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Comment by emilecantin | Hacker News Reader

HDTV has done a lot of damage to computer screens. You used to be able to get pretty hi-resolution CRT screens, but when "HDTV" became a thing manufacturers actually lowered the resolution to 720p so they could call it "HD".

It took 4K for computer screen resolutions to start going up again.

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You could get CRTs back in the day that were higher than 1080p with over 100hz refresh rates. I think some of the Trinitons went even higher res. It's only in the last few years that LCDs have caught up.

There's the matter of size. A 24" CRT display is the hell of a thing to have on a desk.

I used 1600x1200 through the 1990s, so even 1080p wasn't all that impressive to me. Now 1440p is getting interesting.

But even apart from the number of pixels, why must screens be shaped like a letterbox? The only thing 16:9 is good for is watching movies, and if you happen to want to do that on your laptop, small black bars at the top and bottom really aren't any problem at all.

On larger screens you can do 2 documents side by side and such.

For a laptop size screen, yeah, wide aspect ratio is not as useful.

> The only thing 16:9 is good for is watching movies

Nope. These are some of the useful side by side compositions:

- Terminal/Editor + Documentation

- Teleconf + Meeting Notes

- One master, two slave terminals

- IDE + Browser (for real time testing)

- etc.

For all of this, I recently got a 21:9 display, and it is absolutely fantastic.

A colleague of mine made the same comment. I'd love to use one too, but my desk has no horizontal space for it. I can only fit a 24" because the new monitors are so-called "frameless" displays.

Sure, but on a big screen. On a laptop screen, you can only read a few lines at a time. Especially on apps that add menus and other stuff to the top and bottom, like IDEs, browsers, editors, etc. A few lines more would do a lot of good. It's really like you're looking at everything through a letterbox opening.

In fact, 15 years ago I had a coworker who used two 20" 1200x1600 on their side next to each other. That worked really well for having lots of text next to each other. It's basically a gigantic 3:2 screen, which is still a tiny bit taller than 16:10.

> Sure, but on a big screen. On a laptop screen, you can only read a few lines at a time.

A 15" FHD screen is as effective as 24" FHD screen for me. If the panel quality is good enough, I can work for hours without scaling and eye-fatigue.

At that scenario menus, extra screen clutter doesn't change anything since everything is proportional to the bigger screen.

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