It is not a matter of quantity of memory. (One screen worth of content is just 1000 bytes - 40x25 chars) Do not forget that the physical pixels sit on real ras

It is not a matter of quantity of memory. (One screen worth of content is just 1000 bytes - 40x25 chars) Do not forget that the physical pixels sit on real rasterbars on a cathodic ray tube machine. If you made the centered content bigger, first of all the effect would simply be ugly - stretched; if you expanded the content per bar (over the 40ch, 320px) but keep the same ratio, you'd have less warranties that the set would make it visible; similarly for using more rasterbars than 200 (taking into account that compatibility with NTSC basically imposes a limit at 240): will every set display all the lines or will you cause frustrated users? (And of course, given the shape of the screen, if you filled it up with a rectangular matrix you would surely lose displaying the content at the corners.) As others said in a different way: there was a safe area.