
EIZO Announces Monitor with 1920x1920 Resolution - ingve
http://www.anandtech.com/show/8740/eizo-announces-the-ips-265-flexscan-ev2730q-monitor-with-1920x1920-resolution
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zachrose
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...](https://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&type=summary&url=/journals/cinema_journal/v051/51.2.wasson01.pdf)

~~~
micampe
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).

~~~
krick
I wouldn't call 1.43:1 "almost square", especially concerning this opinion of
Eisenstein. It's closer to "half again as height", a bit more than 4:3.

But I wouldn't trust Eisenstein much for that matter anyway.

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userbinator
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.

~~~
Scramblejams
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.

~~~
NamTaf
Widescreen in the office is really good and has a huge advantage over 4:3 in
one key aspect - When you halve the horizontal resolution (8:10 or 8:9, though
8:10 is better at it) you quite closely match what two normal A4/letter
documents, inside word editing applications, cover. So you can place two text
documents side-by-side and they fit reasonably well.

This is incredibly useful to a whole load of office employees, who want to
refer to two word docs, or 1 word doc and 1 PDF, etc. This is where
widescreens shine (and 16:10 is even better than 16:9) and why I think they've
excelled well in the workplace.

~~~
Al-Khwarizmi
I work with PDFs and docs most of the time, and I find that the best setup for
viewing an A4-size PDF is a 4:3 monitor rotated 90 degrees.

A 16:10 monitor rotated 90 degrees (what I have right now) is OK, but it
wastes space at the top and bottom that the 4:3 monitor would be using to zoom
the document more.

A horizontal 16:10 monitor with two PDF's, as you mention, is too small for me
(at least with my current 24 inch monitors). Caring for the eyes is essential
when you're looking at on-screen PDFs all the day. I would probably like that
layout with a 30" monitor though... although maximizing windows in two
monitors is still more comfortable than tiling in one big monitor.

~~~
rwallace
I sympathize, but a 30-inch widescreen monitor is probably easier to get hold
of nowadays than a smaller one in a taller form factor.

If you're using Windows, here's a neat feature I went years without knowing:
Windows key + left arrow arranges the window to occupy the left half of your
monitor, and similarly with right arrow.

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Gravityloss
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. :)

~~~
crististm
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.

~~~
Gravityloss
Those panels from different lots have somewhat different colors anyway, even
in the same orientation, and you can't tune them to be equal very easily, at
least I gave up. They have pretty good viewing angles too. So it doesn't make
it better or worse to turn either one 90 degrees.

~~~
astrange
Did you use a hardware calibrator? It shouldn't be hard to get a Dell monitor
to a calibrated white point - they're not bad unless you got a TN panel model.

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Stratoscope
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.

~~~
tacoman
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.

~~~
gioele
> 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.

I see this as a big failure of "modern" graphic systems. Having a 105 ppi
should just mean more refined graphics, not smaller size of rendered objects.

The way a GUI appears on the screen should be a function of the screen size
and the viewer distance, not a function of the screen ppi! We must get rid of
all the layers of hacks that we have accumulated over the years (the reference
72 ppi, for example).

~~~
imanaccount247
>I see this as a big failure of "modern" graphic systems.

Absolutely. This is one of the main reasons we were stuck with such incredibly
shitty low res displays for so long. Up until windows vista, high DPI monitors
were simply unusable in windows. Even now they have problems.

We still have a similar problem forcing us into having tiny screens. Windows
and all the desktop environments that copied it are absolutely worthless at
their primary function: managing windows. So people prefer two small monitors
over one large monitor simply because the two small monitors allow an easy
"make this take up half my screen space". Something that is of course
trivially easy to implement, but most "modern" windowing systems don't care
about at all.

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Stratoscope
Windows 8.1 has keyboard shortcuts to make a window take half the screen, the
full screen, etc. Hold down the Windows key and try the various arrow keys.
You may be pleasantly surprised.

There are all sorts of other useful shortcuts that use the Windows key as a
modifier, for example Windows+E to open a File Explorer window. Basically, try
Windows+(every key) to see what it does.

~~~
imanaccount247
I'm aware, but until the majority of people are using a system where basic
window management exists, vendors have little incentive to sell double wide
monitors because so few people would be willing to use them. So those of us
who can make good use of them have to wait forever, just like we did for
reasonable DPI LCDs.

Also, even in the newest windows it is still crippled. Applications can
prevent themselves from being resized like that, and often things like games
that you would want to run in borderless window mode can not be moved around
using windows shortcut keys.

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devindotcom
More weird panels, please! I still want a bare-bones monochrome laptop.

~~~
PhantomGremlin
> 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?

~~~
DanBC
There are greyscale monitors. These tend to be very expensive and used for
medical imaging. I've never used one.

[http://www.necdisplay.com/category/medical-diagnostic-
displa...](http://www.necdisplay.com/category/medical-diagnostic-displays)

[http://www.necdisplay.com/p/medical-diagnostic-
displays/md21...](http://www.necdisplay.com/p/medical-diagnostic-
displays/md215mg)

~~~
tgb
Why are these so expensive? You could get a top-of-the-line new 5k iMac for
that greyscale 2048 x 2560 monitor. Presumably it's all the calibration and
certification that goes in, but wow those are pricey.

~~~
thrownaway2424
These typically have many bits of grey and a calibrated response curve that is
stable over time. Specialty stuff.

~~~
tgb
The linked greyscale monitor above only had 8-bit greyscale, but describes it
as "256 levels of gray out of a palette of 3826". Does that mean anything
significant?

~~~
thrownaway2424
Yes, it means the monitor has an 8-bit host interface but each value on the
range [0,256) is mapped to a range of levels [0,3826) that the panel can
actually produce. The number seems weird, I'm not sure why it would be 3826.
Maybe someone can explain.

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dismal2
At that size something like 2880x2880 would be more "modern"

~~~
kylec
Curiously, that's exactly the same number of pixels as a "4K" 3840x2160
screen. Should be drivable by graphics cards that can drive 4K.

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simonh
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.

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rsync
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...](http://www.barco.com/en/Products-Solutions/Displays-monitors-
workstations/Air-traffic-control-displays/High-resolution-displays)

However, what _would_ be interesting is if this was priced at normal monitor
prices ... the ATC monitors are incredibly expensive.

~~~
cma
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."

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marcosscriven
I immediately thought of the medical usage, but then for scan results I
thought they required a far higher res?

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Hoffmannnn
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.

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friism
Perfect for Instagram.

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mark212
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.

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sciurus
I'm curious which resolution people would rather have: 1920x1920 or 2560x1440?

~~~
KhalPanda
2560x1440.

My eyes are positioned horizontally in my head, giving a "wide" field of view.
So a widescreen monitor always feels more comfortable. Unless anyone has a
single, perfectly round eye in the middle of their face, I don't know why
you'd want a square monitor. :) That's my opinion, anyway!

~~~
baddox
Since we're comparing two monitors with the same number of pixels, I'd
probably pick 1440p, mainly because it's more ideal for watching fullscreen
16:9 videos, and because I'm more used to scanning left and right than up and
down (which is probably an evolutionary result).

I've heard that the "aspect ratio" of humans' field of view is approximately
4:3, so if that's the goal, you'd want...2217x1662. 1:1 is actually closer to
4:3 than 16:9. My guess is that the tendency to scan left and right rather
than up and down is the stronger argument for wider aspect ratios than the
human field of view argument.

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hackertux
According to wikipedia, A 4:3 ratio mimics human eyesight visual angle of
155°h x 120°v, that is 4:3.075, almost exactly the same.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_%28image%29#Pract...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_%28image%29#Practical_limitations)

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zokier
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

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deciplex
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.

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rebootthesystem
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.

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rdl
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.

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Synergyse
Where did you pick that up for $250?

~~~
rdl
$230 (TigerDirect with a rebate, from slickdeals).

Seems to be OOS virtually everywhere, though.

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swah
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?

~~~
murbard2
There's that, and also the fact that our visual field roughly has a 3:2 aspect
ratio, so more rectangular than 4:3 but less than 16:10

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Mchl
Meh. Doesn't have pivot. Would not buy.

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nodefortytwo
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.

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CompuHacker
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.

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asgard1024
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.

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trillcode
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.

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myrandomcomment
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.

~~~
2muchcoffeeman
I just got the small 29" version from Dell. It uses an LG panel. It's a good
alternative to having 2 monitors.

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RexRollman
Speaking as someone who loves my 1280x1024 monitor, this sound great.

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logfromblammo
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.

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pervycreeper
Are the pixels themselves perfectly square? Just from looking at it (on my
screen), it seems a bit taller than it is wide.

~~~
LeoPanthera
This is a common optical illusion. Perfect squares usually look taller than
they are wide, to human eyes.

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Animats
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.

