I swear to gourd I had NEVER SEEN a 5:4 LCD monitor in my entire life as a child but now that I want to perfect my retro setup the ONLY MONITORS I can find at thrift stores are all 5:4. Like why. Who is responsible for this. I don’t want to spend all the money on shipping a monitor from ebay but I’m losing it.
1280x1024 is a pretty common size for old LCDs.
I had CRTs that could do that, too, but if you opened a picture of a circle, it looked like an oval.
I’m not saying those screen ratios, or those resolutions, didn’t exist, but I wouldn’t say they were the norm.
Yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen a native 5:4 CRT. I imagine it’s a lot harder to make a different aspect ratio with CRTs, since LCDs are essentially cut out of a sheet, while CRTs are molded glass.
With LCDs, though, 1280x1024 was a fairly common native resolution. If you were getting an LCD above 1024x768 that wasn’t a widescreen, it was almost certainly 1280x1024.
From what I read, SXGA was only popular for 17 and 19" screens. I’m not sure if there were 4:3 screens in those sizes back when they were popular, but 5:4 and widescreen formats are still available in those sizes today.