{"id":1370,"date":"2010-04-05T00:01:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-05T08:01:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2010-03-31T10:35:54","modified_gmt":"2010-03-31T18:35:54","slug":"the-ever-evolving-lcd-monitor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=1370","title":{"rendered":"The Ever-Evolving LCD Monitor"},"content":{"rendered":"

I bought my first LCD monitor about 12 years ago. It was a 15-inch Panasonic that did only 1024-by-768 resolution. It cost me $1050.
\n
\nDon’t laugh! $1050 was cheap<\/em>. When those monitors first came out, the fools who bought them were paying $1600. I thought $1050 was a bargain.<\/p>\n

That old Panasonic monitor still works, but it’s in my boneyard. That’s because the resolution is so limited and the newer graphics cards really overpower the thing.<\/p>\n

The second LCD monitor I bought was back in 1999. It was Apple’s first Cinema Display. At the time it was revolutionary, a 22-inch diagonal monster. I forget what it cost exactly, but memory tells me it was over $2,000.<\/p>\n

I still use the Cinema Display. I’m typing on it now.<\/p>\n

Since 2000 I’ve bought only LCD displays. The price has come down dramatically.<\/p>\n

My most recent purchase was a 23-inch LCD display for my son’s computer. The cost: $190.<\/p>\n

Unlike my cable bill, over time the cost and quality of computer LCD displays has dropped and improved, respectively.<\/p>\n

It’s not going to stop there either.<\/p>\n

The current trend is to keep the 23- to 30-inch widescreen format for LCD monitors, but make them \u00fcber thin. I predict that the prices may drop even further, possibly down to $150 for what will be an “entry-level” 23-inch widescreen LCD.<\/p>\n

Will the monitors go beyond 30-inches? Who knows? But I can prognosticate some interesting possibilities.<\/p>\n

Why are monitors flat? I think sometime in the near future you’re going to see a curved-screen OLED monitor. Think of the old curved Cinerama movie screens: The monitor will have a visible screen size of perhaps 36-inches, but because of the curve, it will take up only as much room as a 30-inch monitor.<\/p>\n

Monitors may grow square again. The 16:9 ratio is pretty cool, but the 4:3 ratio is traditional. A 4:3 ratio 30-inch diagonal monitor would a lot taller than the 16:9 ratio monitor. It would be the size of a small kitchen window. Using such a tall monitor might even hurt your neck.<\/p>\n

There’s the Y factor, which I discussed in Monday and Wednesday’s blog posts. Future monitors could grow a Y pixel for brighter yellows and gazillions of colors.<\/p>\n

Finally, there’s the abomination of 3D. It’s such a gimmick. The people in the 1950s knew it was a gimmick and they got over it. Looks like our Culture of the Easily Fooled has latched on to 3D big time. Thank you, Hollywood. I can see 3D computer monitors popping up in the near future (if they haven’t already). I mean, 3D TV is apparently selling already. Plenty of fools out there.<\/p>\n

Regardless of the outcome, I’ll keep a monitor [sic] on the situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I bought my first LCD monitor about 12 years ago. It was a 15-inch Panasonic that did only 1024-by-768 resolution. It cost me $1050.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1376,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/1376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}