The one thing screen related I do find I have a visceral issue with is the idea that 1:1 (100%) viewing is a legitimate end point. I can see why it could be (say, a gigapixel style image where the whole point is to scroll around a vast image at ever increasing levels of magnification) but for a 'serious' photographer who cares about and takes pains over the point composition, 1:1 viewing is like going to an Ansel Adams gallery and only viewing the prints through a loupe...you know, the suggestion that the thing that matters is ultimate pixel level detail, not the actual image content.
Of course, that is WAY off topic!
I feel that a lot of people who are bothered mainly about screen quality as the end point are people who scrutinise their images at 1:1 in order to ooh and ahh over the pixel detail and give peremptory interest to the image as a whole.
Well, its a photo gear board, of course, but there is a legitimate creative opportunity here is displaying images where you can have an image displayed on a smaller screen and at the same time be able to look at details--just in the same way I suspect that you do yourself at galleries and museums when you step closer and look at the image a foot or so away in order to see this details. Knowing that this is a possibility, a photographer can think about how to make the best use of that possibility.
It's the "I'm impressed" mentality at work. It seems it is quite easy to 'impress' people with sharpness and clarity and rich contrast and saturation, but a lot harder to impress people with good content. The impressiveness of paper prints reached its zenith years ago so no one is impressed by prints. But screens...Bigger! Brighter! Sharper! More contrast! 3D, HDR, Stereo...There's loads of wiggle room left in that tech's development for more more more.
People are the same all over, not just big screen owners. I'm sure you've noticed that the size of photographs in museums has grown quite large--so large (beyond 60" on a side) that in some cases only specialized photo labs can make such a print. And Taschen and others have been putting out (quite successfully) very large "Sumo" and special edition books that take two people to carry. None of that rules out works that are smaller--just be sure to recognize that smaller or larger are not in and of themselves advantages or disadvantages, just creative possibilities. Some images need to be small. Some need to be large. Some have more flexibility. There are no rules.
The problem becomes recognising where legitimate image quality has reached its natural end point and gimmickry is taking over. Everyone loves a good sideshow performance, at least for 5 minutes.
This is very pessimistic view. Maybe you are correct, but I see (along with the dumb stuff) the opportunity for much more. You don't think Ansel Adams, if he were still alive and working, would have his high-end screens and be producing HDR work? He was always interested in the newest technologies, I think, but always in the service of the expressiveness of the image.
Anyway, I think you've made clear that you aren't interested in HDR and that you print with the screen turned way down anyway to facilitate printing. That's fine. It's a big tent and there's no reason you have to be interested and to even think HDR is worthwhile. It's all good. Print images are not in a race with Display images. We're all on the same side in the pursuit of making good photographs.
