Hopefully never. Vertical space is generally much more useful in normal use than horizontal space.
16:9 is bad
What's more, 4:3 should become the standard again
The place where this is most annoying is in laser TVs, which thanks to their dynamic resolution, would be ideal to watch all formats. But no, they make them 16:9, too.![]()
With a username like yours, I'd expect you to be championing a 1:1 aspect ratio![]()
16:9 just makes for an overly-long computer case. For a monitor its alright, but a laptop...
Actually, maybe it's easier to sell 1:1 screens to the dumb masses than 4:3, as it would be something new.
Then everybody can buy Hasselblads![]()
Oh yeah, because everyone wants to watch their blu-ray movies on a 1920x1920 display. Wow, imagine how many pixels are wasted on that thing.
But everyone wants to watch SD content in 4:3 as big as possible.
But yes, 4:3 would be cheaper than 1:1, like 16:9 is cheaper than 16:10
But just about all content these days are in some format wider than 4:3. Just about everything except the smaller devices like the 3GS. Consumer camcorders are in 16:9 just about.
In these cases, 4:3 would make that media look *smaller* than on a wider aspect.
There's a TON of content in 4:3. Not only video, but also classic films that could be rereleased in Blu Ray.
And none of the pixels would we wasted on a computer monitor.
A 4:3 display doesn't make wide media look worse when it has the right amount of pixels.
And laser TVs just give you the exact number of nice pixels for all formats.