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Wide Panel LCD Displays 129

Posted by CmdrTaco from the stuff-to-look-at dept.
fredz writes "EE Times has an interesting article on wide-aspect-ratio LCD displays. Samsung is adding a 24-inch diagonal display (20" W x 12.7" H). This is about the same height as a conventional 20" monitor, but a lot wider. There are also some smaller (and presumably cheaper) 17-inch diagonal (about 14"W x 10"H) displays. " The SGI diagonal (18") is what I've been using for nearly a year now. LCDs are much easier on my eyes, but ya gotta accept the resolution you're given or things get yucky. The aspect ratio is interesting... I like having two comfortably wide browser windows side by side without overlapping. Now when Linux can play letterboxed DVDs ...
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Wide Panel LCD Displays

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  • Re:Why not taller than wide? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The reason pages are taller than they are wide is because it is too easy to get lost in the text otherwise. Try printing out a web page in landscape format and reading through it, this isn't easy!

    Putting the page vertical is about readability, not about what is natural. Take for instance what you can see right now, your eyebrows and your cheeks. You can't see anything to the side (except what is there:). There you have it, you can see wider than you can taller.

  • Why not taller than wide? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I'd be interested in seeing a display with a 4:6 ratio. Something that's the same width as a standard 19 inch monitor, but about twice as tall. After all, most of the digital content that I'm interested in (source code, documents, web pages, etc.) is taller than it is wide.

    Yeah, I know that there are sideways-style monitors, but those actually shrink the horizontal -- I'm saying if you're going to grow, grow vertically.

  • I've been curious about this for a while: does anyone know the relative amounts of radiation of a CRT versus an LCD (say at the same resolution)?

    thanks!
    nick
  • One can display two browser windows side by side... and two emacs frames, or maybe two terminal windows. Can anyone need anything else?
    Well, I like my 2K x 1.5K virtual screen that lets me put 3 80x80 xterms or browsers or edit windows side-by-side while still using a readable font, and still have enough room left over.

    Five years ago, I published my wish-list for a 3:1 aspect ratio 72" x 24" 200dpi screen, wrapped around the form of a quarter-cylinder. The compute power and bandwidth required for maintaining such a system is still a bit beyond current state of the desktop art, though ;-(

  • Most *good* web designers (including myself) build their pages to look acceptable at any width...
    What about at any dot-pitch? Lots of stuff only looks good at 72dpi, but high-end CRT screens are already 110 dpi, and most of the image-heavy web-content stinks on those!

    You'd think all those people writing commercial web-crap would know better than to go out of their way to offend their most affluent potential customers!

    BTW, top-end LCDs from both IBM and Sony are 150 dpi. IMNHO, there will be a "sweet spot" in the compromise between eye-friendly and technology-overkill somewhere between 200dpi and 300dpi.

    fwiw

  • But if the display has high enough resolution, you could print two vertical pages side-by-side and get be better able to reference other information.
  • At work I got a Compaq 1610 (16" by 10") and running at 1600 it looks great (though it flickers a bit at 76Hz refresh).
    Yes, when booting and looking at a standard dos window, or 640 resolution it looks stretched. But at 1600, you hardly notice anymore.
    I have 4 windows open at once (slashdot, outlook, explorer, and whatever else I work on at the moment)

  • In regards to widescreen TVs, what do regular TV shows look like?

    IIRC from read a lot of Roger Ebert's essays on suntimes.com, regular ol' TV is 1.33:1, aka 4:3. A lot of theatrical releases are also this aspect ratio for convenience's sake.

  • Huh? (Score:1)

    by Keck ( 7446 )
    "adding a 24-inch diagonal display (20" W x 12.7" H). This is about the same height as a conventional 20" monitor, but a lot wider."

    Since when is a 20" monitor about 12.7" high? I think this should read, "This is about the same width as a conventional 20" monitor, but much less high." or "This is about the same height as a conventional 13" monitor, but a lot wider".

    Right?
  • "most webpages and background images are made for the standard resolutions. "

    if you had a huge screen you wouldn't open your browser maximized.
  • Hint: What is the length of the diagonal from one corner to the opposite corner?

    Cheers,
    Ben

  • Yabut (Score:1)

    by tilly ( 7530 )
    You are right about what it is that I like doing. I like paging between different applications, and when I am in one (eg xterm) I would like it to be 80 columns wide and loooong since that describes what most code looks like.

    I don't really want 2 monitors though - not enough desktop space for that.

    Cheers,
    Ben

    PS I remember hearing about some famous person back in the 70's twisting a monitor into doing something like this and then refusing to get a new monitor for many years because he liked the effect and couldn't get newer ones to do it. Don't remember the details though.
  • Movie theaters used to use the same 4:3 ratio that TVs do. Then when TVs became popular the movie industry moved to a wider screen because it had more of an impact on audiences. Now TVs are moving to the wider screen also. What will movies do next I wonder?

    Cheers,
    Ben

  • Yup, I loved the SGI I had at home so much I had to buy one for work too.

    I've recently been on a quest to get better 3-D graphics performance though. The Nine RevIV support of Direct3D is marginal, and the OpenGL driver is beta, somewhat unstable, slow, and completely unusable for some games like Q3A.

    I bought the Number Nine SR9 graphics card because it also has a DFP interface, which I assumed would be compatable with the SGI monitor. I was wrong. It supports the PanelLink-style, similar to the ones on those Compaq DFPs.

    Ugh. To play games, I'm building a completely separate system, with an analog monitor so that I can get decent 3-D.

    Later,

    James

  • I have a 21inch IBM monochrome, but I can't get it to sync in X. I have been wanting to use it as my main display because of its crispness (seeing this model on someone elses computer).
  • Thanks Rob, for making us all jealous of your SGI screen, but even it (18") is getting small by today's standards. The new Samsung sounds great, but as it's not really out yet, I can't comment on it. Has anyone seen the Apple Cinema Display [apple.com] in action? It's amazing! 22" diagonal, 1,600 x 1,024, bright and SHARP (it's digital). The question is: can it run on any DVI video card or just Apple's? I'd sure like to run it on a new GeForce DVI card on my box!
  • HDTV is 16:10
    That's interesting as Sony's flagship HDTV [sony.com] is 16:9 as is every other HDTV. I wonder.
  • >What resolutions do these monitors use?

    Follow the link young grasshopper. First paragraph of the ee times story 1,920 x 1,200.
  • Does it actually physically tilt like the Radius Pivot display? The description of the "PerfectPortrait" software makes it sound like a software function and not a hardware function.

    I always thought the Radius solution was interesting.
  • I would prefer a larger monitor over a flatter monitor. I have a beast of a 36" monitor. Now, if they made one that was 42" and had the wider aspect ratio, that would be PERFECT for DVD viewing. As it is, I have to watch my movies in the "optimized for TV" mode.
    -Jer
    -Jer
  • I was deeply saddened when Nokia (now Eizo [eizo.com]) dropped their 6600 [eizo.com] model: a gorgeous 21-inch greyscale monitor -- with more persistent phosphors than usual, even! Now that'd be easy on the eyeballs. I was just about to buy one, too, really...
  • Yea, like win2000, based on NT technology, and the ATM Machine
  • I am inclined to agree, though I wonder what other people think.

    Hey folks, is "LCD Display" correct?
  • I never thought of that. Does it make that much of a difference?
    Huge. AC usually has a fair amount of line noise, and it really messes with my video.

    Is there another way to shield the video signal cable from the power? I run all my cables through a small port in my desk enclosure so there's no avoiding the proximity.
    If your monitor will take BNC connectors for video inputs (usually 5 BNC connectors), you can get a pretty heavily shielded cable. It will cost you some bucks ($50USD) but will help clean things up. The poor man's solution would be to wrap your monitor cable in aluminum foil. I've never tried it, but I've been told it works.

    If I were you, I would run all the cables through the desk except the monitor cable. Pull it out by itself. That should help.


    --
  • For the last year, I've been using the SGI 1600SW [sgi.com] 17.4" widescreen. It's not perfect, but it's not far from perfection either. My only complaint is that it uses a nonstandard digital video interface, and the #9 TTR-4 video card that works with it is not well supported.

    Why do I love it so much?

    • No eyestrain, ever.
    • Four easily-readable xterms/rxvt's/etc. on the screen at once. 1600x1024 is a wonderful resolution.
    • Ok, I admit, it makes my co-workers jealous. :)

    I have an expensive Mitsubishi 22" flat CRT at home, and even though it supports similar resolutions, it isn't nearly as useful. I have to run a much lower resolution than the monitor supports to keep the text sharp, even with top-of-the-line cables and video cards. And what a desk hog!

    I can't wait until 24" panels become affordable...

  • However, now you just get color. Color is getting
    cheap enough (and high enough resolution) that
    your eyes are (practically speaking) more of a
    factor.

    I run a 21" color monitor at 1600x1280. Now a
    comparable monochrome monitor should be at least
    3200x2560. It would be interesting to see what
    you could do at those resolutions. But they're
    not readily available...
  • I don't see that that makes much sense. Standard paper page sizes seem to have settled everywhere on being longer vertically than horizontally, I don't see any evidence that people find this less "natural" than the alternative.

    Eyes are presumably suited for looking at a wide range of things of differing height/width ratios. for example, I don't find looking at other people unnatural just because people are generally taller than they are wide.
  • I have to agree with this, my girlfriend and I tried to sit in bed and watch the Matrix on her computer last week and it wasn't a very pleasant experience

    Try lying down when you go to bed with your girlfriend for a better experience! (no matter what screen you use) :-)
  • Well I personally run at 1600x1200 and I can tell you that when you're dealing with monitors that big, there's almost no webpage that looks "right" when netscape is maximized... but at 1600 horizontal pixels, I'd just as soon have two browsers open at 800 each. It's all good.

    -----------

    "You can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding."

  • The SGI 1600SW runs at 1600x1024 as well.
  • Where is the info on SGI selling refurbished panels? Found a whole bunch of refurbished stuff but no panels!! Can you post a url? Are these compatible with regular digital out cards? Do we have linux drivers?
  • Buy the wide screen and turn it 90 degrees. Some desktop publishing monitors are this way. I believe all that is needed is a Xfree driver option?
  • Wow, that's pretty wild when you think about it. ;)

    Chris Hagar
  • I think that's because the author attended and went to The International Academy of Redundancy and Repetitiveness.

  • Too big!? Too big!!?

    I figure it's not too big unless I actually have to turn my head left and right to read text on the screen.

    Or I have to plug it into one of the those 240v plugs that are normally reserved for dryers and electric ovens.

    Or I have to get out of bed at night and go turn off the monitor in the next room because the light is keeping me up.

    Then it might be too big. :-)

    Later
    Erik Z
  • Meanwhile I sit here staring at a 4 year old 15" ViewSonic monitor at 800x600.
  • While it only embraces a small segment of the Linux population, those of you with Creative Labs's Encore DxR2 DVD decoder card(not inlay, and not DxR3) can have hardware-accelerated playback, including CSS decrypt, without licensing issues. check out opensource.creative.com.
  • Since I'm assuming this thing uses custom video input over vanilla SVGA, I'm wondering if drivers are at all an issue on displays such as these? Or is it more video card problems?

    It would be quite the downer to walk out of my Fry's with my pimpin' new display... but only windows compatable? It would hurt.
  • Movies can already be wider than HDTV, as a 2.35 aspect ratio format has existed for a couple decades now.

    matt
  • If I take the sg flat panel as an example... 1600x1024 max resolution, anything smaller than 800x512 can be "magnified" to fit the vertical resolution, and centered. I.E, a 640 x480 gets magnified to a 1280x960 and centered. 800x600 through 1280x1024 get centered without magnification. I.E., you won't be using all the pixels at the "fractional" resolutions that aren't divisors of the max. resolution.
  • Apple introduced the Cinema display [apple.com] at Seybold. It is 22" diagonal with 1600x1024 pixels, 160 degrees viewing angle and 300:1 contrast ratio. It is a beautiful piece of engineering - the and the G4 plays DVDs on it like a dream - way better than any TV display I've ever seen, including tradeshow HDTV demos.

    The tilt adjustment has an ingenious pivot in the stand that is stable at all angles, so you just push it back with one hand to change the angle.

    It does cost $3999, and you can only buy it with a G4, but it is absolutely beautiful. Just the thing to blow your slashdot IPO money on...

  • I'd love to know the price tag on this one. It wasn't even listed on Apple's site for sale. Great product. Do you think they built a "to scale" model or do they actually have one (1) on hand ;-)
  • I've always thought it would be a good idea to put the toolbars, taskbars, and titlebars at the side of the screen rather than the top and bottom.

    That's exactly what I do, using GNOME. I've got a panel on the right hand side with the tasklist, and gkrellm below it. I've also got a theme for E (spiffE) that uses as little height as possible for the window title-bars. I don't really appreciate having vertical space taken up with candy, as I like to be able to read lots of stuff without scrolling. I even went as far (?) as removing the toolbar thingy from XEmacs, to give me more writing space. I make no claims to be typical, though :)

  • Unfortunatly at this time this beutiful piece of technology is only availible bundled with a G4 computer. Apple does not advertized this but is compatible with other DVI cards. At this time Apple still has a very limited supply of these with the major rush for LCD screens going on these days. In comparison to CRT it has the area of a 24" in moniter. The price though will be enough to curb demand. You will have to shell out $4000 for it. More than the computer attached.
  • I want 'perfect rectangle' aspect ratio!

    In case you don't remember (or never learned of them), perfect rectangles have a ratio of about 1-1.6: I've heard that in a survey (I don't know who did this survey) this was the favorite type of rectangle. You find them a lot in classical Greek architecture, probably because Greek architects liked the shape like everyone else.

    One property of a perfect rectangle is that if you divide it into two pieces, one of which is a square with a side length equal to the shorter side (so if the lengths were 100 cm and 160 cm, you'd get a square with a side of 100 cm), the other piece is also a perfect rectangle (ie, the ratio of 1-1.6 is about that of .6-1, and if you calculate the ratio better it becomes more accurate).

    I like this would be a bit wider than typical 4:3 monitors, (more like 4.8:3) but not as wide as 16:9 (more like 14.4:9). You could obviously pull off 1440x900 if it was big enough.

    Then again, 16:9 is pretty sweet, and if we get an affordable, 16:9 38" 200 PPI LCD (even if there isn't a computer in the world that could take advantage of it), I won't be complaining =)
  • What I had to do was make sure that I moved all other cables (esp power) away from the video cable. That made a huge difference.

    I never thought of that. Does it make that much of a difference?
    Is there another way to shield the video signal cable from the power? I run all my cables through a small port in my desk enclosure so there's no avoiding the proximity.

  • What resolutions do these monitors use?

    Well, my old Toshiba Portege 300CT rus at 1024x600 on a 10.4" diagonal screen with no problems at all. People are even running Linux and X on it.

    There have also been a few other small systems (mostly from Toshiba, I think) that run at unusual resolutions - Librettos are the most common of them. I think one (a small system with a camera built into the edge of the screen) may even use 1024x480.

    Resolution has always been my biggest concern with the newer lightweight laptops - for a long time they were only available at 800x600, and I really wanted that extra width.

  • I have been watching DVD's on my home computer for a few months now. It works really well, except the screen is too small. I was considering upgrading to a 24" CRT, but they are very expensive and probably too big for normal use. Anyway, this display seems like the perfect answer. I wonder when it will be released and the cost? Also - SGI is selling refurbished flat panel displays for cheap (~$1200).
  • I've noticed an increase in the number of people using widescreen TVs also. Is this a trend, fitting more onto your screen? Or is it just a fad? Are there any standards for this kind of thing? How wide is too wide?

  • In regards to widescreen TVs, what do regular TV shows look like? Are they compressed to fit or are the top/bottom just cut off? I'm fairly sure that widescreen moniters are just fine :P

  • Ah, Bah!!


    When I was working at SGI we used to play quake on Infinite Realities with 3 1280x1024 monitors side-by-side. Now that's peripheral vision!

  • Those were cool. I got an LCD monitor that does that too. It's pretty cool since you can work on a much longer document when you pivot to portrait mode. It's from Mag Innovision, and it has a 4 port USB hub thrown in for good measure.

    Has anyone tried this with X?

    tim

    If I distribute beer with the recipe for beer, does that make it free beer as in software, not free beer as in beer?

  • Sounds like what you're trying to do is open a really long xterm and have it wrap from one column to the other ... or maybe you're just trying to be funny.

    Anyway.

    Xfree4.0 supports that xinerama stuff, so you could stack two monitors and almost do that.

  • HDTV will be in widescreen format.
    Most DVD's are offered (sometimes exclusively) in widescreen format.
    You can get video tapes in widescreen format.
    Widescreen format has a specific aspect ration and all of that wonderful jazz.
    A lot of people are making the switch because the techniques used to fit movies onto television screens often hurt the quality of cinematic effects, make the scene harder to discern, or are almost nauseating with constant short distance panning and odd screen resizing.

    The big push is mostly because of the switch to HDTV though, as I figure.
  • I've always thought it would be a good idea to put the toolbars, taskbars, and titlebars at the side of the screen rather than the top and bottom.

    If you try using something like StarOffice in KDE at a low resolution, there's hardly any space left for typing.

    A 16:9 aspect ratio should give plenty of space at the side for a descriptive taskbar and leave a fair bit of useable space in the remaining traditionallly sized chunk of screen.
  • There's normally a choice on the TV set between

    1. Pillarbox (Black bars at left and right)
    2. Cropping (Eliminates the top and bottom portion of the screen. Some shows are made so that they still look good like this)
    3. Stretching (Normally with more extreme stretching at the sides of the screen so that a circle in the centre will still be circular)
  • Yes, it physically rotates.
  • Viewsonic's VPA150 [viewsonic.com] does the exact same thing. Extremely disorienting though; I gave up on it after less than a minute of use like that...

  • Nick Mitchel? Hmm, I used to know one in Gig Harbor... Anyways, to the best of my knowledge, CRTs use a cathrode ray tube, which is basicaly an electron gun that has three different fireing modes: red green blue. It fires the electrons (radiation) at the assorted pixles at different sub dots per pixle.

    LCDs, however, depend on a certian amount of electrical current to flow through the liquid, depending on the current, gives you your particular color....or at least it works on somthing along that principle. You'll note there isn't any radiation.

    so if you're worried about radiation killing you by age 40, think about this; your tv works on the same exact principle that your computer monitor does, except that it has a better resolution and better refresh rate. how long have your kids have been sitting infront of the TV for? I can't recall a single case of diblitating brain tumor that was even remotely linked to CRT radiation. on the upside, however, LCDs will consume less power.

    for those of us who's parents like the thermostat at 65 degrees, my monster 3' deep 17 incher keeps my room (with door shut) a toasty 85 degrees. so much for saving on the electrical bill : )

    Hadlock

  • Picked up my 17" NEC multisync at a boeing surplus wherhouse for 75$... Not only is it big, but it supports every resoulution and refresh i've thrown at it (video playback, various 3D games). Not only that, but while LCDs will consume less power, for those of us who's parents like the thermostat at 65 degrees, my monster 3' deep 17 incher keeps my room (with door shut) a toasty 85 degrees. so much for saving on the electrical bill : )

    Hadlock

    for those of you who care, CRTs are damn good at keeping your coffee, or freshly baked cookies toasty warm, given your CRT sucks power like mine, regardless to saftey concerns

  • Well, wide is more natural for your eyes, since they are located horizontally.
  • The reason content is vertical is because it's easier to read shorter lines (try reading a 14" line and then go back and find the next line, if you can), and monitors are horizontal is because they evolved from TV sets that were not meant to show text but images, which are better presented horizontally because we can see more of it due to our eyes allignment. I say give us square monitors. that way we all win (or loose?). or better yet, do what the other guy said, keep'em wide and have two tall columns displayed. anyone disagrees?
  • This larger display will really add to the value of my I-opener. (At least perceived value... NOT!!)
  • Uhh...LCD screens stil 'shoot' rays at your face.

    --
  • IIRC the recent digital TV standards specify that the display is widescreen. This is normally a ratio of about 9 by 16. This is close I believe to the golden ratio of art and is supposed to be more aesthetically pleasing. Widescreen is closer to the ratios used in the cinema though the 1.78 of widescreen still requires letterboxing of a lot of the 2.1+ ratio feature films (though significantly less than on a standard 1.33 TV).

    A number of TV programs etc. are already being made in widescreen format in preparation for the switch. A small black band at the top and bottom of the screen can indicate this though not all shows have this. Most BBC and ITV drama (UK reference) have had this for years.

    Another example is Babylon 5. Seasons 2-5 were available in both standard and widescreen versions for transmission. Apparently season 1 was filmed in widescreen but the episodes were only edited together in the standard size.

    I have had a widescreen television for over four years now and much prefer it (particuarly for watching LD and DVD Video movies where the player can actually adjust the image for it).
  • Hopefully, manufacturers will move away from using the diagonal measurement of a screen to specify the size. It would be much better to list the screen area and pixel density.

  • The European PALplus TV standard uses a 16:9 aspect ratio. 16:9 is also used for anamorphic DVD and DVB (Digital Video Broadcasting) signals.

    16:9 (1.66) was chosen because it lies inbetween the (old) 4:3 TV aspect ratio and the even wider formats used in cinemas/movies.

  • 3. Stretching (Normally with more extreme stretching at the sides of the screen so that a circle in the centre will still be circular)

    Nope. Stretching is intended for anamorphic signals from DVDs or other sources. So it has to be linear. Actually, it's unstretching. ;-)

  • What application would this be that you are using?
    One can display two browser windows side by side... and two emacs frames, or maybe two terminal windows. Can anyone need anything else? (Am I being just a bit narrow minded?)
    Myself i feel i got my monitor pretty much covered...
  • In the course of this discussion it should be noted that in the March 21st PC magazine John C. Dvorak notes (pg 97) that: Sanyo has opened up a new LCD plant that will make a 26-by 34 inch LCD glass substrate. Such plates will be used mostly for 15 inch and smaller displays for notebooks. This process allows an individual panel to be made in any size up to the size of the glass substrate. Aclaculation is made as to the value of the various sizes and how many individual panels can be cut out of the giant piece. Marketing and mathematics determine how the chunk will be cut up. Its kind of like cutting cloth, and once done you can't go back. **But I suspect that with a piece of substrate this big at least a few monster panels will be nade for trade shows and bragging rights.** Now for my two cents: While I do like LCD technology for its size, for those of you wishing to put two web pages side by side I would strongly reccomend the two monitor solution. For my computer, I bought a $25 monitor card and used a 6 year old moitor for my second screen. Tada! Problems solved! Win 98 supports two monitors reasonably well. On a semi-related note, My first monitor is 27" diagonal viewable. (My second monitor is attached to a 25' cable and sits next to my couch) Where did you get a 27" monitor you ask? For a while Gateway was producing a computer called the XTV, the first TV/Computer crossover. Resolution and dot pitch are not great, but much better on my 27" monitor than the whopping 34" or 36" they also produced for the XTV series. Talk about a big monitor! The best part was that the whole system cost $2,500 for 400 Megahertz processor, CD-RW, DVD player and 192 Mb RAM. I don't know why they stopped making these things, thy where a great deal!! Last thing, I think the only option for you out there that want a TV/Computer hybrid is to wait till HDTV supports imput from computers, but I don't know how long this is supposed to take before it happens if it is indeed possible. Convergence is the future!

  • Re: Huh? (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I think this should read "This is about the same width as a conventional 20" monitor, but much less high." or "This is about the same height as a conventional 13" monitor, but alot wider"...

    You're kidding, right? Have you actually measured the screen size of a 20" or 21" monitor?

    I'm currently sitting behind an IBM P201 20" monitor and an IBM P202 21" monitor. So let's get out the ruler and see...

    P201: around 11.5" high, nearly 15.25" wide
    P202: around 12" high and 16" wide

    These are just rough measurements so +/- 0.25". In any event, neither of these are in the same ballpark as the 20" wide display in the article. Looks like the original poster was pretty close after all! How 'bout that?
  • I know it's nitpicking, but LCD means Liquid Cristal Display. So the term "LCD display" is, although used often, redundant. No need to write "Liquid Cristal Display display" :)
  • Under the view menu, you can turn off most of those stupid menubars (though on 3.1 most come back after any crash or anything slightly wierd.

    Then take that stupid window to the left, drag it away so it floats, and nuke it, too.

    Then again, I started grumbling about wasting my precious screen space when microsoft added the extra ruler in addition to the regular ruler in Word 3 (or was it 4???)

    hawk
  • If you're actually using color, monochrome is kind of useless :)

    Overall, though, at the same level of technology, monochrome will be sharper. I just haven't seen a new, huge, monochrome for years . . . :(
  • No time soon will there be a monitor wide enough for two browser or text editing windows side-by-side. (I long ago gave up 72 or 80 column text for 120 columns.)

    Define "text editing window". I have, right now, on my desktop, two 66x120 xterms, with about a 2cm empty space to the right of them. (I normally have 66x80 xterms, but I widened a couple to see whether you could have two 120 column windows on the screen.)

    Of course, the monitor I have on my desktop is the 1600x1024 SGI 1600SW (which is why I pay no attention to people who talk about how c00l their video cards are; unless it does OpenLDI, so that I can plug my SGI flat panel into them, I Don't Care, especially given that I don't use my machine for games^H^H^H^H^H3D interactive multimedia applications. Hopefully the I128 driver will get ported from 3.x to 4.x in a future XFree86 4.x release; 4.0 doesn't support it, and hence doesn't support the Revolution IV-FP card that came with the monitor - does anybody know of any other video card that can drive the SGI monitor?).

    It can't do two Netscape windows at the width I use for Netscape, but it can, at least, do two 120-column xterms (those being what I do my text editing in)....

  • .. Once you go wide, you won't go back..

    Now I just need to hook a DVD player + QuadScan (or hell, considering the price it's probably cheaper to build a HTPC w/Matrox G400 + DVD and have scaling from that) up to it. Though in principle I agree with DeCSS and have used it and the LiViD stuff to watch DVDs over 100mbps SSH, I still can't easily use the menus and features of the DVD, and my linux box at work does not and will not have a digital audio out. Still, I could possibly argue for having the DVD player and using it as a monitor stand ;) ;)

    btw, that modeline again fro the Sony W900 (works be-yoo-tey-fully with Xf86 4.0 (thank you X4 for DDC support! I even got the monitor's s/n for its inventory sheet without having to turn it around)):

    ModeLine "1920x1200" 245.500 1920 1984 2240 2584 1200 1203 1206 1250

    Your Working Boy,
  • Is there a way to tell X that the window is about twice as high as it really is, and about half the width, then display on my monitor in 2-column format...? The problem with real estate is that I wind up with this big blank unused area called the right.

    Cheers,
    Ben
  • 768x1024,

    In btw it is a standard VESA mode. Most older cards (95-97) used to support various awkward modes with inverse aspect ratio. Dunno about now. Guess I need to buy something new to replace my old faithful S3 and read the leafelet instead of drag-n-dropping it to the "rounded" folder.

  • Yeah, it's big an' sweet, an' I only seen the pictures!
    It's a standard DVI connector, and Apple announced in the last week that they'd allow VARs to sell it independently of getting a full system. It's around US$4500 IIRC. Err... damn had the link somewhere. AH well.

    Pope
  • I have an expensive Mitsubishi 22" flat CRT at home, and even though it supports similar resolutions, it isn't nearly as useful. I have to run a much lower resolution than the monitor supports to keep the text sharp, even with top-of-the-line cables and video cards. And what a desk hog!
    I run a Dell (Repacked Sony or Princeton, I think) 21", and with my Riva ZX 128, I run 1600x1200x16bits and have great looking text all the time. What I had to do was make sure that I moved all other cables (esp power) away from the video cable. That made a huge difference.

    Yeah, you are right about a desk hog. And, it's a real bitch to haul to LAN parties.
    --
  • Perhaps movies will add a plot and characters, to distinguish themselves from TV.
  • "I like having 2 comfortably wide browser windows side by side without overlapping."

    Yes, so do I. But the need for that would be far less if web designers would design for less-than-fullscreen browsers instead of simply putting in a note about "best viewed at 1024x768". I do have a large screen (my favorite resolution being a custom 1440x1080 I designed for XFree because 1280 just didn't cut it and my monitor only does 75 Hz at 1600), but I refuse to open my browser in absurdly large widths just because some web designer couldn't think of somebody wanting to do something else besides browsing the site.

    An especially ugly example is the web interface to german teletext [ard-digital.de]. Try viewing this at less than 800 pixels width. The page navigation instantly becomes unusable (to use it, you have to scroll the window to the right, but after the next page appears, the slider is all left again), yet there is just a feeble bit of actual information on the page which would have fit in a 40x25 text window if it weren't for the graphics.

    (In case anybody is interested in the modeline for 1440x1080 @ 95 kHz/85 Hz, tested and working on a 19" Belinea 106090:

    # 1440x1080 @ 85 Hz, 95 kHz hsync
    Modeline "1440x1080" 184.6 1440 1504 1664 1944 1080 1083 1086 1117

    As always: No warranties that it doesn't kill your monitor, but at least it works for mine :)
  • Wider would be great I think for movies and some games would just rock that way.
    However I prefer taller for most computer related work. I often place the monitor of my 2nd system beside the monitor of my primary system, however I did manage to set up my desk with one monitor above the other. I much preferred that since I found it much easier to glance up and down than side to side. I found working on documents or code with the display spilt between the 2 monitors, much easier to look at vertically on top of one another than side to side.
  • I have one of the Radius monitors on a IIFX, and just for a gag I tried it with a patch cable on my Matrox G200. Syncs up nicely at 768x1024 in X, but the annoying fact it is monochrome got to me. I also got my Rage to do it, but I really had to fight with the X server..
  • Cornerstone is still making their page display monochromes, though they are a pretty penny, and IBM's super-crisp monos are available secondary market for a reasonable price.. We had a couple of those gargantuan Blue tubes through here last month off lease from the DoD. The only way text could look any better is if it were Kathy Ireland.
  • I'll give you the sharpness, but my frequent use of the Gimp, xawtv and xmms/Blur kinda accentuate the need for colour. Besides, my NEC 6FGp's reasonably sharp, and at 21 each definitly outscore the Radius in desktop real-estate.
  • I'm not going to claim that 17.3 inches is the ideal size for a family to huddle around in the living room," added Maunu, "but it does have an appropriate aspect ratio for content creation and business productivity, and if you're watching DVDs on your computer now, all the better if it's in a wide aspect ratio."

    I have to agree with this, my girlfriend and I tried to sit in bed and watch the Matrix on her computer last week and it wasn't a very pleasant experience. Thinking about it now a wider aspect ratio would have made a lot of diference (and of course better speakers which I'll have to get for her now ). I hope this actually does begin a trend with PC monitors so that the price actually drops enough for a couple of college kids like us to buy it.
  • Anyone remember the Radius Pivot monitors, back in what, the late '80s? They were Mac monitors that you could rotate between landscape and portrait mode. When you rotated the screen, MacOS would know and resize the desktop and everything; pretty slick :) Portrait was good for fitting a DTP page on the screen... I don't remember what resolution those things ran at, maybe 624x832? Perhaps 768x1024...
  • What resolutions do these monitors use? I would assume that the standard 640x480, 800x600, etc. would look stretched since the monitor is more wide than usual. Also, it would be a disadvantage to use a non standard resolution because, most webpages and background images are made for the standard resolutions.

    I am thinking that it might an option to run in standard resolution, with two black bars on the left and on the right(kind of like widescreen movies on normal TVs, just horizontal).

    Anyway, I think this monitor would be excellent for playing DVDs or playing Quake with a bigger field of vision than usual(since it's wider, there would probably be a smaller distortion).

  • monochrome boring? Bah . . . (Score:3)

    by hawk ( 1151 ) <hawk@eyry.org> on Friday March 17, 2000 @05:13AM (#1196286) Journal
    I have found exactly two uses for color:

    1) marking keywords
    2) looking at pictures of peoples kids--and I do that rately enough that it's not important; I can use another machine when it comes up.

    Monochrome isn't just a little sharper; it's a lot sharper. There's no mask to get in the way.

    However, I"ll admit to apprciating a slight improvement when I went to four bit greyscale on my powerbook a few years ago. 2 bit really wans't enough, and four would have been silly. But I'd generally prefer the sharper screen to the color.

    hawk

  • Real Life (Score:3)

    by laptop006 ( 37721 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @01:01AM (#1196287) Homepage Journal
    Think about your eyes, you actually see far wider than you can see in height, try it and see.
    -0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-
    Laptop006
    laptop006@netexecutive.com
    Vic, Australia

  • Pah! When do we get REAL screens :-) (Score:3)

    by MosesJones ( 55544 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @01:21AM (#1196288) Homepage

    When I worked coding on an Air Traffic Control system doing the Radar display I had the sort of screen space that made developing a breeze.
    Connected to one box were:

    1) 21" Trinitron monitor

    And the best of the bunch

    2) A 2048x2048 30" Flat Screen by Sony. A real beast of a monitor.

    Requiring a £30,000 graphics box (Barco) plugged into an RS6000.

    6 normal size emacs windows on the 30" and the app running on the 21". One day I shall have such riches again. I've never suffered from such information overload. Magic stuff

  • Cr-aaaa-n-iiii-uuummm - eh? (Score:3)

    by reality-bytes ( 119275 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @01:48AM (#1196289) Homepage
    Yes, and we would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for our pesky craniums! :)

    But Seriously, i wonder if our eyes actually percieve an equal 360' FOV or if they actually work in 16:9 widescreen. As I sit here now, I can see both my forehead and a little of my cheeks (and no, I'm not a fat b@stard!) with clear space to either side ie: I can't see my ears. That must be a pretty equal Field of Vision; so to optimise our eyes potential, we need to tear off our cheeks and smash in our craniums ;)

    (or not)

  • Anything is better (Score:3)

    by 348 ( 124012 ) on Friday March 17, 2000 @05:20AM (#1196290) Homepage
    Than having rays shot at your face for 12-18 hours a day. With all the leaps in technology over the last 20 years it's about time that we get past CRT's and the basic architecture we use as a standard today. As soon as the costs come down a +20" LCD display is tops on my list, for me and for my kids. I fear that is another 20 or 30 years, the medical community will come back and say that all the exposure to monitors causes cancer or something like that.

  • Re:Anything is better (Score:4)

    by vsync64 ( 155958 ) <vsync@quadium.net> on Friday March 17, 2000 @06:31AM (#1196291) Homepage
    It has been scientifically proven that research causes cancer in rats.

    Doctors is all swabs!

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