3 ms·

My favorite display era was the short-lived period of 4-bit greyscale X-terms. Just enough shades of grey to be usable, few distractions. There are a lot of gr

by AlanYx 11mo ago

My favorite display era was the short-lived period of 4-bit greyscale X-terms. Just enough shades of grey to be usable, few distractions. There are a lot of greyscale radiology monitors available in the used market these days, but they tend to have a relatively high white point and aren't easy on the eyes.

XenophileJKO 11mo ago
I still have nostalgia for my Hercules monochrome adapter with an amber screen.
- lproven 11mo ago
  Agreed. I have good colour and stereo vision, but I'm very shortsighted. I'm also nearly 60 and now wear varifocals with 3 focal lengths for books and phones, computers, and distance. But 1980s long-persistence-phosphor CRTs looked good to me, were restful to my eyes, and I could and did look at them all day. On today's flatscreens I can't see the difference between SD and HD, let alone on a TV across the room where it's imperceptible. I can't tell different refresh rates apart, let alone variable ones. I read excited product releases about tear-free video and fixing things I never was able to perceive in the first place and so which did not need fixing. Now I am losing my choice of good X11 desktops with rich standards-driven keyboard UIs, replaced by phonelike toy desktops which take 10x the RAM and 100x the CPU and GPU and require a whole new display server, and which can't do nine-tenths of the stuff I used in desktops 15 years ago. Apparently, because of kids with keen eyes who see things I never could. I suspect all this stuff about HDR and VRR and gamer screens that refresh at 100s of Hertz are just the same as audiophiles who pay absurd sums for gold-plated 100Mb Ethernet cables. I want to see double-blinded randomised controlled trials to prove that these people can see what they claim to see -- because I don't believe them -- and to prove to them that the bulk of the population can't tell.
kjs3 11mo ago
I was sold on greyscale (2-bit) on the NeXT. I ran many NCD Xterminals back in the day, and the greyscale ones were awfully nice. I do have a radiology setup I use for writing sometimes, but yeah it's not a general purpose solution. I didn't think about it being the white point so thanks for pointing that out.

by AlanYx 11mo ago

XenophileJKO 11mo ago

I still have nostalgia for my Hercules monochrome adapter with an amber screen.

lproven 11mo ago
Agreed. I have good colour and stereo vision, but I'm very shortsighted. I'm also nearly 60 and now wear varifocals with 3 focal lengths for books and phones, computers, and distance. But 1980s long-persistence-phosphor CRTs looked good to me, were restful to my eyes, and I could and did look at them all day. On today's flatscreens I can't see the difference between SD and HD, let alone on a TV across the room where it's imperceptible. I can't tell different refresh rates apart, let alone variable ones. I read excited product releases about tear-free video and fixing things I never was able to perceive in the first place and so which did not need fixing. Now I am losing my choice of good X11 desktops with rich standards-driven keyboard UIs, replaced by phonelike toy desktops which take 10x the RAM and 100x the CPU and GPU and require a whole new display server, and which can't do nine-tenths of the stuff I used in desktops 15 years ago. Apparently, because of kids with keen eyes who see things I never could. I suspect all this stuff about HDR and VRR and gamer screens that refresh at 100s of Hertz are just the same as audiophiles who pay absurd sums for gold-plated 100Mb Ethernet cables. I want to see double-blinded randomised controlled trials to prove that these people can see what they claim to see -- because I don't believe them -- and to prove to them that the bulk of the population can't tell.

kjs3 11mo ago

I was sold on greyscale (2-bit) on the NeXT. I ran many NCD Xterminals back in the day, and the greyscale ones were awfully nice. I do have a radiology setup I use for writing sometimes, but yeah it's not a general purpose solution. I didn't think about it being the white point so thanks for pointing that out.