Why are 4:3 and 16:10 extinct?

Frankly, I don't buy the economies of scale story that the OEMs are sticking to - by the time the original iPad came out in 2010 4:3 was long dead, but you never hear Apple complaining about that.

 

Because they can.

They can feed whatever they like to consumers. That's the way the market works.


Here in China angry customers call 16:9 "hairtail screen", and 21:9 "eel screen".


A lot of people actually feel that 16:9 is more "modern" and some even call it "new tech", which adds up to the problem.


Edit: knee-jerk reaction post. See #11 and #17 for some new ideas.

 

I'm sure they are saving money with it and that is one of the reasons they pushed that screen size to us. They got away with it because we (meaning consumers in general) allowed it. When the transition occurred, if people had refused to buy laptops with 16:9 displays "en masse", you can be sure manufacturers would have reverted back to 16:10.

I'm sure some guy in marketing thought it would be a great idea to market displays as FHD, HD+, HD, 1080p and 720p too, since the average Joe understands those terms a lot more than 1920x1200. Have you ever tried to explain display resolution vs screen size to a non techie? It's not that easy.

 

think of the content. hollywood doesn't film in WUXGA. conspiracy debunked.

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If only we all brought out i7 Quad + MXM dGPU notebooks to watch Hollywood...

 

be happy that your i7 quad + MXM dGPU supports content finer than hollywood. i'm simply commenting on the prevalence of FHD--for now. you're free to tether to and drive an external display if that doesn't suit your personal needs.

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I think it's content as well. It's not difficult to create a tilt to scale 16:9 content to 16:10 without any visible breakage even on lcd. But if you rely on the hardware filter/supersampling techniques found in tvs (1 dollar chips), or intel graphics, or just adding black borders which is what you'll see most of the time -- what you're really talking about is adding response time and creating artefacts/blur. Or otherwise just not using the pixels. So it's not very difficult to see why both manufacturers and consumers would choose a 16:9 native resolution and believe that this is a really good idea.

Meanwhile, I still have my old 16:10/1920x1200 monitor.. no filters, just accurate 60hz picture, that I watch film on, and use as a second screen. Weird how that works out.

Found an old foldable bluetooth keyboard in a cupboard the other day as well. It's still better and smaller than the "flat" iPad logitech keyboards. Bought that ten years ago.

 

mattcheu has the beginning of the best answer, in my opinion. Because most movie content is filmed in 16:9 (or wider) ratio, television makers decided to use the same aspect ratios for TV screens. And since screen makers often liquid crystal displays in big sheets, they figured out that they have less wasted LCD area (and more profit) per sheet if all their screens were the same aspect ratio. As a result, and since 16:9 was already the ratio they were using for televisions, they used that ratio for other devices as well.

 

hollywood has filmed in both "FHD" and finer "cinematic" aspect ratios for decades, if not 50+ years. suffice it to say, however, that when you play or stream today's "cinematic" content, the content itself is scaled to 16:9 (letterboxing and all). i suppose my first post was a little unclear for the sake of making a point.

anyway, haven't many a thread like this been closed?

 

In terms of content, the switch is not the content itself, but the business strategy or marketing target. Notebooks were designed mostly for work/business some years ago. As mobile computing gets more and more popular the design leans towards content consumers as well.

 

on that we can agree. which may be the reason why various other display resolutions were more popular before this most recent "switch."

 

That may have been true 5 years ago, but PCs as content consumption devices are a dying breed in 2013. The consumer PC market has shrunk every quarter for the past couple of years.In fact, I would argue that the trend has actually reversed itself in recent years and businesses are once again the predominant buyer of computers.

Tablets have largely taken over in terms of content consumption, and the most popular tablets, like the iPad 4 and the Nexus 7, have *gasp* 4:3 or 16:10 resolutions.

 

If you are correct (I'm not saying that you are or you aren't, an interesting thought nonetheless) we *might* get to see the comeback of 16:10 if not 4:3 outside of the realm of "usual suspects" (Apple for 16:10 and Panasonic for 4:3)...

Agreed.

While we're waiting for large manufacturers in general to decide which way the wind blows, this has made my day a week or so ago:

forum.thinkpads.com • Don't throw away your T4x, The new mobo is coming![Lots PIC]

Of course, unless one is a ThinkPad buff/tinkerer, this particular offering will be outright meaningless to them.

 

Do we have any nice 1600*1200 or 2048*1536 panels for this? The mobo itself is cool, but what panel should ThinkPadders use on this one?

TBO, the old panel used on the genuine IBM ThinkPads isn't nice by today's standard if you ignore the resolution and aspect ratio.

 

TL;DR: widescreens can be explained partly as side effect of notebook shells made smaller without shrinking the keyboard.


This just came into my mind:


A notebook computer comes with something you can't get rid of: the keyboard. People are used to the standard size of a keyboard, which was not chosen at random. While the keys on some ultra-portable notebooks are indeed smaller than usual, the more you shrink it, the more problem you'll have. This means it's very difficult to reduce the size of a notebook shell from left to right, but it's much easier from front to rear.

As tech progresses on, it now takes much less space to meet a main-stream consumer's computing needs than it toke some years ago, and notebooks are mobile computers, so people want them to be small and portable. Because it's hard to reduce the width of the body with a keyboard getting in the way, manufacturers choose to reduce the length. As a side effect, the screen gets shorter. "Short screen" doesn't sound nice, so the P R people called it "wide screen".

The shift to 16:10 and 16:9 was, in some sense, a step on the way towards smaller and more portable mobile computers. More extreme designs like 21:9 make the machine even smaller without shrinking the keyboard, but those are not very easy to use. With both width and length somewhat locked down, the manufacturers now attack the 3rd dimension. This is why we're seeing ultrabooks, slim computers that have the same screen space as their main-stream counterparts, but take less space vertically.

This also explains why slates (or tablets as people call them now) are more flexible with their aspect ratio. They don't have any built-in keyboard.


Just like the shift of marketing target agreement, this only applies to main-stream and ultra-portable machines, not high performance DTRs, which are not designed to be super portable to begin with, and can always utilize more internal space if available. Unfortunately, DTR is the only type of notebook computer I care about, so I'm still left as an angry and sad customer.


Back in 1995, IBM attacked the keyboard-too-small problem by using an innovative and interesting designed called Butterfly Keyboard. Sadly this designed had its own flaws and vanished quickly.




Here's a good joke about " THE FUTURE TECHNOLOGY" for mobile computers.

 

Click on the link in my signature to find out.

The original IPS FlexView screens are still great. While not as bright as most of today's panels, they still offer superior viewing angles and colour accuracy when compared to most of today's LCDs.

 

I think it's a combination of 16:9 usually being a bit smaller (and thus cheaper) and the idea that convenient-for-movies aspect ratios are the ideal. The latter makes some sense for companies; the latter I don't really understand since I can't say I've ever met anyone who used their computer primarily for watching movies. Most people, if they have both a TV and a computer, will use the TV for movies, and even those without TVs tend to do things other than watch movies most of the time.

I personally won't buy a 16:9 screen, though unfortunately my place of employment will. As I'm a programmer by day, they probably would've recouped the extra cost for a 16:10 already due to slightly higher productivity with the extra 120 vertical pixels.

(Written in the glow of my 16:10 year-and-a-half old Dell U2412M. Quite glad I didn't cheap out and get a less expensive 16:9 display)

Edit: That T43 thread is rather interesting. Thanks for linking!

 

Relatively speaking, yes, they're great. But that's a very low bar of standards given the kind of screens that ship on most laptops.

When compared to everything out there on the market, they're terrible. They definitely don't hold a candle to their modern equivalents, the HP DreamColor and Dell PremierColor screens. In fact, it's hard to believe that these screens were produced in the same era as the NEC 2490WUXi, which to this day is still widely regarded as the best general purpose (i.e. non-graphics work) 24" monitor ever produced.

 

Dell still makes and sells 1920 x 1200 monitors, but they are expensive: Monitors | Dell

My main monitor is a 2560 x 1600 Dell U3011. The new one is this: Dell 30 Monitor (Dell UltraSharp U3014 30" Monitor with LED) It's awesome to do everything on this 30" monitor!

 

Define "most laptops". I'll take an old Hydis AFFS or ID Tech IPS over anything that Lenovo sells nowadays, apart from the 15.6" FHD panel found on W5*0 series.

You can't possibly compare a DreamColor panel or its Dell equivalent to something that has been extinct for about 6-7 years now and belongs to en entirely different era altogether.

No one - myself included - is disputing the fact that the IBM FlexViews are dinosaurs, albeit lovable ones.

 

"Most laptops" as in 95-99% of all laptops available for sale today. Essentially, everything that's not a high end Ultrabook, Retina MBP, or HP/Dell workstation.

Which is why I brought up the NEC 2490WUXi - it's an equally old dinosaur, but unlike the FlexView screens it's withstood the test of time extremely well. People still buy and sell good-condition secondhand 2490WUXi's - which cost around $1000 new - for $750+, despite knowing that even the newest ones likely have 5000+ hours on their CCFL backlights at this point.

Point is, the display technology that was available in the mid-2000s could have produced a monitor that can easily compete with the best of what's available today. IBM/Lenovo just chose not to.

 

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.

And many people still pay $300 for a well-kept T43p with an IPS screen - which is one nanosecond away from being obsolete due to its PM CPU - while you can pick up a garden variety of "most laptops" - including many ThinkPads - for about the same price at three years old...instead of seven...

And there's a laptop manufacturer who offered better screens at the time? Please enlighten me on which one that would be...

 

There isn't. From the very beginning I've been saying that the FlexView screen is better than the screens in most laptops.

Unfortunately, there's no bell curve in effect when it comes to screens - being the best of a terrible bunch doesn't automatically make it excellent.

 

I guess I misunderstood your stands earlier on. Apologies.

True. One aspect of what made the original FlexViews so desirable was the fact that they were a part of IBM's premium offerings, in the days when the ThinkPad name still meant both innovation and quality.

Personally, I'd like to see a 4:3 UXGA DreamColor but I know that's not going to happen, so I went with the next best thing...

 

Indeed, but what I would really like to see is a reversal to the slow but steady downward slide in the what the Thinkpad brand represents ever since Lenovo took over a decade ago. Thinkpads used to be the laptop of choice for enterprises, in the "no CIO was ever fired for choosing IBM" sense. Nowadays they're merely first among equals, if even that.

 

I believe that one would have a far better chance of surviving a lightning strike than living to see what you're hoping for...

 

Any possibility for other vendors to go that route?

 

Is is even a significant difference between 16:9 to 16:10? I don't think most people would notice it. Its more of a "if it works, then don't break it" thing.

 

Not much.

But there is a big difference between 16:9 and 4:3.

 

The problem lies in pixel height, Both at FHD provide 1920 pixel width where 16:9 provides 1080 pixels and 16:10 provides 1200 pixels in height. Now the extra 120 pixels make document work much smoother. At default scaling you can open word and see two pages side by side and almost, if not totally, see the full height of the page.

Here is where I disagree with most. Either give me back the 1920x1200 screen or just put out a 18.4 with 2560x1440. With the later resolution I would get back all of my desktop real estate and more. Problem is most people would not like the increase in DPI as you will need better than average vision to use it without scaling it where you may as well of just got a 1080P screen........................

 

It's enough to me to keep throwing money on my old/current one like it's the last laptop on earth.