On 02/03/2012 03:48 AM, Kevin Chadwick wrote:
On Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:48:17 -0800
Brian Conrad wrote:
No one is really sure why Edison's engineer chose 4:3
though they think it had something to do with the sprocket hole
placement.
I believe the first TV's were 1:1, they would have been round except
it's expensive to make round glass. The square glass covers the round
edges of the pictures produced by a cathode ray tube.
They were round (think oscilloscopes). There are some YouTube videos of
the BBC experiments with TVs in the 1930s. WWII put an end to TV until
after the war. Early sets had round screens but with a ceiling and
floor edges. Rectangle tubes came later in the early 1950s. Widescreen
tube TVs were a problem for engineers to create and flat panels solved
the problem. Pixel widths are just engineer methods to display wider
images.
And believe the
actual argument goes our eyes see more like 21:9 than a square canvas
(unless you're myopic). There was a good article the other day on why
4K HDTV for the home didn't make sense though they do for theaters. We
get 16:9 displays on devices probably because the LCD market went that
direction and the desire for users to play videos on them.
I don't believe that, probably stemming from the too simple a test
about moving fingers in front of your face I've seen by a university
PHOTOGRAPHY LECTURER, not a biologist or brain specialist, we have a
focal point as re-affirmed by the uk christmas lectures this year and
it has more to do with the creators job and cinema wall shape than the
viewer which is what it should be about. We do use peripheral vision to
decide to move our focus, and eyelashes etc. may slighlty restrict the
vertical but the finger exercise has more to do with the brain having
the ability to decide which plane to prioritse at any given moment.
Vertical for Batman jumping off a building for example, that was cool
at IMAX.
There is no getting away from the fact our pupils are round and IMAX
which is 4:3 and charges a premium is far more immersive.
Read John Belton's "Widescreen Cinema" which is a definitive book on the
subject. Artists long before movies and photography chose wide canvases
for landscapes and and square or sideways tall canvases for portraits.
Hence the two terms.
I'm not even sure (I'll start trying it on my tablet) of 16:9 being
better for text, it's certainly easier to hold a floppy piece of paper
in that shape and people do stop reading sooner apparently if web page
lines are too wide, I guess because it feels like they are not getting
through the text and will be there all day. I know I prefer 4:3 over
16:9 for browsing in landscape.
Portrait modes were first popular on PDAs because most of the software
was for lists. And of course most people hold their phones that way but
tablets introduce a different paradigm where people want to watch movies
on them. I built a version of one of my apps that had tabs for 10"
tablets that instead presented everything on the screen using fragments
using a landscape layout.
Everyone I've ever met hates 21:9. Ask this, why do DVDs on TV almost
always have black lines and yet cinemas want the largest pictures
possible.
Cinema =>$ is my suspicion.
The first widescreen movie was shot back in the late 20's by Warner
Brothers. It was a western and there may be a DVD of it. Also the
anamorphic lens was invented back then. They dusted off the technology
in the early 1950s when people started staying home and watching TV than
going to movies. Then there was Cinerama another early immersive
technology. Again 4:3 is really only good for talking heads and who
wants to watch those all the time. I bought my 53" widescreen HD set in
2000 and was happy to have it since I am a movie buff as well as a
videographer. And if you don't like black bars on a 21:9 picture they
do make 21:9 LCD screen or at least Phillips had such a set. Many home
theater owners have projection setup with screen to accommodate that.
My local theater was one of the early theaters in the Bay Area with all
digital projection (8 screens). These days they seem to think they're
an amusement park with D-Box and 3D. :-D
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android
Discuss" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en.
