{"id":36060,"date":"2012-06-07T08:00:13","date_gmt":"2012-06-07T15:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/?p=36060"},"modified":"2013-07-30T18:14:02","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T01:14:02","slug":"toshiba-21x9-ultrabook-laptop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/toshiba-21x9-ultrabook-laptop\/","title":{"rendered":"Perhaps Wider Isn’t Always Better"},"content":{"rendered":"

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a proponent of Constant Image Height<\/a> display in my home theater. Just last week, I posted about an interesting new technology<\/a> that could improve the resolution of Blu-ray discs to benefit CIH projection. However, even I have to concede that the aesthetic advantages of a Cinemascope-shaped screen must sometimes give way to practicality. To that end, I don’t really understand the point of Toshiba’s new 21:9 aspect ratio Ultrabook computer.
\n<\/p>\n

It’s very likely that I feel this way because I almost never watch movies on a computer. I’d of course prefer to watch them on my home theater projection screen, but even when I travel, I’m much more liable to watch videos or movies on my phone or a tablet. The convenience of those portable devices hits a sweet spot for me that’s suitable enough for entertainment purposes. On the other hand, a computer, even a laptop, is a work<\/em> device. I need it to do word processing, internet browsing and other computing tasks. As such, I feel like I need to have screen real estate maximized in the vertical direction so that I have enough room to move programs around on the screen. The U845W Ultrabook<\/a>‘s 14.4-inch 21:9 screen seems like it would be very awkward at that.<\/p>\n

A Toshiba rep argues that the wider screen could be used to display a regular 16:9 movie side-by-side with a browser, or perhaps two processing documents beside each other. I suppose that’s a fair point, but the screen size (a 14.4″ diagonal screen at this ratio should be about 5.6″ tall) and low-ish 1792×768 resolution make that seem impractical as well. <\/p>\n

Toshiba is billing the model as an “entertainment optimized ultrabook,”<\/em> which may mean that I’m simply not the target audience. Perhaps if I ever used my laptop as an entertainment device for watching movies or playing games, I might be more excited about this. It’s possible that a shorter screen may also be more convenient to use on a plane. (I’ve certainly run into issues opening my current laptop screen on a plane.) Nevertheless, right now, this doesn’t do much for me. While I will continue to preach the benefits of Constant Image Height display on a large home theater screen, it just seems like an inconvenient gimmick on a notebook computer. <\/p>\n

The Toshiba U845W Ultrabook will be available on July 15th, 2012 at a starting price of $999.99.<\/p>\n

Does anyone out there find this more intriguing than I do?<\/p>\n

[via PCMag<\/a> and Arstechnica<\/a>]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Regular readers of this blog know that I’m a proponent of Constant Image Height display in my home theater. Just last week, I posted about an interesting new technology that could improve the resolution of Blu-ray discs to benefit CIH projection. However, even I have to concede that the aesthetic advantages of a Cinemascope-shaped screen…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":36066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[143,151],"tags":[3203,1241,6560,1276,5228,2021],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36060"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36060"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54247,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36060\/revisions\/54247"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.highdefdigest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}