its issues with some (actually most) programs, but in Windows 7 things are quite a bit better.

 

It still has some issues. My Envy's monitor measures at 144DPI, but I run it at about 105DPI, and I still have issues with a number of programs, putting text in dialogs in all kinds of random places.

 

Try a CRT in a laptop. Talk about cumbersome, lol!

Here ya go! (Stealth, how ironic!)

 

lol @ ps/2 and serial ports!

 

If i find the guy who figured out that PS/2 ports are no longer needed in desktop computers (not laptops), i'm gonna shoot him. I'm in the market for a new motherboard, but it seems you can't find one with PS/2 ports and IDE controller anymore, let alone floppy drive.

And say what you want, the old floppy has gotten me out of trouble a thousand times, and my IDE opticals still work just fine. Oh and most SATA optical drives actually have an IDE->SATA bridge chip inside...

 

yeah i do enjoy the floppy, when I got my first sata HDD winXP needed the drivers to be installed via floppy. Not to mention all the floppy variants of linux i used for fun back in the day. I'm a fan of the floppy, not sure if its changed any, but the whole boot from usb thing seems to be hit or miss with MBs though one could always count on the floppy.

 

Yeah, I'm surprised that the floppy was never upgraded to something higher density and much faster. I still can't make a proper bootable USB drive for the life of me. Windows 7 went flawless, but other than that, a traditional DOS type boot escapes me.

 

For updating the BIOS on my old Toshiba ultralight, i needed to buy - guess what - a USB floppy drive! Right now, i'd pocket one of those to be future proof, it acts like a regular floppy on any computer.

 

There was many better solution available since the floppy (like CD's/DVD's or SD cards/USB sticks or even ZIP drives just after the floppy's death) but we still using things like BIOS from the 80's (what a joke)...

 

http://wiki.fdos.org/Installation/BootDiskCreateUSB

 

you are full of random tidbits of information! high five!

 

Yeah but the HP Boot Tool is limited to a FAT partition so no greater than 2GB. It just seems that by now, Windows should include a bootable USB utility, and make the full amount of storage accessible.

 

It doesn't, because the guys at Microsoft still use floppies too.

 

You said DOS. DOS isn't of much use with more than 2GB... the only reason to use any kind of DOS any more is for system diagnostics and BIOS flashing.

 

not alone....I HATE 16.9 format in a notebook...widens the footprint...for what, so we don't have two small black bars at the top and bottom when watching a 16.9 movie? Watching movies is probably less than 1% of my time on the notebook...