Blech! How can you stand 640x200??

[mister_boffo@hotmail.com (Mr. Boffo)]

So anyway I've been trying out stuff like Hyperstudio for the IIgs,
and the one thing which keeps coming to mind is: "Boy, this screen is
just godawful!"

What exactly was the point of limiting the IIgs to a maximum of
640x200? The pixels are so irregularly shaped that the screen images
look horrendous. At this point my only guess is that memory cost too
much for the extra resolution to be worthwhile.

Now, the 320x200 mode is just fine and dandy. That mode is quite nice.
But 640x200 totally blows. The text looks terrible, unless you make it
double wide to compensate for the unnatural skinniness that 640x200
imposes on everything.


This reminds me of something that's always bothered me.. how is it
that the image appears to really only have 200 lines, when NTSC is
really 525 lines? I realize the edges are blank and unused to prevent
overscan, but still, at 200 scanlines tall you'd have a squashed
letterbox in the middle and 162 blank scanlines above and below.

It would seem that those 200 image scanlines are double-thick, yet
when you look at the graphics on an NTSC monitor you can't tell that a
pixel is two scanlines tall. Even with the old hires 280x192 grahpics,
a pixel appears to be made up of a single scanline, with a definite
separation from the next pixel above and below but no visible split in
the pixel itself. Is this really a "normal" NTSC resolution at all?

-Mr. Boffo

Email: mister_boffo@hotmail.com