http://www.xkcd.com/732/

This puzzles me too.

I mean, if you're going to force everybody to buy a new TV, new 
receiver, new type of disk and a new machine to play it, why it increase 
the resolution *significantly*? Why only increase it by a small amount? 
I don't understand that.

(And hell, half the equipment and content that says "HD" on it isn't 
even full resolution anyway... Why allow half a dozen resolutions when 
it would have been far simpler for the designers and less misleading for 
the public if they allow only one resolution?)

Hell, when I was at uni ten years ago we had computers exceeding these 
resolutions. With Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 4. Has technology not 
moved on since then? It's not like there's any technical challenge to 
using a higher resolution, after all...

PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" TVs. 
Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 aspect, 
what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 aspect?? I 
don't understand.

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:19:45 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> I mean, if you're going to force everybody to buy a new TV, new  
> receiver, new type of disk and a new machine to play it, why it increase  
> the resolution *significantly*? Why only increase it by a small amount?  
> I don't understand that.

Cost, both for producing the TV and for producing the content.


> (And hell, half the equipment and content that says "HD" on it isn't  
> even full resolution anyway... Why allow half a dozen resolutions when  
> it would have been far simpler for the designers and less misleading for  
> the public if they allow only one resolution?)

Again, cost.


> Hell, when I was at uni ten years ago we had computers exceeding these  
> resolutions. With Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 4. Has technology not  
> moved on since then? It's not like there's any technical challenge to  
> using a higher resolution, after all...

Did you have a 40" computer monitor ten years ago? How much did it cost?


> PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" TVs.  
> Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 aspect,  
> what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 aspect?? I  
> don't understand.

I take it you have never watched a movie then.

Also, cost. Moving to widescreen -- while maintaining the same diagonal  
length -- reduces the panel area.



-- 
FE

Post a reply to this message

>> why not increase the resolution *significantly*?
> 
> Cost, both for producing the TV and for producing the content.

Producing the content I can understand. It presumably costs more money 
to shunt larger volumes of data around...

>> Why allow half a dozen resolutions when 
>> it would have been far simpler for the designers and less misleading 
>> for the public if they allow only one resolution?
> 
> Again, cost.

How is it *cheaper* to design something more complicated?

> Did you have a 40" computer monitor ten years ago?

No. But you would think that making a large monitor with a high 
resolution would be much cheaper than making a small monitor with a high 
resolution. (That would require a greater dot-pitch.)

>> PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" 
>> TVs.
> 
> I take it you have never watched a movie then.

Some movies are widescreen. But by no means all of them. Besides, the 
time spent watching movies is utterly dwarfed by the time spent watching 
normal TV - which is never widescreen. (Hell, even when the movie is 
widescreen, they usually show it in 4:3 aspect anyway.)

> Also, cost. Moving to widescreen -- while maintaining the same diagonal 
> length -- reduces the panel area.

Ah. So that's the true reason...

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:51:55 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:

>>> Why allow half a dozen resolutions when it would have been far simpler  
>>> for the designers and less misleading for the public if they allow  
>>> only one resolution?
>>  Again, cost.
>
> How is it *cheaper* to design something more complicated?

1. If a TV supported *only* 1080p, any video source you connected to it  
would also have to support it.
2. A video-scaling circuit is dirt-cheap compared to the cost of the panel  
and the back-light.
3. Calling all those resolutions "HD" lets them make TVs with lower  
resolutions and still market them as "HD".



>> Did you have a 40" computer monitor ten years ago?
>
> No. But you would think that making a large monitor with a high  
> resolution would be much cheaper than making a small monitor with a high  
> resolution. (That would require a greater dot-pitch.)

Making a high-resolution panel is expensive. Making a large panel is  
expensive. Making a large high-resolution panel is *really* expensive.



>>> PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" TVs.
>>  I take it you have never watched a movie then.
>
> Some movies are widescreen. But by no means all of them.

Most movies are widescreen. However, most movie producers traditionally  
took care to make the movies easily convertible to 4:3 (typically through  
Pan&Scan) specifically because TVs used to be in that format.



> Besides, the time spent watching movies is utterly dwarfed by the time  
> spent watching normal TV - which is never widescreen.

That may be true for you, but you really need to stop assuming that  
everyone in the entire world has the same behavior and preferences as you.



> (Hell, even when the movie is widescreen, they usually show it in 4:3  
> aspect anyway.)

Once again, cost. Some networks save money by reusing the same tapes they  
have been using for decades. Since those tapes were already prepared for  
4:3, that is what you get. Newer movies, and also older movies shown by  
less stingy networks, are almost always shown in widescreen.



-- 
FE

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:4bd54ca2$1@news.povray.org...

> I mean, if you're going to force everybody to buy a new TV, new
> receiver, new type of disk and a new machine to play it, why it increase
> the resolution *significantly*? Why only increase it by a small amount?

Bandwidth. Your LCD is connected to your computer by a 4 foot cable that
carries a single "channel". Now think about the number of channels and the
distances involved in broadcast TV.

> (And hell, half the equipment and content that says "HD" on it isn't
> even full resolution anyway... Why allow half a dozen resolutions when
> it would have been far simpler for the designers and less misleading for
> the public if they allow only one resolution?)

I'm with you on this one.

> PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" TVs.
> Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 aspect,
> what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 aspect?? I
> don't understand.

Movies (on disk).

Post a reply to this message

>>>> Why allow half a dozen resolutions when it would have been far 
>>>> simpler for the designers and less misleading for the public if they 
>>>> allow only one resolution?
>>>  Again, cost.
>>
>> How is it *cheaper* to design something more complicated?
> 
> 1. If a TV supported *only* 1080p, any video source you connected to it 
> would also have to support it.

How about if it supported only SD (which is one resolution) or only HD 
(in one resolution)?

> 3. Calling all those resolutions "HD" lets them make TVs with lower 
> resolutions and still market them as "HD".

Yeah. This is exactly the part I don't like.

>>> Did you have a 40" computer monitor ten years ago?
>>
>> No. But you would think that making a large monitor with a high 
>> resolution would be much cheaper than making a small monitor with a 
>> high resolution. (That would require a greater dot-pitch.)
> 
> Making a high-resolution panel is expensive. Making a large panel is 
> expensive. Making a large high-resolution panel is *really* expensive.

I thought it's a high dot-pitch which is expensive? (The "resolution" of 
the finished item being the area of the panel multiplied by the 
dot-pitch.) By that reconing, a large 1080p display would be cheaper 
than a small 1080p display, because the dot-pitch is lower.

> Most movies are widescreen. However, most movie producers traditionally 
> took care to make the movies easily convertible to 4:3 (typically 
> through Pan&Scan) specifically because TVs used to be in that format.

OK. Might be true I guess...

>> Besides, the time spent watching movies is utterly dwarfed by the time 
>> spent watching normal TV - which is never widescreen.
> 
> That may be true for you, but you really need to stop assuming that 
> everyone in the entire world has the same behavior and preferences as you.

Well, I'm only talking about the UK. I don't know what's happening in 
other parts of the world, but in the UK everybody's acting like HD is 
this Really Big Deal that everybody should be excited about. As far as I 
can tell, there isn't really much of a difference.

Similarly, it has now become virtually impossible to buy anything in a 
normal aspect ratio; only widescreen TVs and monitors (and even 
laptops!) are for sale. And I have no idea why. (What the hell is the 
advantage of a widescreen *laptop* for goodness' sake?!)

>> (Hell, even when the movie is widescreen, they usually show it in 4:3 
>> aspect anyway.)
> 
> Once again, cost. Some networks save money by reusing the same tapes 
> they have been using for decades. Since those tapes were already 
> prepared for 4:3, that is what you get.

OK, fair enough.

Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?

Post a reply to this message

>> I mean, if you're going to force everybody to buy a new TV, new
>> receiver, new type of disk and a new machine to play it, why it increase
>> the resolution *significantly*? Why only increase it by a small amount?
> 
> Bandwidth. Your LCD is connected to your computer by a 4 foot cable that
> carries a single "channel". Now think about the number of channels and the
> distances involved in broadcast TV.

My monitor is connected via an analogue (or, if I'm lucky, uncompressed 
digital) link. Video signals tend to be highly compressible. Indeed, at 
higher resolutions the data may even become *easier* to compress.

But sure, I guess if you're trying to transmit stuff, there is only 
finite bandwidth to work with. You'd think all this would be less 
problematic for playback from disk though...

On the other hand, greating a succession of slightly higher resolution 
platforms gives manufacturers a way to charge you more money as you 
constantly upgrade all your equipment. :-P

Post a reply to this message

>> Cost, both for producing the TV and for producing the content.
>
> Producing the content I can understand. It presumably costs more money to 
> shunt larger volumes of data around...

For the same size TV, increased resolution (smaller pixels) is more 
expensive for many reasons:
- Bigger backlight needed
- More/bigger driver ICs
- More expensive components due to higher pixel clock rate
- More RAM for frame buffer
- More powerful DSP/CPU for manipulating frame buffer
- More connections to the panel (worse reliability)
- Panel yield reduced due to roughly constant probability of pixel failure

> How is it *cheaper* to design something more complicated?

Because not everyone can afford the top of the range model.  It's a well 
known economics method to introduce several products with varying 
performance and price to get more money overall.

> No. But you would think that making a large monitor with a high resolution 
> would be much cheaper than making a small monitor with a high resolution.

No, the cost of panel area outweighs all the things I mentioned above. 
Every LCD factory is run at almost 100% capacity, they measure income in $ 
per square metre, a panel that is twice the size is going to be roughly 
twice the cost (plus or minus a bit depending on the factors I mentioned 
above).

> Some movies are widescreen. But by no means all of them. Besides, the time 
> spent watching movies is utterly dwarfed by the time spent watching normal 
> TV - which is never widescreen.

Funny how radiotimes.com indicates almost every TV program is broadcast in 
widescreen :-)  You need to fix your TV if you are not seeing a widescreen 
picture from normal TV.

Post a reply to this message

> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?

WTF?

Post a reply to this message

>> How is it *cheaper* to design something more complicated?
> 
> Because not everyone can afford the top of the range model.  It's a well 
> known economics method to introduce several products with varying 
> performance and price to get more money overall.

...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing 
is to extract more money from people.

>> No. But you would think that making a large monitor with a high 
>> resolution would be much cheaper than making a small monitor with a 
>> high resolution.
> 
> No, the cost of panel area outweighs all the things I mentioned above. 

Oh, OK. I assumed the difficulty of manufacturing a higher dot-pitch was 
the main problem...

>> Some movies are widescreen. But by no means all of them. Besides, the 
>> time spent watching movies is utterly dwarfed by the time spent 
>> watching normal TV - which is never widescreen.
> 
> Funny how radiotimes.com indicates almost every TV program is broadcast 
> in widescreen :-)  You need to fix your TV if you are not seeing a 
> widescreen picture from normal TV.

I especially love how I have a widescreen TV, but you have to manually 
flip between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect. Even though it's connected by a 
digital link, so you'd think it could *detect* which kind of signal it's 
receiving...

That being the case, it's not entirely easy to tell whether you're 
watching a widescreen broadcast, or a normal one with the top cut off. 
(Unless of course you configure the TV to show black bars at the side - 
but it's my mum's TV, and she always complains when I configure it that 
way.)

Post a reply to this message

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.

Post a reply to this message

>> 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...

Post a reply to this message

On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:25:12 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> How about if it supported only SD (which is one resolution) or only HD  
> (in one resolution)?

Then you would ignore the market segment that consists of people that want  
something better than SD but cannot (or do not want to) pay the full price  
of 1080p.



> I thought it's a high dot-pitch which is expensive? (The "resolution" of  
> the finished item being the area of the panel multiplied by the  
> dot-pitch.) By that reconing, a large 1080p display would be cheaper  
> than a small 1080p display, because the dot-pitch is lower.

I am by no means an expert on LCD panel production, but I do not think  
there are significant cost savings associated with an excessively large  
dot-pitch; certainly not enough to offset the cost of a larger panel.  
Making pixels really tiny is difficult/expensive, but making them really  
large becomes a matter of diminishing returns.



> Well, I'm only talking about the UK. I don't know what's happening in  
> other parts of the world, but in the UK everybody's acting like HD is  
> this Really Big Deal that everybody should be excited about. As far as I  
> can tell, there isn't really much of a difference.

The issue of whether there is an appreciable difference has been discussed  
before, at great length, in this very forum.



> (What the hell is the advantage of a widescreen *laptop* for goodness'  
> sake?!)

1. Watching movies on the go.
2. A better match for the aspect ratio of the keyboard.
3. Cost (remember that thing about the diagonal and the surface area).



> Question: Why aren't there any widescreen cinemas yet?

Are you smoking something, or have you simply never been to a cinema?  
Practically all cinemas are widescreen. Heck, they can even adjust the  
aspect ratio on the fly.



I have to ask: Is Milton Keynes like one of those little tribal villages  
sometimes found deep in some jungle, where technology has not improved for  
centuries?



-- 
FE

Post a reply to this message

Am 26.04.2010 11:38, schrieb scott:

> For the same size TV, increased resolution (smaller pixels) is more
> expensive for many reasons:
...
> - Panel yield reduced due to roughly constant probability of pixel failure

... which, to make things worse, does not just have a /linear/ effect on 
panel yield, but an /exponential/ one.

Post a reply to this message

Am 26.04.2010 11:49, schrieb Invisible:

> ...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing
> is to extract more money from people.

The entire reason for HDTV /per se/ is to extract more money from people.

They call it capitalism: The desire to extract more money from people as 
the primary driving force for innovation.

Post a reply to this message

>> ...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing
>> is to extract more money from people.
> 
> The entire reason for HDTV /per se/ is to extract more money from people.

Damn. And here I was thinking it was supposed to improve picture quality...

Post a reply to this message

Am 26.04.2010 12:04, schrieb Invisible:
>>> ...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing
>>> is to extract more money from people.
>>
>> The entire reason for HDTV /per se/ is to extract more money from people.
>
> Damn. And here I was thinking it was supposed to improve picture quality...

No; that's just a semi-rare collateral effect...

Post a reply to this message

> ...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing is 
> to extract more money from people.

Of course, why else would any company do anything?

>> No, the cost of panel area outweighs all the things I mentioned above.
>
> Oh, OK. I assumed the difficulty of manufacturing a higher dot-pitch was 
> the main problem...

No, that's technically easy.  Besides pixels can be made orders of 
magnitudes smaller than what is needed for TV (computer monitors, cell phone 
screens, LCDs for projectors, etc.).

>> Funny how radiotimes.com indicates almost every TV program is broadcast 
>> in widescreen :-)  You need to fix your TV if you are not seeing a 
>> widescreen picture from normal TV.
>
> I especially love how I have a widescreen TV, but you have to manually 
> flip between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect. Even though it's connected by a digital 
> link, so you'd think it could *detect* which kind of signal it's 
> receiving...

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?

> That being the case, it's not entirely easy to tell whether you're 
> watching a widescreen broadcast, or a normal one with the top cut off. 
> (Unless of course you configure the TV to show black bars at the side - 
> but it's my mum's TV, and she always complains when I configure it that 
> way.)

With 99% certainty anything you are watching from UK TV will be widescreen. 
It is very rare anything is broadcast in 4:3, I certainly haven't seen 
anything and looking through radiotimes.com I can't find anything either.

Quite often you will see the text and captions on the TV will be formatted 
within some "safe" area for 4:3 (so won't use the left/right edges), but the 
main feed will be 16:9 format. Like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v467/jonchoo/954963b2.jpg

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:19:45 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake thusly:

> PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" TVs.  
> Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 aspect,  
> what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 aspect?? I  
> don't understand.

To all those giving an answer of "movies" to this question may I point out  
that most aren't 16:9 but are in 21:9 cinema proportions. 16:9 was the  
compromise yet now we have the option of purchasing yet another television  
at this proportion from Philips.

-- 
Phil Cook

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

Post a reply to this message

And lo On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:53:08 +0200, Fredrik Eriksson  
<fe79}--at--{yahoo}--dot--{com> did spake thusly:

> I have to ask: Is Milton Keynes like one of those little tribal villages  
> sometimes found deep in some jungle, where technology has not improved  
> for centuries?

No that'd be Scotland... ooooo channeling Frankie Boyle there.

-- 
Phil Cook

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

Post a reply to this message

>> ...in other words, the entire reason for multiple resolutions existing 
>> is to extract more money from people.
> 
> Of course, why else would any company do anything?

I don't mind paying money when I actually get something in return.

>>> No, the cost of panel area outweighs all the things I mentioned above.
>>
>> Oh, OK. I assumed the difficulty of manufacturing a higher dot-pitch 
>> was the main problem...
> 
> No, that's technically easy.  Besides pixels can be made orders of 
> magnitudes smaller than what is needed for TV (computer monitors, cell 
> phone screens, LCDs for projectors, etc.).

I often wonder why we don't have monitors with 300dpi or 600dpi yet. 
Then the text on screen would be nearly print-quality.

(Except that, to this day, changing resolution makes everything come out 
too small. How many managers have you seen turn down the resolution to 
make the text bigger?)

>> I especially love how I have a widescreen TV, but you have to manually 
>> flip between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect. Even though it's connected by a 
>> digital link, so you'd think it could *detect* which kind of signal 
>> it's receiving...
> 
> 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?

Even the adverts?

Which channels are you watching?

> With 99% certainty anything you are watching from UK TV will be 
> widescreen. It is very rare anything is broadcast in 4:3, I certainly 
> haven't seen anything and looking through radiotimes.com I can't find 
> anything either.

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.)

Post a reply to this message

Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> And lo On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:19:45 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did 
> spake thusly:
> 
>> PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" 
>> TVs. Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 
>> aspect, what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 
>> aspect?? I don't understand.
> 
> To all those giving an answer of "movies" to this question may I point 
> out that most aren't 16:9 but are in 21:9 cinema proportions. 16:9 was 
> the compromise yet now we have the option of purchasing yet another 
> television at this proportion from Philips.

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...

Post a reply to this message

>> How about if it supported only SD (which is one resolution) or only HD 
>> (in one resolution)?
> 
> Then you would ignore the market segment that consists of people that 
> want something better than SD but cannot (or do not want to) pay the 
> full price of 1080p.

I'm of the opinion that "full price 1080p" shouldn't be that expensive 
in the first place, and we should all be saving up for 4096p or 
something. But I guess that's next year's money draw...

>> (What the hell is the advantage of a widescreen *laptop* for goodness' 
>> sake?!)
> 
> 1. Watching movies on the go.

OK. If you accept that there is movie content available in widescreen 
then that makes sense.

> 2. A better match for the aspect ratio of the keyboard.

That works. In fact, my (widescreen) laptop is the very first laptop 
I've ever seen with a numpad. Usually laptops omit it.

> 3. Cost (remember that thing about the diagonal and the surface area).

Fair enough.

> I have to ask: Is Milton Keynes like one of those little tribal villages 
> sometimes found deep in some jungle, where technology has not improved 
> for centuries?

Milton Keynes hasn't actually existed for a complete century yet, so... 
no. (Although for some strange reason almost nobody seems to have heard 
of it or know where it is. And whenever shows or events happen, they 
happen in Northampton. Not Milton Keynes. No idea why!)

I did once see a film at Loughborough Cinema [there is only one]. That 
was an experience; no surround sound, for a start. It's surprising how 
much of a difference that makes!

Post a reply to this message

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...

Post a reply to this message

On 26/04/2010 11:55 AM, Phil Cook v2 wrote:
> And lo On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 11:53:08 +0200, Fredrik Eriksson
> <fe79}--at--{yahoo}--dot--{com> did spake thusly:
>
>> I have to ask: Is Milton Keynes like one of those little tribal
>> villages sometimes found deep in some jungle, where technology has not
>> improved for centuries?
>
> No that'd be Scotland... ooooo channeling Frankie Boyle there.
>

Oi! Do ye like hospital food? ;-)

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

Post a reply to this message

> I don't mind paying money when I actually get something in return.

Most people feel the same way, and obviously people selling stuff realise 
this too.

> 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.

On the other hand cell-phones, which you often do use much closer, have much 
higher resolution displays.  200-300 dpi on high-end phones is normal, for a 
computer monitor at normal viewing distances I doubt there would be much 
improvement going from 100 -> 300 dpi, and going to 600 dpi would be pretty 
much invisible at normal viewing distances.

> (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.

> Even the adverts?

Yeh I think so, I would have probably noticed if they weren't.

> Which channels are you watching?

Just the usual, BBC1-3 and red button, ITV1&4, C4 etc.

> 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, again check your 
favourite listings magazine or website if you don't believe me.

"Most digital broadcasts from the BBC and the other main broadcasters are 
now in widescreen format"

From:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/digitaltv/widescreen.shtml

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

Post a reply to this message

> 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.

Post a reply to this message

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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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> a écrit dans le message de groupe de discussion 
: 4bd58d26@news.povray.org...
>  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.

Truly, lots of people are blind to wrong image ratios. Some years ago the 
photos in my university's facebook had been stretched horizontally, turning 
hundreds of students into flattened toads. Nobody found that odd. Recently, 
I saw a framed print of a painting where the image had been squeezed because 
the original image's ratio was wider than the frame's ratio. Why bother to 
crop the image or find the right frame? Making movies in widescreen is a 
real waste: filmmakers could film everything in 1.37:1 as in the old times, 
stretch them to 2.39:1 and few people would notice.

G.

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> Truly, lots of people are blind to wrong image ratios. Some years ago the 
> photos in my university's facebook had been stretched horizontally, 
> turning hundreds of students into flattened toads. Nobody found that odd. 
> Recently, I saw a framed print of a painting where the image had been 
> squeezed because the original image's ratio was wider than the frame's 
> ratio. Why bother to crop the image or find the right frame? Making movies 
> in widescreen is a real waste: filmmakers could film everything in 1.37:1 
> as in the old times, stretch them to 2.39:1 and few people would notice.

I think it's because we are used to often seeing things at an angle during 
everyday life, so our brain is quite good at automatically correcting aspect 
ratios for us.

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>> I can see the pixels on my monitor.
> 
> What dpi is it?  How far away are you from it?

No idea what the dpi rating is. It's 1400x900 and it's probably about 
30cm tall or something? And I'm sitting maybr 40cm or so away from it. 
(I don't have anything to actually measure it with.)

> 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).

Yeah, AA hides a multitude of sins. ;-) Curiosly, they don't seem to 
have invented AA for mouse pointers yet. (Except in computer games...)

> 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?

Plausible.

> 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!

Haha! And I bet that CAD software was the most expensive thing on the 
whole PC, by a mile... ;-)

>> (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.

Maybe that's it then. Maybe the reason I still see all broadcast signals 
in 4:3 aspect is because the receiver is resizing them?

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> Haha! And I bet that CAD software was the most expensive thing on the 
> whole PC, by a mile... ;-)

Yeh, I think it is about 10x the price of the laptop itself :-)

> Maybe that's it then. Maybe the reason I still see all broadcast signals 
> in 4:3 aspect is because the receiver is resizing them?

I would definitely check the settings on the receiver.

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>> Haha! And I bet that CAD software was the most expensive thing on the 
>> whole PC, by a mile... ;-)
> 
> Yeh, I think it is about 10x the price of the laptop itself :-)

Only 10x? Bargin!

Oh, wait - what laptop do you have? I'm thinking about the £300 laptops 
that *I* usually work with...

>> Maybe that's it then. Maybe the reason I still see all broadcast 
>> signals in 4:3 aspect is because the receiver is resizing them?
> 
> I would definitely check the settings on the receiver.

Mkay...

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> Oh, wait - what laptop do you have?

Some HP one, with Intel T9600 CPU and nVidia FX770M, it's quite nifty and 
surprisingly the battery lasts for 4 or 5 hours if you're not doing anything 
particularly CPU or GPU intensive.

> I'm thinking about the £300 laptops that *I* usually work with...

I think mine was about 1500 GBP, although I think our IT guy has some scam 
going with the supplier, because his prices always seem to be way more than 
I find them for on other websites ;-)

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scott wrote:
>> Oh, wait - what laptop do you have?
> 
> Some HP one, with Intel T9600 CPU and nVidia FX770M, it's quite nifty 
> and surprisingly the battery lasts for 4 or 5 hours if you're not doing 
> anything particularly CPU or GPU intensive.

Yeah, I'm still quite surprised at how well the batteries on my laptop 
last. It's always been my experience that the battery specs on the 
packet are nonesense and the battery *actually* lasts about 20 minutes. 
But my current laptop _really will_ run for over an hour without needing 
charge.

(And, since it's the first laptop I've seen with a *working* glidepad, 
you can ACTUALLY USE IT ON YOUR LAP! Amazing...)

>> I'm thinking about the £300 laptops that *I* usually work with...
> 
> I think mine was about 1500 GBP.

I'm glad I was already sitting down. :-)

Man, 10x that... that's expensive! Hell, it's almost worth stealing the 
laptop just for the software that's stored on it! ;-)

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> Man, 10x that... that's expensive! Hell, it's almost worth stealing the 
> laptop just for the software that's stored on it! ;-)

Yeh good luck with that, assuming you managed to get past the hard drive 
encryption somehow, the software won't run without a license.  It picks up 
the license from the network (you can "borrow" it for up to 14 days if you 
want), so you'd either need to hack my VPN account too, or get physical 
access to our site somehow.  Anyway, once we knew it was stolen I'd 
definitely notice if that machine had picked up the license, and then I'd 
ask IT to block it :-)

Easier to just download the software from bitTorrent along with a crack...

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On 4/26/2010 3:19 AM, Invisible wrote:
> I mean, if you're going to force everybody to buy a new TV, new
> receiver, new type of disk and a new machine to play it, why it increase
> the resolution *significantly*? Why only increase it by a small amount?
> I don't understand that.

Partly bandwidth related. The UHF/VHF frequency space has only a certain 
amount of bandwidth per channel. Now, while a HD broadcast in 1080p at 
an "acceptable" compression ratio might fit nicely within the allotted 
bandwidth for a channel, doubling the horizontal and vertical 
resolution, for example quadruples the number of pixels on the screen. 
Eventually, the video would need to be compressed to the point where the 
image would be nothing more than a macroblock-fest.

> (And hell, half the equipment and content that says "HD" on it isn't
> even full resolution anyway... Why allow half a dozen resolutions when
> it would have been far simpler for the designers and less misleading for
> the public if they allow only one resolution?)

We're in a transitional period right now. Give it time. What really irks 
me is the way the cable company has been handling content. They have 
allotted no fewer than 4 channels per local station, which is, IMO 
completely unnecessary, and (if the channels aren't just aliases, and 
some aren't: they're analog variants!) it's a horrible waste of 
bandwidth. I can understand simulcasting the analog variant for those 
who do not have HD equipment, but do not want to rent a box.

> Hell, when I was at uni ten years ago we had computers exceeding these
> resolutions. With Windows NT 4.0, Service Pack 4. Has technology not
> moved on since then? It's not like there's any technical challenge to
> using a higher resolution, after all...

In both the digital flat panel and the CRT's case there is some 
technical challenge to higher resolutions: Eventually the frequencies 
involved get so high that capacitance becomes VERY important, and 
circuit design becomes exceptionally tricky, to the point where traces 
at certain distances from each other (whether on the same layer, or 
overlapped in different layers of the board) will essentially act as a 
low-pass filter killing the signal.

> PS. I am similarly baffled by the current fashion for "widescreen" TVs.
> Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 aspect,
> what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 aspect?? I
> don't understand.

Movies.

Going back to why movies went widescreen (they used to be displayed at a 
square ratio, even!) has to do with how the human visual field works, we 
have a wider angle of view on the horizontal axis than we do on the 
vertical.

-- 
~Mike

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:19:45 +0100, Invisible wrote:

> Given that 99.998% of all video content ever created is in 4:3 aspect,

Most of what's created today 16:9 or some other widescreen format.  Older 
stuff?  Maybe not "99.998%", but certainly a majority of the content ever 
created by mankind is likely a 4:3 aspect.  Except movies.

> what the hell is the advantage of buying a TV with a 16:9 aspect?? I
> don't understand.

If you watch more modern content, then you can better utilize the space 
for a larger system.  Me, I use my 16:9 projection system mostly for 
watching HDTV and movies, so 99.998% of what I watch is actually 16:9.

Jim

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>> I mean, if you're going to force everybody to buy a new TV, new
>> receiver, new type of disk and a new machine to play it, why it increase
>> the resolution *significantly*? Why only increase it by a small amount?
>> I don't understand that.
> 
> Partly bandwidth related. The UHF/VHF frequency space has only a certain 
> amount of bandwidth per channel. Now, while a HD broadcast in 1080p at 
> an "acceptable" compression ratio might fit nicely within the allotted 
> bandwidth for a channel, doubling the horizontal and vertical 
> resolution, for example quadruples the number of pixels on the screen. 
> Eventually, the video would need to be compressed to the point where the 
> image would be nothing more than a macroblock-fest.

Quadrupling the number of pixels doesn't necessarily mean that the 
*compressed* signal takes more bandwidth. I'm sure I'm not the first 
person to notice that using higher resolutions tends to make the video 
more compressible. (Although, sure, I imagine there's a limit to how far 
you can feasibly go.)

Then again, since we replaced our old CRT with a shiny new LCD, suddenly 
I notice that just about *everything* on TV has DCT artifacts all over 
it. (I guess the CRT was too blurry to show this.) It's quite annoying.

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Mike Raiford wrote:

> Partly bandwidth related.

Ooo, here's a random thought: Do you think there will ever be a day when 
the Internet becomes fast enough to watch TV-quality video in realtime?

When do you think that day will be?

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On 4/26/2010 4:49 AM, Invisible wrote:

> I especially love how I have a widescreen TV, but you have to manually
> flip between 4:3 and 16:9 aspect. Even though it's connected by a
> digital link, so you'd think it could *detect* which kind of signal it's
> receiving...

Heck, the device producing the signal even does this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widescreen_signaling

There is a slight issue, of course with HD signals, since they're only 
intended for the 16:9 aspect ratio, if a program was originally intended 
for the 4:3 ratio, it will be "pillar-boxed", but the signal is still 
16:9, so you must manually change the TV's widescreen mode if you want 
to fill the screen.

> That being the case, it's not entirely easy to tell whether you're
> watching a widescreen broadcast, or a normal one with the top cut off.
> (Unless of course you configure the TV to show black bars at the side -
> but it's my mum's TV, and she always complains when I configure it that
> way.)

I don't care for the stretching, though when viewing 4:3 full-screen on 
my TV it's not as severe as some, the only reason I do stretch it, 
though is because my TV is an old-school CRT projector and prone to 
burn-in. If it weren't for that, I'd display 4:3 in its native format. 
Perhaps your mother has the same concerns?

-- 
~Mike

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On Mon, 26 Apr 2010 17:15:28 +0200, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> Ooo, here's a random thought: Do you think there will ever be a day when  
> the Internet becomes fast enough to watch TV-quality video in realtime?
>
> When do you think that day will be?

About five years ago.

Are you sure you are not living in the jungle?



-- 
FE

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