16:10 vs 16:9 - the monitor aspect ratio conundrum
Posted on 22nd Oct 2012 at 09:05 by Antony Leather with 100 comments
I've been lucky enough in the last couple of months to have three of the latest IPS monitors sitting on my desk for weeks at a time. They range from several 23in 1,920 x 1,080 models to a 27in screen of the same resolution - all 16:9 aspect ratios of course. However, key to the point of this article is the middle man - a 24in monitor with a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 - an aspect ratio of 16:10.
If you're familiar with aspect ratios, you'll probably know about the fact that in the last four or so years, monitors have switched from being predominately 16:10 (typically 1,680 x 1,050 or 1,920 x 1,200) to 16:9 (usually 1,600 x 900 or 1,920 x 1,080). This is to cut production costs by tying them in with flatscreen TV manufacturing which also sports a 16:9 aspect ratio. As you can see from the above resolutions, you lose a considerable amount of vertical screen real-estate with 16:9 compared to 16:10.
This has real knock-on effects when it comes to viewing photos or webpages, the latter requiring a lot more scrolling for example, while you end up with a narrower field of vision in games too. These are disadvantages that enthusiasts have been crowing about for some time, but having used a larger 27in 16:9 monitor, compared to the seemingly much smaller 24in 16:10 for a few weeks and just having switched back, do you know what I realised?
Even with an extra three inches of diagonal screen space (24in vs 27in) the 27in monitor simply didn't feel as big. Admittedly it was nice to get rid of the horizontal black lines when watching 1080p movies, but apart from this, even having gotten used to the extra size (which was quite immersive in games it has to be said) I still pined to switch back to the 24in screen.
This was in addition to the loss of sharpness due to the fact that fewer pixels had been spread over a larger area, making the screen feel at an even greater disadvantage. Strangely I didn’t expect it to be inferior. The extra screen space seemed like a valuable thing to have, and games certainly appeared much larger. However, when you think about it, all you’re doing is enlarging the image, rather than actually seeing more compared to an identical resolution on a smaller 23in screen.
I have to admit I’ve been on the fence in this argument till now. After all, 16:10 monitors are usually far more expensive too. However, having seen that even a 27in 16:9 monitor can’t usurp a 24in 16:10 example sporting all those extra vertical pixels, it really did make me by surprise and I’d have no qualms now recommending a 24in 16:10 monitor over a larger one that can only offer 1080p.
As 27in monitors become cheaper (the model I looked at costs a similar price to the 24in 16:10 model I’d also been using), the question is a popular one in enthusiast forums - 27in 16:9 or 24in 16:10? While I believe the sweet spot for large monitors is in the 27inch range (I find they’re not too big as to make you constantly move your head around as you would with a 30in monitor on your desk, but offer substantial gains over 24in models) this would have to be with one sporting a 16:10 aspect ratio. As for the above question, my mind is certainly made up – I’d recommend the 24in 16:10 option every time.
What are your thoughts on aspect ratios? Do you have no qualms with 16:9 or are you a die hard 16:10 fan? Let us know in the forum.
If you're familiar with aspect ratios, you'll probably know about the fact that in the last four or so years, monitors have switched from being predominately 16:10 (typically 1,680 x 1,050 or 1,920 x 1,200) to 16:9 (usually 1,600 x 900 or 1,920 x 1,080). This is to cut production costs by tying them in with flatscreen TV manufacturing which also sports a 16:9 aspect ratio. As you can see from the above resolutions, you lose a considerable amount of vertical screen real-estate with 16:9 compared to 16:10.
This has real knock-on effects when it comes to viewing photos or webpages, the latter requiring a lot more scrolling for example, while you end up with a narrower field of vision in games too. These are disadvantages that enthusiasts have been crowing about for some time, but having used a larger 27in 16:9 monitor, compared to the seemingly much smaller 24in 16:10 for a few weeks and just having switched back, do you know what I realised?
Click to enlarge - a 24in 16:10 monitor offers far more vertical screen space than a 16:9 monitor without losing horizontal resolution
Even with an extra three inches of diagonal screen space (24in vs 27in) the 27in monitor simply didn't feel as big. Admittedly it was nice to get rid of the horizontal black lines when watching 1080p movies, but apart from this, even having gotten used to the extra size (which was quite immersive in games it has to be said) I still pined to switch back to the 24in screen.
This was in addition to the loss of sharpness due to the fact that fewer pixels had been spread over a larger area, making the screen feel at an even greater disadvantage. Strangely I didn’t expect it to be inferior. The extra screen space seemed like a valuable thing to have, and games certainly appeared much larger. However, when you think about it, all you’re doing is enlarging the image, rather than actually seeing more compared to an identical resolution on a smaller 23in screen.
I have to admit I’ve been on the fence in this argument till now. After all, 16:10 monitors are usually far more expensive too. However, having seen that even a 27in 16:9 monitor can’t usurp a 24in 16:10 example sporting all those extra vertical pixels, it really did make me by surprise and I’d have no qualms now recommending a 24in 16:10 monitor over a larger one that can only offer 1080p.
Click to enlarge - a 16:9 monitor is better for viewing movies but the reduced vertical space can be a bitter pill to swallow
As 27in monitors become cheaper (the model I looked at costs a similar price to the 24in 16:10 model I’d also been using), the question is a popular one in enthusiast forums - 27in 16:9 or 24in 16:10? While I believe the sweet spot for large monitors is in the 27inch range (I find they’re not too big as to make you constantly move your head around as you would with a 30in monitor on your desk, but offer substantial gains over 24in models) this would have to be with one sporting a 16:10 aspect ratio. As for the above question, my mind is certainly made up – I’d recommend the 24in 16:10 option every time.
What are your thoughts on aspect ratios? Do you have no qualms with 16:9 or are you a die hard 16:10 fan? Let us know in the forum.
100 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyUm - not strictly true - look at the Dell Ultrasharp 27" - 2560 x 1440.
High res displays (2560x1600/1440 for example) tend to buck this trend as they are situationally unique enough to warrant changing your seating arrangement to meet their demands.
Since then, all other laptop I've used have been of the 1366x768 or 1920x1080 (16:9) ratio. On the lower resolution, I badly missed the 16:10 ratio. On the 1920x1080 panels, I can live because of the sheer resolution, but anything lower is just a royal pain to use for real work, so I swear by 16:10, much to the dismay of my wallet. This has reached a turning point as of now since I got the occasion to replace my desktop monitors with a pair of 24" Dells (a U2410 and a 2408WFP, second-hand - I was amazed at how cheap...), both of which have a glorious 1920x1200 pixels in the correct 16:10 ratio.
And then I have to poke around on a friends 1366x768 laptop for whatever reason... Combine low resolution, with shitty washed out colours, a pithy 200:1 contrast ratio and not even sRGB colourspace and you have a recipe for me wanting to go slap some laptop designers... Much the same applies to monitor manufacturers as well, although the Dell U2412M heralds cheap 16:10 IPS for everyone soon \o/
I think people will just choose what they want and how much they want to spend.
but when it comes to monitors or tv's (tv's have come a a nice point where the quality can be also impressive gaming wise), bigger the better, granted the image quality is decent. although colour might not pop as much as certain monitors and technically u just stretching the imaging to fit on a bigger screen, i dont car. like a real man thats still a boy. i would buy a 90inch monitor in my 5foot flat if i could, be uncomfortable but man oh man would i smile when playing games :-)
i would look and say, yeah, ur aspect ratio delivers a true experience and sharper colour, i would reply with, yeah, but i got a monster which is bigger than urs :-D
only joking. 16:10 for me.
@home I currently have exactly the screen I turned down for work which IMHO is a perfect compromise for gaming.
For X-mas, however, I am considering a 16:9 27" (2560 x 1440): It delivers additional 240 vertical pixels over a 16:10 @ 1920 x 1200 while not straining the GPU as much as 2560 x 1600 - I hope...
16:9 is for watching movies, and that's going to happen on a TV instead for most people. The shift to 16:9 in computer monitors is an anti-consumer move that they got away with because of the general consumer's ignorance about these things and the marketing fluff attached to terms like "HD Ready" and "Full HD"; which are largely meaningless in computer displays.
The real screen-type that needs to die in a fire, though; is 1366x768.
Trying to get a 15" laptop that doesn't have that horrendous, unusable, pathetic resolution is a pain.
If it wasn't for whitebooks I'd have torn my hair out when I was in the market for a laptop.
Another alternative would be a Macbook, to Apple's credit; since their attitude to screen resolution is a bit more grounded in reality than the average box-shifter; even if there's just a bit too much marketing fluff attached to the 'Retina' term as well.
i use three 24" 1920x1200 screens, and i have three spares, so i'll be sticking with 16:10 for some time to come.
Several people have, in the past, told me "It's no different, 1920x1200 is too clunky" only to find me trying to punch them in the mouth.
I use 1920x1080 on my laptop, and thanks to works cheapness, the 24" it plugs into. It's ludicrous how different the two resolutions are, and when I get home (to a real display), I feel much better.
I tried to explain this to some friends the other night, but we wound up talking about why the trucker of the group shat in a fridge..
One thing I would mention is that the wider screen of a 16:9 shows more of the game than 16:10. A useful excuse for when I'm getting my arse handed to me in Counter Strike.
Yes we all know that when looking at two monitors (Say two 24" screens) then a 1920x1080 vs 1920x1200 but to then focus on screen size / aspect ratio alone without covering resolution is plane bonkers. It's a forehead slapping omission really and makes me wonder if the author was even aware that higher than 1080p resolution screens were so widely used.
My primary screen is a 16:9 27" my secondary is a 16:10 24". I've got much more working room on the 27" than the 24" and the result is a shaper image to boot.
How can I have a sharper image and more working room on the 27" even though the aspect ratio is 16:9?
BECAUSE IT HAS MORE PIXELS!
Edit: Actually my 24" is not 16:10 it's 10:16 with a vertical height on 1920px and my 15" laptop trumps the 27" when it comes to working space if I crank it up to 2880x1800px
What? I'm serious!
Even with 1440p I still think the U2711 looks too thin.
Sadly couldn't afford a U3011 :(
The other issue is cost - 16:10 screens are becoming increasingly more expensive, and although they have more pixels is that worth the mark up? A Dell 30" costs hundreds more than a Dell 27", which would pay for a large SSD, new CPU or even a whole budget machine.
I thought that a 16:10 screen always showed more of a game than 16:9. I always percieved it as:
16:10 = 16: 0.5 + 9 + 0.5.
For example, if you go from gaming at 1280x720 (16:9) to 1280x800 (16:10), you gain an additional 5% of information above and below the 720p resolution.
When you compare 2560x1440 to 1280x800, the 1440p is showing as much of the game as 720p but with twice as much detail. However, the 1280x800 image would be showing the extra 5% on top and below meaning you see more of the game.
Alas, it works the other way round. The 16:9 shows everything that the 16:10 does, plus a bit more round the sides. Remember the Bioshock furore? There was such an uproar, they changed it, but it's still the default on other games.
As for games most games are console ports and are hard coded for 16:9 ratio even if its stretched to fit the area of your screen.
Very few recent releases even give you an option to change the aspect ratio.
I've never done across many (too many?) years of purchasing / upgrades.
I choose my screens primarily these factors in this order.
A) How much working space I can get (Resolution)
B) Screen size
C) Quality
D) Price
I sit at a distance from my screens where my finger tips could just reach (I have short girly arms). I do that with small monitors I do that with larger hi-res screens.
I choose bigger screens to get more pixels and get more on screen at any one time.
Mainly because only pros and hardcore enthusiasts care at this point.
As for the Dell U2711 vs U3011 comparison, its a big difference in terms of panel tech: the U3011 has a native 10bit panel while the U2711 makes do with an 8bit + afrc panel. That alone is a big difference in cost. If you want expensive try the Nec PA30 for price.
This is much the same reason why Dell still sells the U2410 alongside the U2412M and the U2711 alongside the U2713HM. In both cases the older models have 8-bit + AFRC for 10bit colour while the newer models have 6-bit + AFRC for 8bit colour and consequently are much cheaper.
As tftcentral sums it up:
Depends what you mean by 'showed more'. The majority of games lock the horizontal FOV, so a wider aspect (16:9) will display a wider field of vision round the edges, I think the article author has also got this mixed up. With the squarer 16:10 aspect the edges will be clipped by comparison however the picture will be zoomed in so there is probably a greater level of detail too. As you can see you could confusingly describe both as showing more when it comes to games. There was some forum handbags over this last year that made my head hurt so I tested it out and showed it with screen caps from BFBC2:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?p=2840286&highlight=BFBC2#post2840286
For 2D applications 16:10 is going to be more useful, for games its complicated.
Shame I couldn't push to the 2410 but I reckon the extra quality would have been wasted on me.
Word documents and web pages are just so much less pleasurable.
Never really fancied 16:9.
16:10 is better for games IF it was developed with those res in mind and not a shitty console port. Initial release of Bioshock is a prime example.
The amount of spies I have caught on TF2 thinking I couldn't see them decloak above me is hilarious.
Of course, it's not a requirement that you play at the monitor's native resolution - you can let the monitor upscale if necessary for the game to run smoothly. Or you can dial back on antialiasing, which gets less required the higher your DPI.
I'm using a 16:9 ratio and i bet i have more vertical space than most 16:10 users.
I know that can't be true for games and other things but i prefer anyway the wider aspect.
Field of human vision is wider than taller afterall.
edit: apparently imageshack doesn't provide thumbnails anymore. it the image is too large i'll resize it.
I have a 2408 (fixed 2407) and a U2410. The U2410 is a good successor to the 2407/2407HC/2408.
My dual 1920x1200 screens say hi.
On the laptop side, my shitty-ass 1280x800 laptops have more vertical space than the new average resolution of 1366x768.
If you need the vertical resolution for work, why not take the 16:10 monitor, and put it in portrait mode?
Have you tried using a 24 or 27' monitor in portrait mode..?, you have to crane your neck upwards to see the top of the screen...gets old real quick, either that or sit about 3 or 4 feet away.
I have a nice old 5:4 Viewsonic 17' LCD permanently left in portrait mode for reading magazines, 17' is the perfect size for this mode, you can take in the whole page without having to constantly move your head up and down.
Although 27' monitors in portrait mode do make for amazing Virtual pinball displays..:)
So much so in fact that I bought a trio of Dell U2412 monitors (used in portrait mode) for my gaming rig.
24" is the sweet spot for size, 16:10 is the sweet spot for ratio, 1920x1200 is the sweet spot for res for me.
The comparison being made is a 27" 1920 x 1080 display versus a 24" 1920 x 1200 display. Obviously, the 24" screen will win with it's higher pixel density. That has nothing to do with aspect ratio. If I were buying a 27" display, I would opt for a display that's 2560 x 1440. Aspect ratio wouldn't even be a consideration, and it would avoid a 30" monstrosity with an effectively similar aspect ratio spread across a larger area where one would effectively run into the same 'problem' when comparing image quality and pixel density.
At work, I have a 24" 16:10 IPS display. At home, I have a 23" 16:9 IPS display. Aside from the difference in physical size (which I counteract with by putting the appropriate distance between me and the display), there's hardly anything about the missing 120 horizontal lines that makes me think one is better than the other.
I have to be honest, my first reaction to the article title alone was, "Seriously, this is a thing that people are worried about? Are people that unadaptable that such a tiny difference bothers them?"
Can you get more colour accurate screens? Can you get higher res screens? Can you get bigger screens? Can you get faster screens? Yes, yes, yes and yes. But for £200, a 1920×1200 24" IPS monitor is cracking value for money.
Colour is good, build quality is good and the price is good. I highly recommend these as a decent value for money monitor.
My 10bit 27" Hazro at home is much nicer though, even though it's 16:9. It's all about resolution, not aspect ratio.
Hell, I'd take a 16×5 aspect ratio if it had a nice high vertical resolution greater than 1080 :D
However, 4:3 (which I think the ipad uses) is much better than 16:9 on tablets.
I'm disappointed that Blizzard games look significantly worse in 16:10 - you really have to run them at 16:9
The way I see things, 16:10 is the way the games should be played. 16:9, you are cheating in seeing more to the left and right of you. And getting those overly wide monitor, are the biggest cheaters. So either you have 16:10, or a cheater :p (I am just kidding)
Agree. Also considering a 16:10 and a 16:9 of the same physical height, the 16:9 is physically wider, which I enjoy. The only dimension monitors can really grow without becoming awkward to use it's length.
All that being said, in a perfect world, all other specs equal, 16x10 is a better ratio.
In that matter 16:10 wins, no doubt, and the reason is pretty simple.
Every time you have a 16:9 screen that is high enough in size, it will be too wide to use without having to move your head too much. I know you can then move it further away, but then it would decrease in height (according to your position) and not be high enough. 16:10 is therefore the better aspect ratio, since it delivers the better height according to how wide it is.
The only reason why 16:9 is so widely in use, is purely because of marketing and price.
Too bloomin late once we've all downloaded it.
Use the image hosting here on BT, but personally I don't think you needed the image to add to the point being made.
It all depends on what you're doing. For several hours a day I work in Xcode (OSX software development) and work in a three column view (EG Project + .h + .m).
I'm don't need to be trying to read something on the left and simultaneously read something on the right. I need the maximum number of windows / panes open at the same time which is why I run three monitors and therefore work with a 'virtual' aspect ratio of 48:9 most of the time.
It aint about the aspect ratio, it aint about not turning your head.
It's about seeing what you need to see so you're not having to swap windows / tabs around every few seconds.
As it happens, I don't really notice the lack of vertical height on my screens, there's so much extra real estate in general that it suits me just fine for my needs.
Being able to put two documents side by side, or have a document open and still enough width for a browser, or a video in one corner and a web browser open... all of these things need as much width as possible and they're things I do every day.
Personally I'd love that LG EA93, loads of space for everything.
If you guys really want more height and less width maybe try a 9:16 display? :P
1920x1200 vs 1920x1080....}--> Width is the same. 16:10 does all that :)
2560 x 1600 vs 2560 x 1440}/
Plus you have more room to place windows. So you only lose with 16:9 (except price, but higher demand, higher production, lower price).
Now this is just getting silly!
How does a 29" 2560x1080 screen have 'loads of space' compared to a 27" 2560x1440 screen?
The 27" has 33% more pixels, so you get exactly the same detail in width but an extra 33% of space in height.
I'd love a 21:9 monitor as a toy but not as a working tool, they simply don't have the pixel count.
Hear my words. Someone will come out with an 'affordable' 4K screen before too long and when that happens I think we'll never see a premium 16:10 screen again seeing as UHD is specced to require a minimum of 16:9.
Nope. When we will have 4K, our desktop will be set to a much higher DPI for smoother text, icons, etc. And there will be 4K 16:10 :)
My 2nd screen is a big, fast, 16:9, 27" Iiyama which I use mainly for watching movies and whenever I need a 2nd desktop (usually when working on web pages) but I think I've used it for games like 2 or 3 times. The Formac isn't as quick and ghosts a lot more but I still prefer it for gaming. Also the IQ on the Iiyama isn't even in the same league as the - almost 10yo - Formac.
Until about a month ago, that was a 1600x1200 20.1" Viewsonic, which sadly died after 7 years. Now I have a Samsung 1920x1200 24" model, which is actually far too big for me - I have to move my head to view stuff at the sides of the screen.
Nothing frustrates me more than the useless shops (PC World etc.) who insist on advertising monitors by screen size, and ignore resolution (a year back, you could barely find the resolution of a monitor at PC World!)... and people with 1600x1200 laptops make me cry with envy!
I'm sure the default settings will be like that but if we're still using operating systems like we are today you'll be able to change the settings to give us more working room if we choose.
Just like I can on my retina where I can choose the resolution to suit my working conditions, and I bump up the resolution to give me more room when I'm working away from my desk and don't have my 27 + 24 screens.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/picture.php?albumid=1895&pictureid=30647
See how using a high PPI screen gives you the option to choose how much real-estate you want to work with, and you can even go with a higher resolution than the native (2880x1800) and let the scaling algorithms handle everything.
Because you can't see the individual pixels these scaling modes work surprisingly well and shouldn't be thought of as similar to using a traditional screen at less than native resolution. 1920x1200 on a 15" is very nice and very usable.
It doesn't, but I was comparing it to a 1920x1080 screen. Unless it's stupidly expensive (no pricing I can find yet) it's a perfectly legitimate comparison, given that you have to spend over 500 GBP for a 27''.
Like I said, everyone keeps confusing the issue of size and aspect ratio, and creating an argument they'll always win but which is totally invalid because of the price difference. You can very nearly get TWO 16:9 23'' IPS monitors for the price of one 16:10 24'' IPS monitor.
16:9 in most 3D games is actually wider than 16:10. The reason for this is because most games that implement widescreen properly fix the vertical aspect ratio at a set rate and expand the screen along the horizontal. Since 16:9 is wider than 16:10, this means you see more in most games with decent widescreen support, making it a superior choice for gaming (unless you have a surround setup, where the extra monitors provide your peripheral vision instead of the extra space on the sides).
The only exception are 2D games which feature fixed pixel-scaled graphics. If you play a lot of older games that support higher resolutions, field of view is tied to the number of pixels on screen, and because a 16:10 screen has more pixels than a similar 16:9 screen, you will see more on 16:10. This is not really a concern for modern games, of course.
"it really did make me by surprise"
probably should be:
"it really did take me by surprise"
otherwise great article, I definitely agree about 16:10 being better suited for PCs.
I am a bit sad though that today's announcement on new iMac is 16:9 again.
Don't be sad. Seriously! It's not important enough to make you sad. War, famine and child suffering can make you sad but not the smegging aspect ratio of a computer monitor!
If 16:9 is such an issue for you, then I have good news for you. The iMacs can be thought of as 16:10 2304px x 1440px screens.
(Drum roll)
It's just that Apple give you an extra 128px free on each side.
(Cymbal crash)
Of course a decent spec 29" 21:9 2560px screen is going to be closer in price to a decent spec 2560px 27" than a 1080 screen.
As the LG is IPS, high res, well specified, has speakers and a 4 way split screen mode I think it's safe it's not going to be the low cost option if you're looking for 'loads' of room. A 27" is still the 'sweet spot' to go for when comparing price / pixels.
I'd still love one though, even if I'm not sure what I'd do with it seeing as I wouldn't let it replace my 27" + 24"
</dream>
back to boring old 2012.
At home I use two Samsung 24" side by side. Mosty I concentrate on one of the screens to do stuff on. And the last couple of weeks it seems like we adapted to the screen estate being that the left screen is for me and the right screen for my girlfriend this was sneaked in almost automaticaly during the last month. Unless I switch the screens to my other PC that uses both screens for showing Cubase and the mixer panel, vst plugins etc.
27" is total rubbish in my view. They rarely offer higher pixel density, quite to the contrary. Should I ever have quite a bunch of spare money, my next upgrade step would be 16:10 30". Two of them. Three is quite silly really, imho.
Meanwhile, I am dreaming of 2020, round-a-bout when OLED-displays should start becoming affordable.. *drool* (yes, once more, 16:10!!)
16:9 is a projector-only resolution for me. there it is the perfect one (well, and in tv's). simples.
You know, kinda like on your smartphone, when you flip the phone to landscape and the page contents fills the whole of the screen, and doesn't leave half the screen empty.
This would sure help with the scrolling part. I mean even with my 1920x1200 24" 16:10 dell screen, there is still too much scrolling going on whilst reading sites like this one right here for example :P
Back on topic, I think the author was right when he said that 16:9 was introduced to "cut production costs". The question I would like to ask is:
Do 16:9 screens cost the same as 16:10 screens?
P.S. Love my 16:10 screen.
Also, as 16:10 is aimed for professionals market, they costs more as they don't really cheap out in build quality. While they are exceptions, this is the general rule.
What a silly thing to say. If you are comparing a 1920 27" screen with a 1920 24" screen, then yes, of course, but who the hell buys a 27" 1920 monitor anyway?
I've come to expect crapness from bit-tech when they deal with monitors though.
I do agree though... 16:10 is vastly superior. I'll only buy a 16:9 screen when I am forced to do so.
It's not a silly thing to say at all, it's factually correct. Nothing more to it than that. Plenty of people are buying 27in monitors, which is why I stated the fact that the question of 24in 16:10 vs 27in 16:9 is a popular one on forums at the moment.
Really? 27" 1920x1080 monitors? I don;t think so.
2- I see 16:9 monitor has a super thick frame around them, because they are cheap monitor, and those are glossy, so that's more annoying.
3- Black lines are 0 issues, as you don't focus on them or even visible (unless you buy those crummy TN panels, where you have back light bleeding like no tomorrow)
Quick analysis of a random "1080p" movie shows a resolution of 1920x800... Sure doesn't look like 16:9 to me, so black bars anyways.
1. Saying little here, we already know that we get the aspect ratios that directors want to release. Fact is they want to release a certain standard and that isn't 16:10
2. This is just nonsense. The fact that 16:9 monitors may tend to be cheaper by and large has no bearing on the actual aspect ratio itself. It's not inherent and thus pointless to point out.
3. It's a problem for me. It distracts from the viewing experience.
4. This is bleedingly obvious. Who said I wanted merely an upscale? The underlying point I thought would be obvious was that in order for 4K resolutions to work we need multiple industries to change. Yes, we need movies to be recorded in higher resolution, a communications network to handle the extra bandwidth requirements associated to streaming this new resolution space and lastly the screens to utilize it. What is your point here?
However, the 16:10 monitors that are out there tend to be very high quality compared to the gambit of crap panels in the 16:9 market. Same goes for 4:3 monitors. If people insist on 4:3 it's because they have a good reason to want it, and the quality of the monitors reflects that.
I use 3 Dell 24" 1920x1200 monitors in portrait mode. I love it. Scrolling web pages makes a ton of sense with vertical monitors. Any program in the Adobe Master Suite . . . not so much.
1. Sure isn't 16:9 though: Anamorphic widescreen (which is most movies) is 2.35:1 = 23.5:10 = 21.15:9, so you're still getting black bars on a 16:9 screen anyways.
2. It does actually. Due to 16:9 panels being all the rage, pretty much all current 16:10 monitors are high-end IPS monitors as opposed to the piles of of cheap, shitty TN 16:9 panels.
3. Fair point, but you're still getting black bars on 16:9, even on your 80" HDTV.
4. 4K resolution output exist already:
4.1. The RED Scarlet (a fairly popular 4K camera) is selling quite well to both pros and semi-pros, so recording into 4K is not an issue.
4.2.1. File networking is covered: a 1080p movie can at most max at 42Mbps (that I've seen), straight scaling by a factor of 4 give a required bandwidth of upto 168Mmbps. We then round up very generously to, say, 250Mbps. At this point in time we have 1000Mbps deployed in LANs (my computers are wired using gigabit ethernet most of the time) and many WANs. Curent Wifi tech could theoretically provide the necessary bandwidth, but we all know how that works in practice.
4.2.2. Signal output is covered too: HDMI 1.4 and DisplayPort 1.2 both support 4K at 24-30Hz and 60Hz respectively. Decoders/Encoders already exist as well, so no issue there either.
4.3. 4K panels already exist. Bloody expensive though, you're looking at US$ 2.5k+ for a single desktop-class monitor.
4.4. Theatres already use 4K.
At this point, we need releases and screens. By the looks of it, 4K screens should reach high-end around 2015-2016. Hopefully the movie industry can adopt tech quickly for once... otherwise we end up having in the HD situation where people had 1920x1200 screens in their computers (Like the 15.4" latitude D830 from 2005) and had to watch SD content only...
On that note, I'd like 3 nice 30" 120Hz 5120x3200 (precise doubling on 2560x1600) IPS screens. With Thunderbolt.