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Comment by brokenparser | Hacker News Reader

Yes, but you're talking about TV's where it's fine if it has a 16:9 aspect because all of the content is in 16:9. If I buy a monitor, I want it to have a proper 16:10 aspect because it matches the ratio of the W*XGA displays it would replace/complement. More specifically, I don't want to be left out of those extra lines and would feel cheated by Dell in this regard if I either bought it or had to use one due to a budget stricken IT department. A TV is a TV and a monitor is a monitor. The thing they're selling is a TV without a tuner and remote control, marketed as a monitor.

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If you want separate resolutions for computer monitors and televisions you are going to pay a premium for both, since different supply chains are focusing on two different kinds of panel. You want the two industries working on the same thing, and that's already happening. I've been 1080p on my workstation for a long time. I can't wait for 4K TV monitors and they will be my next upgrade for my workstation once the price is right.

My comment up-thread discusses why television shifting to 16:10 is unlikely, and it mainly has to do with lenses. Another concern is all of the monitors in studios, trucks, and so forth that are 16:9. Given that, it seems fair to me to have computing move toward 16:9 so the toolchains can be shared between computer monitors and televisions. My 55" 1080p TV was $2,000 when I bought it. You can now buy it under $1,000. What's wrong with taking that experience and working on computer monitors?

Computers are increasingly being used to deliver television and cinema content, as well. It's fairly ideal for me right now to consume 1080p content at its native resolution with no boxing or cropping.

> My comment up-thread discusses why television shifting to 16:10 is unlikely, and it mainly has to do with lenses.

It's not lenses as much as sensors. Most lenses have a circular image circle, which can cover a lot of aspect ratios. (The big exception is anamorphic, but I'm not too familiar with that.) Canon's new HD video lens system, for example, can be stuck on cameras with Super 35 sensors, or standard 3:2 photography 35mm film.

During the digital transition, we had to buy new bodies and new lenses. My understanding is that the transition to 4K will allow the same exact lenses to be used whether on a new body or the same body with a swapped-out sensor train. Going to 16:10, as I understand, would require new lenses, which is part of the reason NHK's demonstration of 4K equipment as a straight multiple of 1080p was desirable.

I'm not an expert on the mechanics of how a lens works; I merely know enough to operate the camera and shoot a decent scene, and part of that is lens selection. If you can operate a 16:10 sensor behind, say, a HA18x7.6BERD with square pixels and no distortion or image loss, I stand corrected, but I don't think that's the case from my experience. Again, though, I just pushed buttons (in a single industry application of "transmit picture through lens and apply to persistent storage", television ENG/production), and I didn't take gear apart.

I know there are lenses today that can operate at 4:3 and 16:9. Maybe the same concept?

Anamorphics produce a circular image as well, it's just that it represents an elliptical selection of what's in front of the the lens.

It's more to do with director taste than sensors. My camera shoots 16:9 onto a 3:2 sensor, so it could easily go up to 16:10, but 16:10 looks worse than 16:9. Some directors shoot even tighter.

Kubrick (and many others) shot stuff in 4:3!

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