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Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

tonsky.me

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Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#781

Post by bitbang »

Interesting bit of trivia on why the frame rate is '119.88' instead of 120: It's using the NTSC/ATSC frame-base of 1.001.

Ever since old TV standards moved from black and white to color within the US, the timing has been "frames per one and one onethousandth of a second". So 120/1.001 = 119.88.

Was a neat trick in the analog days to maintain compatibility with the older black and white TV sets. Fastforward to the digital age and that fractional timing difference makes keeping audio and video sync an absolute nightmare.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#782

Post by toyg »

lifty wrote: post #620
stephc_int13 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a 4K display at work for about 18 months. I still won't trade my 1680x1050 monitors for anything else until they die. I don't mind the pixels, as long as the font rendering system is good. Of course I understand the need for a Retina display if you're working on macOS...

Not sure I follow. Are you saying that font rendering on macOS is bad?

Not parent poster but, as somebody who works on macOS, my problem is that the switch between the high-density laptop screen and a “pixelated” external one is extremely jarring. At one point I had an additional, average Dell monitor and every time I moved my eyes I cringed. After a couple of days I just removed it - better to have fewer screens than forcing my eyes to readjust every few minutes.

So yeah, if your primary device is a modern Mac, you really want a high-res, high-density screen.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#783

Post by fomine3 »

hocuspocus wrote: post #647
johncalvinyoung wrote: post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My personal requirement though is 4:4:4 color. Too many TVs will only accept 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 chroma, and colored text on black will look horrid.

Just stick to big brands. Even entry-level models support 4:4:4 UHD @60Hz. The main issue with TVs is that HDMI sucks compared to DP. You'll need a half-decent GPU from 2015 or later for good HDMI 2.x support.

Some LG's cheap 4KTV have RGBW panel that's not suitable for reading text. Should check review and spec even it came from big brand.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#784

Post by namdnay »

monadic2 wrote: post #555
namdnay wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d say all is bad with MacOS and external monitors... It can’t manage text scaling like Windows, so you either have to downscale resolution and get everything blurry or keep the ridiculously high native resolution and have everything tiny :(

Is it not visible for you in the displays settings? You DO need all the monitors to have the same DPI or you’d have a window rendered half in one dpi and half in another when dragging across a display boundary.

No, when it’s an external screen I don’t get any scaling options, only the choice of resolution. I have a 24” QHD, so either it’s ridiculously small 2500xSomething or it’s blurry HD :(

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#785

Post by swader999 »

slantyyz wrote: post #494
thomaslord wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! Person who actively dislikes 4k here. In my experience: 1. No matter what operating system you're on, you'll eventually run into an application that doesn't render in high dpi mode. Depending on the OS that can mean it renders tiny, or that the whole things is super ugly and pixelated (WAY worse than on a native 1080p display) 2. If the 4k screen is on your laptop, good luck ever having a decent experience plu…

So I'm a little nuts in that I run 2 x 27" 4K monitors side by side with no scaling. 27" is about the smallest I can tolerate 1:1 pixel sizes. Since aging has forced me into wearing reading glasses, I wear single vision computer glasses that are optimized for the distance range of my monitors' closest and furthest points. Because I dont have scaling enabled, I don't get any of the HiDpi issues that I've gotten on my…

I do the same with three but all in portrait mode.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#786

Post by fomine3 »

Polylactic_acid wrote: post #746
asdff wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of my colleagues love a vertical monitor for writing and reading documents.

I tried putting my 27" monitor vertical but I found I had to move my head to see the top and that was much less useful than multi column.

16:9(9:16 on rotated) 24 inch display is best size for vertical display for me.

Re: Time to Upgrade Your Monitor

#788

Post by Ycros »

On lower dpi monitors I use bitmap fonts with no smoothing for coding, they are crisp. See http://upperbounds.net/index.php?menu=download for a bunch of these fonts (I use Proggy Clean with slashed zeroes and bold punctuation). Note that you may have to play with your font size and turn off any antialiasing in your editor to get it looking right.
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