> Well, the monitor I'm watching right now actually has a 8:5 aspect, and 
> the one at home has (I think) a 11:6 ratio. No idea what that means...

IIRC they made computer monitors 16:10 rather than 16:9 so that you could 
watch a 16:9 movie and have a little space for the GUI whilst still seeing 
the film at full size.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?
> > 
> > At risk of entirely misunderstanding the question, all cinemas have shown all
> > films in 16:9 or wider for almost a hundred years.

> Really?

> Huh, well, you learn something every day. The picture always looked 
> fairly square to me...

  I'm beginning to suspect that this is not Andrew, and instead some troll
is posting using his nickname.

  If even TV is not square (it's 4:3), how in the world could you ever
think that movies are square? I don't get it.

  The narrowest aspect ratio used in movies for the past 20+ years has
usually been 1.85:1. The most common aspect ratios for big movies today
is 2.25:1 and even 2.35:1 (that's well over twice as wide as tall).

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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scott <sco### [at] scottcom> wrote:
> Don't know about that, I have a widescreen TV and all the TV programs I 
> watch come in widescreen format, so I never need to adjust anything and it 
> always looks fine.  Where are you getting 4:3 content from?

  "Looks fine" is not saying much...

  Well, I'm not saying you are one of those people (and I'm in fact
assuming you aren't), but I have seen *way* too many people who vehemently
deny seeing *anything* wrong *at all* in a 4:3 picture which has been
stretched horizontally to cover the entire 16:9 screen area.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> I often wonder why we don't have monitors with 300dpi or 600dpi yet. 
>> Then the text on screen would be nearly print-quality.
> 
> Because you view a computer monitor from further distance than a book, 
> an arbitrarily increasing the ppi is a waste of money and electricity.

I can see the pixels on my monitor. But yeah, maybe 600dpi would be 
overkill. Perhaps just 150 or something?

>> (Except that, to this day, changing resolution makes everything come 
>> out too small.
> 
> You can change the ppi setting somewhere in windows, but IME some badly 
> behaved programs don't like it.

Hell, there are programs that ignore you if you change the default 
window colours. Or programs that don't like it if Windows is installed 
on D: rather than C:. ;-)

>> Perhaps I live in a different country or something then? Most of what 
>> we receive doesn't appear to be widescreen.
>>
>> (Or are you talking about the HD channels? We only receive SD.)
> 
> No I only get SD too, everything I've seen is widescreen.

Mmm, OK. I shall investigate further...

> Oh wait, you're not still receiving analogue signal are you?  That might 
> be different.

I don't *think* we are... I thought we were using Freeview.

(Then again, my grandparents use FreeSat. Their TV physically has a 4:3 
aspect [it's an old CRT], and the picture seems to fit natively, so...)

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Warp wrote:

>   Well, I'm not saying you are one of those people (and I'm in fact
> assuming you aren't), but I have seen *way* too many people who vehemently
> deny seeing *anything* wrong *at all* in a 4:3 picture which has been
> stretched horizontally to cover the entire 16:9 screen area.

This is the best part of widescreen! :-D

You can choose between:

1. Black bars at the side of the screen. (I.e., all that extra screen 
area you just paid money for being completely unused.)

2. A stretched image where everybody has elliptical heads.

3. One of the various "zoom" modes which distorts the image non-linearly 
to supposedly give a better picture than a linear distortion.

4. Cut the top and/or bottom off the picture to make it fit.

Everybody seems to hate #1, but lots of people apparently see nothing 
wrong with #2 or #3. *shudders*

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> I can see the pixels on my monitor.

What dpi is it?  How far away are you from it?

> But yeah, maybe 600dpi would be overkill. Perhaps just 150 or something?

My laptop has a 150 dpi screen.  My desktop monitor is 103 dpi and from 
normal viewing at my desk (60 cm) I cannot see any jagged edges from the 
pixels (maybe that's just because of the AA settings though).  Maybe the 
fact that Windows is not good at scaling has meant that making a 150 or 200 
dpi monitor that is used from "desktop" viewing distances would be 
impossible to use due to the tiny physical size of the fonts and other GUI 
items?

> Hell, there are programs that ignore you if you change the default window 
> colours. Or programs that don't like it if Windows is installed on D: 
> rather than C:. ;-)

I was running it for a while on my laptop with a non-standard dpi setting. 
On the whole Windows and Office was fine, but IIRC my CAD software screwed 
up, with some buttons being shifted outside of the window so you couldn't 
get to them!

> (Then again, my grandparents use FreeSat. Their TV physically has a 4:3 
> aspect [it's an old CRT], and the picture seems to fit natively, so...)

Most stand alone sat/freeview boxes I've seen have an option to output to 
4:3 which just crops the left/right edges of the 16:9 signal (I assume if 
it's built into a TV it will be set accordingly to match the TV).  This is 
why they always put any important information in the central part of the 
screen, as they know some people are still chopping the sides off to watch 
4:3.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> 1. Black bars at the side of the screen. (I.e., all that extra screen 
> area you just paid money for being completely unused.)

  And that's wrong because...?

> Everybody seems to hate #1

  I have been thinking about an explanation for that psychological phenomenon
for years, but come up with nothing. It still baffles me.

  Clearly I'm different than 99% of people. The stretching bothers me a
lot, but the black bars on the side not at all. This seems to be the exact
opposite of what those 99% of people feel. But why? I have no idea.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> 2. A stretched image where everybody has elliptical heads.

Maybe it makes them feel better if everyone else looks fatter on TV :-)

Still interested to know where you're getting your 4:3 TV feed from that 
requires one of these "fixes".  Are you using a separate 
freeview/cable/satellite box?  That might be configured to 4:3 rather than 
16:9?

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> 1. Black bars at the side of the screen. (I.e., all that extra screen 
>> area you just paid money for being completely unused.)
> 
>   And that's wrong because...?

It's wrong that I should have to pay extra for a bunch of additional 
pixels that I'm never going to use.

However, if I've already paid that money, I'd rather see black bars than 
squashed heads.

>> Everybody seems to hate #1
> 
>   I have been thinking about an explanation for that psychological phenomenon
> for years, but come up with nothing. It still baffles me.

Join the club.

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And lo On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:28:34 +0200, Bill Pragnell  
<bil### [at] hotmailcom> did spake thusly:

> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Perhaps I live in a different country or something then? Most of what we
>> receive doesn't appear to be widescreen.
>>
>> (Or are you talking about the HD channels? We only receive SD.)
>
> Lightbulb overhead *ping*!
>
> Are you by any chance still watching the analogue signal? Everything on  
> freeview
> that was made within the last 5-10 years will be widescreen, but I seem  
> to
> recall that PAL is only 4:3...

Nope not even that, the analogue widescreen broadcasts are anamorphic so  
despite being 4:3 they expand to 16:9. Even prior to Freeview most films  
on my 4:3 CRT were black-barred top and bottom. I'm trying to think of any  
current broadcasts in 4:3... the older items obviously particularly those  
 from the USA; oh and one channel on Freeview - Viva
-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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