My iiyama VisionMaster was doing 1600x1200 @ 90Hz and running Quake 3 just fine back in 1999/2000.
> better compositing, much better text and graphic rendering, better antialiasing, all around higher quality and faster rendering.
Thank you Nvidia, I guess? They have been carrying the water since the late '90s when everyone else dropped the ball.
But let's get something straight. When we went from CRT to LCD/LED we weren't picking visual fidelity. We, as a consumer base, picked convenience. Thin and light vs. great colors, contrast, viewing angles, refresh rates, etc. My first LCD was in 2004. It was an expensive top of the line brand. I took it home and the ghosting was incredible. Massive input lag. If you were sitting in your chair and just leaned back, all the colors would shift on the display. The viewing angle was nonexistent. I took it back the next day. We are just now getting to the point of matching a CRT from the '90s. And you may have noticed we still don't have OLED on the desktop.
Around that same time we all got stuck with perhaps the worst crime against monitor tech: 16:9 aspect ratios. Not only is that aspect not "cinematic" (theatrical 16:9 does not exist), but we're leaving tons of resolution and screen space on the table. Because your monitor will always have the same footprint due to the width, we could have much better vertical resolution if we stuck with 4:3. Consumer TV fads really hurt the computing industry.
> support for web standards has changed dramatically in the last 10 years.
Yeah well, Webpack, Babel, and numerous polyfills all say otherwise. We're only just now dropping support for IE11 everywhere. Maybe that's the light at the end of the tunnel? But I have my doubts. The incentives are too high for the web to fully standardize. Embrace-and-extend will continue. Developing for the web has never been more complex than it is today.
The other bit of sad news is that the web is no longer open. HTML5 is not an open technology. It requires proprietary DRM which only a few companies allow you to use.
> web analytics wasn’t really a thing
I'm going to shed no tears when Google Analytics finally dies.
> perhaps the worst crime against monitor tech: 16:9 aspect ratios. Not only is that aspect not "cinematic" (theatrical 16:9 does not exist), […] we could have much better vertical resolution if we stuck with 4:3.
I’m confused by this. Film aspect ratios are even higher than 16:9, at 1.85:1 and 2.39:1. I don’t understand why you complained about 16:9 being not cinematic while suggesting 4:3 is better, could you elaborate?
Sure. What I mean is at 16:9 you're still getting letterboxing (black bars on top + bottom). In addition to that, it's rather silly to think that just because 16:9 is closer to a theatrical ratio that you're going to ever get a cinematic experience sitting 2 feet in front of a 24" monitor. Or 6 feet in front of a 46"+ TV. We optimized all of our devices for viewing DVD content whether it ever made sense or not. Because home theater was where the money was.
4:3 is better because it fits the application better. What are you doing at your computer? Probably work or browsing the web. If you watch YouTube videos then you have a chicken-and-egg issue... YouTube content is 16:9 because that's what your device is (to see what I mean: look at all the vertical videos today... the content follows the device). YouTube/TikTok creators aren't using aspect ratio in an artistic manner because few of these people are even aware that they could have a say in the matter. Unlike say, Kubrick, who deliberately picks a ratio for each of his films. They are using what the prosumer cameras are designed for, which is all 16:9.
The point is: you're getting black bars if you watch theatrical content whether it's 4:3 or 16:9. The width of your computer monitor is a constant. So we lost vertical screen space for what? Nothing, that's what. Slightly less black bars on the top and bottom when we watch a Marvel movie on our desktop computer or laptop.
While you are correct about movies not using that aspect ratio, I’d say 16:9 is a standard because of TV shows. With the advent of the glutton age of television we’re in now, people find value in a 16:9 display because of all the Netflix shows you can watch full screen on their laptop without bars.
16:9 is a compromise resolution. It's the geometric mean of 1.33 and 2.85 (TV vs Panavision).
> So we lost vertical screen space for what? Nothing, that's what. Slightly less black bars on the top and bottom when we watch a Marvel movie on our desktop computer or laptop.
It's not "nothing" that we lost; on a X" display with Y total pixels, the marvel movie will be larger and higher resolution on a 16:9 than it will be on a 4:3. This is true for any of the post 1960ish popular ratios for films: 15:9, 1.85, and 2.35.
Similarly, 4:3(1.33) content will use more pixels than it would on a 1.85 or 2.35 ratio screen.
Yeah I was distraught by the complete eradication of 4:3 offers in just a few years' time. I think it was a marketing problem: In 16:9 you could suddenly offer screens with a greater diagonal without actually increasing (or even while decreasing) true screen real estate. Measured in inches/dollar, classic 4:3 was fighting with both hands tied behind it's back.
I think diagonal inch unit for screen should be banned. It works as incentive to go for non-square aspect ratio. See smartphones getting longer even though we have eyes horizontally.
i have one, here are pros and cons that i have identified
1. if you sit about 1m or more away from the monitor, it might be usable in terms of size
2. it has brightness limiters, so if you have a mostly white screen (say a fullscreen diagramming app with a white canvas) the monitor will dim by about 50% so you will need to keep some empty space around your window of the desktop image visible (unless you are in complete dark mode for the app)
3. its a glossy display, so if you have direct light behind it wont work out well
4. 4k at 48 inches, the pixel density is a bit low, and if you do scaling of the ui its quite nice but then you loose the advantages of a large monitor to have more desktop space
5. darkmode + low light is brilliant
6. oled is beautiful (wish i could get it without the gloss though)
7. you will need a good enough gpu to get 120fps at 4k (laptop + egpu or latest macbook pro might work)
8. you will need a hdmi 2.0 cable to get 120fps at 4k
9. there are only hdmi inputs
10. if you want to prevent the timed autodimming (you cannot disable dimming completely (see 1) you will need to get the factory remote to disable it
11. to prevent damage to the oled, it auto shifts the screen output by about 5 to 10 pixels every few minutes in desktop/game mode (so you might notice the mac menubar is slightly cut off, thats normal)
12. the remote is a but wonky but cool... there are no direct shortcuts to brightness controls unfortunately...
---
it will also take while to get used to it.... it took me about 2 weeks to start liking the size... (i sit about 80cm from the monitor, deep desk)
honestly, if you sit close, say 50cm or less, a 32 inch 4k display will be better (like the lg 32 inch 4k displays)
edit: my dream monitor is 8k oled at about 38 inches (not ultrawide) and not glossy... thats a few years off i guess (and also who knows if they would make that size in non-ultrawide..)
The 48" CX is a TV. It happens to work pretty nicely as a monitor if you have enough space (between you and the display). But in a desktop setting where you are sitting 2 feet from the monitor, you'd have to physically move your head to see all the content. OLED on the desktop means 24", 27", 32" OLED displays.
Yep, completely agreed on the sizes + viewing distance. I've been on the fence but I'll retrain myself from buying it. It seems it has quite a few downsides.
My iiyama VisionMaster was doing 1600x1200 @ 90Hz and running Quake 3 just fine back in 1999/2000.
> better compositing, much better text and graphic rendering, better antialiasing, all around higher quality and faster rendering.
Thank you Nvidia, I guess? They have been carrying the water since the late '90s when everyone else dropped the ball.
But let's get something straight. When we went from CRT to LCD/LED we weren't picking visual fidelity. We, as a consumer base, picked convenience. Thin and light vs. great colors, contrast, viewing angles, refresh rates, etc. My first LCD was in 2004. It was an expensive top of the line brand. I took it home and the ghosting was incredible. Massive input lag. If you were sitting in your chair and just leaned back, all the colors would shift on the display. The viewing angle was nonexistent. I took it back the next day. We are just now getting to the point of matching a CRT from the '90s. And you may have noticed we still don't have OLED on the desktop.
Around that same time we all got stuck with perhaps the worst crime against monitor tech: 16:9 aspect ratios. Not only is that aspect not "cinematic" (theatrical 16:9 does not exist), but we're leaving tons of resolution and screen space on the table. Because your monitor will always have the same footprint due to the width, we could have much better vertical resolution if we stuck with 4:3. Consumer TV fads really hurt the computing industry.
> support for web standards has changed dramatically in the last 10 years.
Yeah well, Webpack, Babel, and numerous polyfills all say otherwise. We're only just now dropping support for IE11 everywhere. Maybe that's the light at the end of the tunnel? But I have my doubts. The incentives are too high for the web to fully standardize. Embrace-and-extend will continue. Developing for the web has never been more complex than it is today.
The other bit of sad news is that the web is no longer open. HTML5 is not an open technology. It requires proprietary DRM which only a few companies allow you to use.
> web analytics wasn’t really a thing
I'm going to shed no tears when Google Analytics finally dies.