The Nexus 7: Google ships a tablet

Posted Aug 4, 2012 9:30 UTC (Sat) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

I blame the rise of HDTV for the seemingly permanent regression in monitor resolutions. 1080 interlaced vertical lines was "high" definition when compared to analog TV but is pathetic compared to the PC displays available at the end of the last century.

Evidence does not point in this direction. CRT swang songs had even higher resolutions than what I cited above which were higher than HDTV! ViewSonic G225fB supported 2048x1536@80Hz! This was in 2005 when most LCDs had much less then HDTV resolution.

No, both CRTs and LCDs show typical parallel trajectories till the moment where CRT is dead. Yes, HDTV worked as a speed bump: it pushed jump to 1920x1200 (and then shrinkage to 1920x1080 to save money), but I don't think it was responsible for the fact that MacBook Pro with retina was only released this year. It just took time to reach these high resolution again after disruptive CRT-to-LCD switch.

What HDTV did (and what I really dislike) is sudden fascination with 16:9 aspect ratio monitors. These are now dominating even 4:3 monitors are obviously better for real work. But again: HDTV was a pretext, real difference was a drive to save money and HDTV only gave good excuse. Think about it: 16:9 monitors made no sense in CRT era (it's easier to make good CRT when aspect ration is closer to 1:1), but LCD have no such limitations and 16:9 are cheaper ! Only by about 10% (for the same diagonal), but if you'll recall how low margins for LCD producers are now…