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FWIW, the Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein once gave a lecture outlining why square screens would be superior for cinema.
"Eisenstein playfully hyped the virtues of the "dynamic square," a screen that was exactly as high as it was wide. He did so in part because to him the square was modern, charged with productive machine force. This more purely cinematic screen was, according to Eisenstein, necessary for properly showcasing the energies, conflicts, and collisions germane to the moving image arts. It would also, at least in theory, be the most accommodating frame, capable of hosting images composed for planes that were either horizontal or vertical. Eisenstein proclaimed that previous industry standards (4:3), as well as contemporaneous calls for wider screens, were nostalgic, calling forth a dated viewing regime dictated by traditional art forms."
https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals...
I watched IMAX 2D & 3D films on the biggest screen (600 m2) in Europe. *
It was impossible to see the whole screen, that was especially great with 3D movies (Space Station 3D, etc.). Also the 2D movie premiere of The Matrix Revolutions in IMAX DMR film was awesome.
So I would prefer movie theatre/TV/monitor screens with almost 1:1 or 4:3 ratio over 16:10 or 16:9.
* The IMAX Vienna had a 600m2 screen, 24000 watt 6 channels surround sound, 458 seats, demolished in 2009: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/IMAX#.C3.96sterreich , http://web.archive.org/web/20030422003546/http://www.imax.at...
IMAX movies are almost square (1.43:1) and they are indeed a better experience (let's ignore the 3D conversation, IMAX can be 2D).
Funnily enough I just saw a movie that had a square format for 99% of the duration.
As someone who mainly reads text (developer) I think widescreens are advantageous only for multimedia. As for the arguments about how human eyes are horizontal so our field of view is wide, that's true but only for peripheral vision - where everything is out-of-focus and not actually "visible" for e.g. reading something. Otherwise it's implying that humans can independently use one eye for the left side and one eye for the right, a skill that I don't know of anyone having (it's possible though, just not something that would be common.) I have a dual-monitor setup equivalent to a 5:2 aspect ratio and I still need to rotate my eyes or head horizontally to focus on the right part of the screens.
I don't know if a completely square monitor would be as well received as something at least slightly rectangular - 1920x1440 (4:3) might be a good compromise.
My kingdom for a victorious return of 4:3 displays!
When I code, horizontal space is never at a premium. It's always vertical space I'm short on.
Pulling out my T42p retro laptop, with its 4:3 screen, always gives me the warm fuzzies. Love that aspect ratio.
With enough size and resolution, it really doesn't matter. After all, you can always use the space for something, right?
I recently upgrade to a 5k imac... and it's an absurd amount of space. I don't see the point in griping about aspect ratio when it's merely size and density that we really want.
We have a 'horizontality' to our vision, not because our eyes are side-by-side, but because that's how we interact with the world; and how we grow up doing so[1]. We have a slightly narrower arc of vision vertically due to brow and cheek, but even so, the stuff we see 'up' and 'down' is low-density information.
What's happening in the sky or on the ceiling isn't particularly useful to us, and as long as we have reasonably sure footing, the same is true of the ground or floor. We spend our days interacting with things mostly in the horizontal visual plane. Things that we approach or that approach us mostly move in this plane as well.
[1] There were a few famous experiments a few decades ago showing that what we see as we grow up affects the development of the visual system: https://computervisionblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/cats-and...
Don't discount the value of screen space that's normally out in the nearer part of your peripheral vision, though. It's not as valuable as screenage that's normally in the centre of your vision, but it's still very useful (assuming it isn't too distorted by the viewing angle). You may have to move your eyes and maybe even slightly move your head to see what's out there clearly, but (I strongly assume - I'm not an expert) that kind of glancing should still be a lot more (yuck) "spatial" and less distracting than having to alt-tab or whatever to reveal the same information and then to hide it again. So in concrete terms, a 40" 16:9 4K monitor like http://www.tomshardware.com/news/philips-4k-bdm4065uc-monito... which has slightly greater vertical height than the 26.5" 1:1 1920×1920 screen as well as higher ppi ought to be preferable if price, horizontal desk space or whatever don't rule it out.
Unfortunately, OSes and other software tend to mess this up: in particular, the fact that those handy fullscreen commands actually fill the screen with the selected window or picture or video or whatever is no longer good news if some or all of the edges of your screen are far enough away from the comfortable centre area of your vision (see http://blog.codinghorror.com/the-large-display-paradox/ ). This was appropriate behaviour in the past, when both pixels and screen inches were limited and expensive and so it was safe to assume that the whole of the screen was well within the user's central viewing area—and in fact was probably covering much less of that central area than was at all ideal. Nowadays the user should be able to define a central fullscreen area that (possibly) doesn't take up the whole screen: then (by default etc.) fullscreened items should be expanded to the limits of the "fullscreen" area and no more. The rest of the screen can be filled with other information: maybe the other open windows pushed to the side in an OS X Exposé-like manner, or things like image metadata for a viewed image. The brightness of the outer area should be subdued to prevent it from distracting from the central image. (A practical use for whizzy translucency effects!). The information out in the "gutter" will be glanceable, but won't feel like it's impinging on your view of the fullscreened item (if it does, you didn't make the fullscreen area large enough).
I flat out love my 1920:1080 resolution - however, because of the IDE I use, I'm kind of tied to having panes down the sides of my code. A 4:3 sucks in this scenario, 1:1 would suck even more - if the resolution is not high enough. I would imagine that 1920:1920 would be awesome - vertical real estate is awesome for reading... but I don't want that at the cost of code navigation. My gut says that 1920:1920 would be sufficiently dense to get the best of both worlds.
I use 24" 1920x1200 for work and I would really, really enjoy x1440 (220 pixels more on Y) with the same screen width.
Not so much of a stretch. We use Dells with a rotatable screen at our work place and about half of the people keep one vertical and one horizontal monitor.
Reading logs or browsing code is quite nice with the vertical screen, as is reading some vertical oriented pdf materials. Cat videos are usually watched on the horizontal screen. :)
How many of your coworkers noticed the difference in image quality in portrait mode? The monitors are optimized for "landscape" and when you put them in "portrait" you get a very different color hue on each eye.
I found it so disturbing that I never used the monitors in portrait mode.
For productivity, ignoring the aesthetics of letterboxing for videos or games, aspect ratio comparisons really just come down to more resolution/desktop space is better. A 1920x1920 monitor is "squarer" than a 1920x1080 monitor, sure, but you can also just think of it as a 1920x1080 monitor with more space in the vertical axis. For productivity, making either axis longer or higher resolution is just better (obviously until you approach extremes which are physically unwieldy).
Linked is a photo of my current workspace. I use one in landscape and the other in portrait. http://i.imgur.com/CWYv6ZG.jpg
The setup is perfect for Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects - I can set all my menu/preview windows on the portrait, landscape for primary.
Could I use a monitor like that? Not really, I thought about it for a while but it just wouldn't help me anymore than what I use now.
1920x1920 on a 26.5" panel is only 102 pixels per inch. That is a low pixel density for a modern monitor. It's the same density as a 1920x1080 21.5" panel - certainly usable, but you won't get the crisp text you'd have on a higher density display.
Of course, many monitors are worse. A 1920x1080 27" monitor is only 82 pixels per inch!
The monitor I'm buying next is probably the Dell UP2414Q. With 3840x2160 resolution on a 23.8" panel, it has 185 pixels per inch. It's expensive and you need a machine that can drive it properly, but that is a nice pixel density.
I'm near sighted. My eyeglass prescription is about -6.5. Using either windows or linux, anything over about 105 dpi is too small and I need to get closer to the monitor than what is acceptable from an ergonomics stand point.
If I need to use something with a higher dpi for any length of time, I have crank up the font size which causes some problems in some applications.
Right now I use a 19" 1280x1024 and a 20" 1600x1200. A monitor like this would be great.
Are you gonna sit very close to the screen?
You probably will sit half a meter (1.64ft) from a 26.5" monitor, maybe more, right?
According to isthisretina.com the density of a 26.5" 1920x1920 becomes equivalent to retina (326ppi) at about 34 inches (86cm).
More weird panels, please! I still want a bare-bones monochrome laptop.
> I still want a bare-bones monochrome laptop.
That's not a bad idea, from both a cost and power standpoint. I wonder why nobody has done it?
Same thing with digital cameras. There is a good use case for a grey scale image sensor. Higher sensitivity, fewer artifacts, lower power. But, sadly, nobody has built an affordable one yet. Sure it's not a large market, but there are hundreds of cameras that are almost identical, why doesn't somebody dare to do something different?
It's not quite what you're looking for, but the Kindle Paperwhite will apparently pair with a Bluetooth keyboard.
EDIT: Better choice: The OLPC lets you turn off the screen backlight and that gets you a grayscale display that works even under direct sunlight.
The SOL Vision monitor [1] is currently the only affordable screen in that regard (without hacking). It's specifically built for outdoor applications and has HDMI, VGA, and RCA/AV input, but unfortunately it’s limited to 1024 by 768 pixels.
[1]: http://www.solcomputer.com/sunlight-readable/sol-vision-moni...
At that size something like 2880x2880 would be more "modern"
Curiously, that's exactly the same number of pixels as a "4K" 3840x2160 screen. Should be drivable by graphics cards that can drive 4K.
But that's only 1440x1440 if you divide it by two.
It's an interesting idea, but I recently got a 5k iMac and now I can feel the jaggies on the 1080p displays I use at work cutting my eyeballs. The longer I use the Mac at home, the more I get used to it and the more annoying the screens at work become.
For sub-27" displays these days I think 4k is definitely the way to go. Affordable modern graphics cards are perfectly capable of driving such displays now and I think, or at least hope, that by the end of next year they will have become a pretty standard mainstream choice. A non-standard aspect ratio is all well and fine, but if it's still at standard dpi resolution it's just icing on a cake that's getting towards the end of it's shelf life.
This isn't that groundbreaking - there are plenty of 1:1 ratio screens that are made and sold for the air traffic control industry:
http://www.barco.com/en/Products-Solutions/Displays-monitors...
However, what would be interesting is if this was priced at normal monitor prices ... the ATC monitors are incredibly expensive.
Read the article:
"But after a few minutes, I realized that non-standard monitor sizes are most likely abundant in various industries, such as medical, when they are designed for a specific purpose and quality. So while a 1:1 monitor is something interesting to see in the consumer space, perhaps it might not be so new when considering industrial use scenarios."
Square is good. EIZO monitors are normally eye-wateringly expensive, at 5-10x the price of a budget panel as they are targeted at the medical industry.
Many monitors these days can be rotated on their side (check your stand mount!), and windows natively supports portrait mode.
My dual monitor setup has one landscape, one portrait, and I'm never going back. Viewing documents & code is just so much more convenient.
Perfect for Instagram.
FWIW -- square monitors have long been popular on financial trading floors. I think there's a preset on the Bloomberg terminal for this ratio, but it's been a while.
I'm curious which resolution people would rather have: 1920x1920 or 2560x1440?
I suppose it is highly use-case dependent if this is better than dual vertical 1920x1080 monitors. You essentially are choosing between having a bezel in the middle or losing 240 horizontal pixels. For having two things side-by-side the dual monitor setup is obvious win, so for coding etc I'd lean towards that
Why 1920? I would rather have 1440 (or 2160) as it would allow me to put it to the side of a 2K or 4K monitor and keep the same vertical resolution. Unless you're planning to put them in an over-under configuration (pretty rare in the home, at least) I don't see the point of this resolution.
We run three 1920 x 1200 monitors on all of our engineering workstations. In some cases I could see the value of running four but three is amazing for productivity. Going to three 1920 x 1920 monitors would be even better.
I'm pretty happy with a $250 4k 39" seiki and a dell u2410 1200x1920 (portrait) at work, but a square display would be great on a tabletop or otherwise in nonstandard positions.
I always thought widescreens "were here to stay" because its easier to move our heads to left/right than up/down... isn't this true?
Meh. Doesn't have pivot. Would not buy.
I have 4 screens, 2 24" either side of a 27" and a 15" macbook pro below the 27. I find it much more comfortable to look left and right than i do looking down towards the macbook which is what i feel a square monitor would be like, more up and down movement as opposed to horizontal.
I've been looking for a 1:1 monitor for years before this; they're only made custom for military HUDs and such. I was so disappointed, especially in the people who called 5:4 and 4:3 "square" in response to forum posts asking about it.
Hoping for a power of 2 square model.
Great to see that! I am only worried this will be ultra-expensive based on the assumption that people who actually want to do some real work on a computer (and not just play games or watch movies) do it for money, so they can pay the price.
I think the greatest push for 1:1 resolutions becoming popular would come from how similar it is to the usage on a phone.
With how popular mobile technologies are, and most consumers are usually consuming their apps in a vertical fashion.
I have an LG 34UM95-P which is a 34" 21:9 UltraWide with a resolution of 3440x1440. Once you get used to how wide the monitor is it works quite well. This replaced 2 x 1920x1440 29". It is on a mount on a standing desk.
Speaking as someone who loves my 1280x1024 monitor, this sound great.
I would prefer an 8.09:5 aspect ratio screen that can easily be rotated 1/4 turn.
But that's mostly because my love for (sqrt(5)+1)/2 is near-Pythagorean in its scope.
Are the pixels themselves perfectly square? Just from looking at it (on my screen), it seems a bit taller than it is wide.
OK, a square monitor. Maybe Apple will announce a round monitor, with a round GUI to go with it. Apple fans would be camping out in front of Apple retail outlets for the thing.