Digital system field/frame rates.

[Mark Hennessy]

Most computer monitors are now 1920 by 1080, sadly. I much prefer 1920 by 1200 - but get them while you can! And only buy IPS panels, as panels that size are too big for TN. I'm very impressed with my Dell 2412, but my HP monitor at work is terrible for anything more demanding for office stuff. The Dell has been replaced by the 2415 (which also looks superb), but tempted to pick up another 2412 while they are still available.

[Mike Watterson]

HD on computers predates TV HD and 16:9 only arrived as a cost reduction to Computer monitors MUCH later.

16:9 is pretty useless if you need reading glasses, as with a 26cm screen height and normal viewing distance it's too wide. Yet putting the task/quick launch bar at side would help. That DOES work on XP. Mac OS, Windows, Linux by default have it at the bottom, stupid in Landscape WS. Also Portrait mode is rarer on desktop computers now than high end workstations 1980s to 1990s, though used on advert screens. Most graphics cards support it. Amazingly given how primitive it is, Android does have the quick launch at the side in Landscape, though stupidly only allows notifications at top.

You can get high end laptops from Lenovo with better than 1920 x 1200 screens.

Also 1080 (rather than 1200 turns out to be JUST too short for A4 documents in portrait). A 4:3 format 2060 x 1545 approx screen at about 200 dpi (without sub pixel addressing) would be a decent minimum. My 14 year old laptop is 133 dpi and 1600 x 1200. The 133 dpi is a little low for good fonts, only "saved" by the fact that the sub pixel addressing works and gives text closer to an effective 250dpi horizontally. More modern screens have a more complex structure requiring two lines for averaging of the colour sub pixels so work badly with sub pixel addressing
Older
RGBRGBRGB
RGBRGBRGB

Newer
RGRGRGRG
GBGBGBGB
or
RYGBYGRYG
BYGRYGBYG
or some other variation.
The so called "retina" screens may use four lines to repeat the pattern, but they don't need sub pixel addressing.
The subpixel address is a slight misnomer as the RGB pixels are not actually addressed, instead the black text has coloured edges, based on assumptions of how the colour is laid out on the panel. Windows from XP onwards has a separate fine tuning utility to adjust appearance of text (cleartype). Linux has such a utility included on most desktop's control panels.

Even for a 7" tablet you want an IPS. The cheap laptop and tablet screens are worse colour and viewing angle than my 14 year old CCFL backlit LCD.
Not all LED backlights are good.
OLED etc look good on a phone or tablet, but they are short life as they are really EL panels, not true LEDs.

[ppppenguin]

HD on computers predates TV HD and 16:9 only arrived as a cost reduction to Computer monitors MUCH later.

HD transmissions to people's homes happened much later but the 16:9 standard for HDTV along with the 1920x1080 image format was developed in the 1980s. The 16:9 aspect ratio was came from work done by NHK Japan to find the subjectively most pleasing aspect ratio. SMPTE 260M, which defines the 1980x1080 60Hz format was first published in 1992. There were very few widescreen displays available back then and they were very expensive professional CRT monitors.

I've read the NHK papers on aspect ratio and think they are dubious at best, but that's what we ended up with. Everybody agreed 16:9 very early on in the days of HDTV when it was still largely analogue. I'm sure I have the NHK papers somewhere but finding them is another matter.

I think the first widescreen computer displays were in the early 2000s.

HDTV had square pixels because anyone who was doing image processing was fed up with the non-sqaure pixels of SD digital. Differently non-square in the 525 and 625 versions too.

[Mike Watterson]

I remember the trials of the satellite only transmission of 1125 line.
WS of TV was influenced by Cinema (which had flirted with it long before WWII). Cinemascope and Colour was pushed by Hollywood as the answer to forecast introduction of Color in USA from 1951. Cinema WS even before the special anamorphic lenses was what ever they wanted, the projector could be adjusted to mask (the matte) as required.

A lot of UK WS film was 1.66:1, (4:3 is 1.33 and 16:9 is 1.78) which technically made more sense for CRTs. It was mindboggling STUPID of TV industry to introduce WS before Digital HD.
I never met anyone that really wanted WS computer screens on workstations. They were extremely rare till WS LCD TVs came in. I've never seen a WS CRT for computer. It's curious though that initial WS LCD for computers were all 16:10 (usually 1920 x 1200, 1200 being a useful minimum for PDFs that are multi-column, which is 1.6:1)

1.66666:1 would be 2000 x 1200, if you kept the minimum 1200 for documents. (twice 576 is 1152, which is nearly good enough, 1080 isn't)

Try reading multi-column text on something without enough vertical resolution!


I was never convinced by 16:9 (1.78) or wider (Ben Hur 2.7:1, some pre WWII films used THREE projectors). Wider than 1.66 really implies an immersive experience and width of wall screen. Also the framing on modern WS HD is STUPID! Close ups chopping off tops of heads?  The framing should be putting MORE in shot to be immersive. Do they think we are all watching on 28" or 32" TVs about 4m away?
Current TV & Cinema seems to have forgotten how to do photography and sound. Are all their screenings on 10" monitors and all their audio listening on giant 8 speaker setups by people that care more about music and effects than dialogue?
This is the main reason I prefer TV and Cinema more than 40 years old.
 

[ppppenguin]

Cinema certainly influenced the use of 16:9 for HDTV. Cinema also used a wide range of aspect ratios from 1.33:1 to rather more than 2:1. Easy enough in a theatre with curtains to define the screen width. Cinema wide screen wasn't always anamorphic. Some methods used fewer perforations per frame, especially on 65mm/70mm film. "5 perf" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_film_formats Makes the pot pourri of TV formats look simple and modest!

Displaying material shot for one aspect ratio on another is always a problem. There isn't a good solution and probably never will be. Letterboxing, pillarboxing, pan/scan, non linear stretching all have their merits and problems.

Producing TV material that works on any device from a 4.5" smartphone to a 105" home theatre is another problem. Again no satisfactory solution.

Computer displays are a separate problem. Big desktop displays are nice to use but sometimes we don't have the space/money or we're using a phone/tablet. I use a pair of 1920x1080 24" monitors which works well enough for me. The few systems that have projected directly into the eye have not been successful. These could overcome the problem of a big display in a small space. Are you a "glasshole"?

I once heard Mike Leigh, the film director, give a wonderfully funny and totally spurious argument to "prove" that the optimum aspect ratio is 1:1.

The other day I saw a BBC demo of 4K UHD with extended dynamic range and colour gamut. The material was a short sequence of shots from the new David Attenborough series that had been re-edited for the new format. The pictures were glorious on a 60" (?) Samsung 4K TV. In a few years it's likely that this sort of quality will be routine. Mind you, it took the best part of 20 years for HDTV to go from lab to commonplace.

[Cardigan]

HD on computers predates TV HD and 16:9 only arrived as a cost reduction to Computer monitors MUCH later.

NHK were transmitting HD TV in 1989, when PCs were struggling with 800 x 600. The BBC did a co-production with them called "The Ginger Tree".

[ppppenguin]

The Ginger Tree brings back memories. I think I saw it either at an IBC or a lecture at IEE Savoy Place. The NHK transmission system was analogue with 1035 active lines out of 1125 total. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_s...g_encoding  It had a limited life. I suppose it was akin to the CBS sequential colour system; a bit too early.

[Mike Watterson]

NHK were transmitting HD TV in 1989, when PCs were struggling with 800 x 600. The BBC did a co-production with them called "The Ginger Tree".

Maybe entry level IBM PCs, but decent CAD PCs and Workstations had far better than that. PCs didn't struggle with 800 x 600, they either did it, or better or not. The PC SVGA standard was 1987 (specified up to 1280 x 800) though VESA may not have ratified it till later. The actual official IBM resolutions were FAR  behind professional  & CAD graphics cards for PCs, never mind CAD/CAE Workstations.

I was using 1280 x 800 in 1986 for PCB layout on a PC.  IBM's failed PS/2 introduced the "behind the curve" 640 x 480 VGA in 1987. 800 x 600, 1024 x 768 (interlaced on cheap screens) and 1280 x 800 were common by 1988 if you needed it.

I have CAD graphics cards for EISA based PCs (released 1988) till recently in the attic which had a VGA daughter card and their own CPU, made in 1989.

All the CHEAP SVGA cards in 1987 were based on the 82c441 chip.

When IBM only had Text on PC on 1981 and then 640x 200 CGA card in 1981, competitors had 800 x 400 as graphics for lower price. CAD workstations where better.

My Jan 2000 laptop wasn't state of the art. Small company. It was 1400 x 1050 (I got to keep it when I upgraded in April 2002 to a 1600 x 1200 15" laptop. I still have both working).

In the late 1980s till CRTs replaced by LCD, the top of the range CRTs for computers were made by iiyama. I have an iiyama 17" CRT now, that does 2048 x 1536. My 2002 laptop can drive that resolution as well as the built in 15" ultrasharp 133dpi 1600 x 1200.

So RETAIL, PRODUCTION PCs have ALWAYS outperformed Public Broadcast TV and the NHK/BBC thing was not not available generally. Two years earlier anyone could buy a much higher resolution CAD/CAE system based on a PC off the shelf.

https://xkcd.com/732/



Go to link and "Mouse over"

Edit: See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vecto...dards2.svg

[Mike Watterson]

The NHK transmission system was analogue with 1035 active lines out of 1125 total. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_s...g_encoding  It had a limited life. I suppose it was akin to the CBS sequential colour system; a bit too early.

Only Satellite could deliver it, and very costly transmission, set boxes and screens.
I'm reminded of DMAC & D2MAC (too early hybrid Digital systems, killed by cheaper 20MHz to 25MHz channel FM Video with multiple FM Audio subcarriers and compatible with PAL, NTSC and SECAM baseband, so the satellite receiver only needed an FM receiver tuned 950 to 11700, later 12600 ) and a regular VCR style TV modulator. The DMAC/D2MAC needed RGB or an encoder.

I'll resist explaining here in  detail why I think ANY type of portable Digital Radio other than Internet Streaming is an ergonomic failure even if the digital technology and coverage was perfect! DAB was certainly a technical masterpiece, but some issues remain.

Digital TV, SD and HD as we have it now, is a success. It's just a pity it was not progressive only and didn't include 48, 96, 100 and 120 frame rates as options.