Inquirer article: Time to ditch awful HD 1080p widescreens

[ansible212]

A self professed rant on UK IT technology site (despite the $s rather than £s in the article) on the quality of both laptop and desktop LCD monitors that I'm sure will chime with many on here, bemoaning both the demise of 4:3 and latterly 16:10 screens in favour of the cursed 'Full HD 1080p' 16:9 nonsense:

Time to ditch awful HD 1080p widescreens

[ZaZ]

While there are some here and other places who care about screen quality, most people don't in my opinion. For most people price is the most important factor when buying, which leaves manufacturers little room to maneuver to offer something better.

[ansible212]

True, but I also think there is a market for higher quality displays and people who would pay a premium. I would, and indeed have... the HP LP2475w is not cheap in the UK.

[pianowizard]

If I were to start an LCD manufacturing company now, I would definitely specialize in 4:3 panels (both laptop and desktop) and 5:4 laptop panels. It would be a nice niche, with little competition from the major manufacturers. One of the unusual panels I would make would be 24" QXGA (2048x1536). I think QXGA is a great resolution, but the 20.8" panel that IBM used to make was a bit too high in pixel density. But I would probably not make 5:4 desktop panels, because people who need lots of vertical real estate can simply rotate a 4:3 screen into portrait mode.

The demand for taller-than-16:9 panels is higher than the leading LCD companies realize. One line of evidence is the prices of these monitors on eBay and Craigslist. 4:3 and 5:4 monitors were dirt cheap 2 to 4 years ago on these sites, because most of the gullible general population were fooled into believing that 4:3 and 5:4 screens were obsolete and inferior to widescreens, so they got rid of those tall screens for dirt cheap. Lots of 17" 5:4 LCD monitors were being sold for $20 to $30, and luckily I grabbed one of those. The same thing happened about 1 to 2 years ago when the industry migrated from 16:10 to the "better", "high-definition" 16:9 format, causing the prices of premium 16:10 monitors like the Dell 2407WFP to plummet (I bought a near-mint 2407WFP off eBay for $115 shipped!). But all these 4:3, 5:4 and 16:10 monitors have been getting more expensive again, as more and more people become aware of their advantages over 16:9.

Despite what I said above about selling 4:3 and 5:4 panels, for my personal use, my favorite aspect ratio is actually 16:10 because it is the most versatile, especially desktop 1920x1200 monitors that can be rotated into 1200x1920.

[Navck]

Next up, laptop makers will attempt to sell you this new technology known as "Tallscreen."
It will be an extra 200 dollar surcharge, however.