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5:4 vs. 4:3

Doh, okay, you little trickster!, you placed the figures back to front to confuse me!.

Should of read 5:4 is better because of increased resolution. 1280x1024 vs 1280x960.

I never realized normal monitors were 5:4

Learn something new everyday
 
Originally posted by: SolMiester
Doh, okay, you little trickster!, you placed the figures back to front to confuse me!.

Should of read 5:4 is better because of increased resolution. 1280x1024 vs 1280x960.

I never realized normal monitors were 5:4

Learn something new everyday
Click to expand...

I would have thought it was the other way around because the only resolutions that are 5:4 are 1280x1024 and 1600x1280. 4:3 ratios are 800x600 1024x768 1152x864 1600x1200
 
I'd perfer 4:3 IMO. Resolution isn't everything esspecially with that few of pixels difference. The wider the better IMO.
 
Originally posted by: JBT
I'd perfer 4:3 IMO. Resolution isn't everything esspecially with that few of pixels difference. The wider the better IMO.
Click to expand...

Thats what I was trying to get at.
 
5:4 really is an oddball. The only common resolution that uses it is 1280x1024 but there are so many LCD's out there that use it so it's influence is disproportionately large. I think it was only created because it makes it easier for LCD manufacturers or something (16:10, anyone?).
 
no, 1280x1024 is a standard resolution called SXGA, developed back in 1990s.

As for 4:3 vs 5:4, you don't have much choice: any 17" or 19" non-wide screen is 5:4, which is too boxy both for gaming, movies and computer-based pro work.

Widescreen is story for itself.
 
The thing is, even though there's more pixels, your eyes won't really notice the difference. Where that really comes into play is the the lines that travel accross the screen (the 1280), or the "latitude". Your eyes wouldn't really notice the difference on the "longitude" side. Most movies are shot anamorphic, which means that the rectangular image is compressed down to an image that is closer to a square. They can get away with that because of our eyes not noticing the resolution this way <-->.

Bottem line, use 1280x960 if you can get away with it because you'll get better framerates and very similar pictures. But, if it's the LCDs native res, go with 1280x1024.
 
Given a diagonal (say 19 inch) a 5:4 has a greater surface area then a 4:3 which is in turn greater then a 16:10 which is why people say a 19 inch lcd (5:4) feels like its the same size as 20 inch crt (4:3).

All that aside 16:10 is the most natural resolution for human eyes imo.
 
Originally posted by: Dribble
Given a diagonal (say 19 inch) a 5:4 has a greater surface area then a 4:3 which is in turn greater then a 16:10 which is why people say a 19 inch lcd (5:4) feels like its the same size as 20 inch crt (4:3).

All that aside 16:10 is the most natural resolution for human eyes imo.
Click to expand...

Umm, a 20" CRT has about 19" viewable, a 19" LCD has 19" viewable, which is why they feel the same size. They are.
 
But 4:3 is a wider aspect ratio than 5:4 correct? To me it seems that 4:3 would be more "natural" than 5:4. When I look at my 19inch LCD it looks almost exactly like a square, but a 20 inch LCD looks more rectangular to me. Is that just me?
 
Broadcast TV is in 4x3. The majority of monitors made in the last 50 years are 4:3. 5x4 is some LCD bastard child.
 
Originally posted by: MBrown
But 4:3 is a wider aspect ratio than 5:4 correct? To me it seems that 4:3 would be more "natural" than 5:4. When I look at my 19inch LCD it looks almost exactly like a square, but a 20 inch LCD looks more rectangular to me. Is that just me?
Click to expand...

4:3 does seem a little more natural, 16:9 even more maybe. 5:4 is pretty close to a square. A 20" LCD looks more rectangular to you because it is probably 4:3 (prolly 1600x1200).

Common aspect ratios
 
Its somewhat a silly Q, because "best" is either the native resolution of a digital panel (5:4 typically only correct for 17/19" LCD panels), or the optimal resolution of a CRT. Both are fixed aspect ratio due to the physical viewport of the display and running the incorrect aspect ratio will give you either;
*Bad geometry (oval circles)
*Reduced screen real estate (Black bars top or bottom)
 
Originally posted by: Lonyo
Originally posted by: Dribble
Given a diagonal (say 19 inch) a 5:4 has a greater surface area then a 4:3 which is in turn greater then a 16:10 which is why people say a 19 inch lcd (5:4) feels like its the same size as 20 inch crt (4:3).

All that aside 16:10 is the most natural resolution for human eyes imo.
Click to expand...

Umm, a 20" CRT has about 19" viewable, a 19" LCD has 19" viewable, which is why they feel the same size. They are.
Click to expand...


There's no such thing as 20" CRT. A 21" CRT has viewable size of 19.8".
 
The problem with 5:4 is that 4:3 has been the industry standard for a long time. When you have a 5:4 monitor, some applications, even today, do not scale images properly, especially when you run them in "full screen mode". What ends up happening is that 4:3 content gets stretched to fill a 5:4 frame, leading to slight distortion (vertical stretching).

I have a 1280 x 1024 19" LCD (5:4), and the latest version of ATI TV player (for the All-In-Wonder cards) stretches 4:3 TV to fill the entire screen when I watch in full-screen mode.

Earlier versions (like the one I run now) are smart enough to stretch the picture while preserving the aspect ratio, so I get black bars at the top and bottom. I'd rather have small black bars at the top and bottom than a distorted picture.

And Windows is not smart enough to preserve the aspect ratio of desktop wallpaper either. Most made-for-desktop pics come in 4:3 (or maybe widescreen) aspect ratios, so you if use the stretch option, they get distorted. And if they are too small or too big, then the "centred" option is useless. Now, whenever I wanna set the wallpaper on a 5:4 monitor, I use a 3rd party application that is smart enough to scale the picture properly.

The other thing is that sometimes I do wanna run non-native resolutions (e.g. for gaming, especially 2D/classic games) on my LCD. Now obviously blurring due to interpolation is unavoidable, but it would be nice if I could avoid the vertical stretching. Unfortunately, my monitor doesn't support stretching while preserving the aspect ratio (I understand some of the higher-end 20+" monitors do), and neither does my ATI video driver. (I know that current nVidia drivers do support "stretch+preserve ratio", at least for widescreen LCDs. I used that feature to play 4:3 games on a widescreen laptop.)

The funny thing is that everyone in the industry seems to be pushing customers to throw out their CRTs and buy LCDs of all kinds of different shapes and sizes (4:3, 5:4, 16:9), but the software support for screens of different shapes still isn't completely there. (How hard is it for Windows to zoom an image while preserving the aspect ratio? Image viewer applications do that all the time.)
 
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