PC Master Race @lemmy.world bumbly @readit.buzz 12 mo. ago

Why 16:10? I don't get it

Nigh all media is 16:9. What's this obsession people have with 16:10? Isn't it inconvenient to have black bars along your videos and pictures?

13 comments

The benefit of taller screens is for productivity, not media consumption. More lines of text is preferable to many people, myself included.
- Even non-productivity too! I'm a gamer and I find games to be more "fuller" in 16:10, if that makes sense. I mostly play RTSes and A/RPGs, and recently switched from a 32:9 ultrawide to a 16:10 and I find it better, at least for the games I play.
  
  You can pry my 49" 32:9 monitor from my cold dead hands.
  
  Seriously though glad you found something that works for you. I could see them being difficult for RTS/ARPGs. I've started getting back into racing games because of my 32:9 because being able to use the side mirrors is cool as hell.
  
  I could not switch back from 21:9 now. If anything opens in 16:9 I get upset.
  
  I would prefer 2x 21:9 over 3x 16:9
  With proper use of window snapping it is superior for research.
  But for general productivity I see personally no real upside between 16:9 vs 16:10. Our office administration recently complained it's too constricting so....Some are fans.
Flashback to ~2008-2009 when all laptops went from 16:10 to 16:9 and we couldn't understand why. 16:9 was for TVs and watching movies. 16:10 was for computers to do work.

While it's true finding 16:9 desktop backgrounds is easier, and watching movies and TVs without black bars is nice, 16:10 is much nice when actually using a computer to do work. Taskbars, toolbars, tabbars, headersbars etc take up a lot of precious vertical space, leaving less space for application content.
- Sidebars are the hot new thing. Latest Microsoft apps are all starting to enable them by default
  
  Well that's progress. And yet they removed vertical task manager from Windows 11 😢
  
  My windows laptop is sticking with windows 10 as long as I can, hopefully vertical taskbar is back by the time I'm forced to upgrade. Maybe by then it's windows 12, continuing the tick-tock release cycle of good and bad Windowses 😂
  
  Also, shoutout to Firefox addon TreeStyleTabs for having vertical tab management
pictures

Actually, most pictures are 3:2 (DSLR/full-frame camera sensors) or 4:3 (micro four-thirds and smartphone cameras). There are almost no 16:9 sensors out there, so 16:9 pictures are relatively rare, so if you come across a 16:9 picture, it's likely been cropped or stitched together.
I'm not a 16:10 zealot, but I can understand why some people like it. Firstly, no, it's not inconvenient to have black bars along the top and bottom of media. I don't see why it would be. That used to be the most common experience for watching widescreen media, and it still is the experience with some ultra-wide screen media for anyone without an ultra-wide screen display. I don't see anything that would be inconvenient about it and can even see the convenience if you, say, need to pull up a status bar on the top or bottom and don't want it to obstruct the media playing.

But the biggest argument I've heard is for people using the display at least partially as a workstation. A lot of UIs on production software are cramped for space, trying to give you as many tools as you need on screen at once. Yes, these are somewhat customizable, but screen real estate can be critical in some of these. I never thought about it until someone mentioned 16:10 and how it can help, but there are a lot more times when I could have really used just a little more vertical space to make things more convenient than horizontal. The example that really made me think about looking at 16:10 the next time I get a monitor is that I do video editing sometimes, and they mentioned that a 16:10 will give you an extra channel or two to work on compared to a 16:9 display.

Does that mean 16:10 is better? Not inherently. It's going to be better for some people. Maybe for most people. But not everyone is going to need it, not everyone is going to use it, and not everyone is going to even want it. I grew up with SD TVs watching VHS tapes with big black bars on the top and bottom because I wanted to see the whole movie and not a pan-and-scanned half-frame re-edit, so I don't see any problem with having black bars on the top and bottom of my screen. That's just normal. But you kind of called it an inconvenience, so to you it's bound to be weird. So for you, maybe a 16:9 is better than a 16:10 could ever be because it fits your use case better, fits your tastes better.

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