On 27/11/06 12:39 AM, "Remek Kocz" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> This kind of change would have to be initiated by the TV or display industry.
> The consumer is not familiar with anything but inches for display sizes.  This
> could have been done gracefully when smaller displays started showing up in
> cell phones and PDA's, but the industry chose to decimalize the inch, and
> started giving out figures like " 2.4-inch screen."
> 
> The added bonus of going metric with screen sizes, would be the inevitable
> "metric makes it seem larger"  phenomenon.
> 

Dear Remek,

I agree with you that this was an opportunity lost. A better way would have
been to describe the screen sizes on cameras as 61 millimetres.

However, now that I have just converted your example of 2.4 inches, I am
beginning to wonder if the screen was designed as a 60 millimetre screen and
that this was then dumbed-down to 2.362 205 millimetres and this, in turn,
was rounded up to 2.4 inches.

The television and computer screen industries have a long shameful record of
rounding up the size of screens unreasonably ‹ remember the days of
measuring the 'phosphor' so that a 19 inch screen (probably 480 mm) was
routinely described as 21 inches (530 mm).

Cheers,

Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216
Geelong, Australia
61 3 5241 2008

Pat Naughtin is manager of http://www.metricationmatters.com an internet
website that primarily focuses on the many issues, methods and processes
that individuals, groups, companies, and nations use when upgrading to the
metric system. You can contact Pat Naughtin at
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 

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