actually this sounds good for the TVs. maybe we can finally get panels that are 1 to 1 instead of 1280x768 panels used for 720p and 1680x1050 laptops falsely advertised as full HD.
computers can always just use more processing power to get the interpolation right and computer users can use leftover space in either dimension for controls, but I'd like my movies to show up correctly.

16:10 is pretty close to what is most aesthetic and mathematically pleasing.. i say keep it!

I personally have come to hate large resolution, wide screen (i.e., wider than 4:3) displays on laptops particularly.
If you play them with native resolution, the fonts get really hard to read. If you reduce the resolution, everything becomes blurred.
Yeah, I know I could get myself glasses in principle, but why on earth does the font size on my laptop screen have to be in line with the small print on the back of an insurance contract? IMHO, it should be the size of a decent newspaper text font.

And I do share the "losing vertical resolution" concern that others have raised. 
Now, one elegant way around it is flat screen monitors that you can turn by 90° to get from 16:10 to 10:16. One colleague of mine has one and I really admire that nifty thing. However, I seriously doubt that monitor makers will support this feature in the long run for anything but niche models (= high prices).

*sigh*

16:9 is the perfect ratio - it's great to have one standard ratio for all media.

The biggest criminal offence is to not have 1:1 pixel mapping and black borders.


I'm running a 37" 1080p computer screen and I love it. Game consoles will make all future games compatible with 1080p, which user base grows every freakin' day, so the HDTV ratios on computer screens make for easy game portability...

Movies don't use only anamorphic 21:9 or 2.35:1 formats (original cinemascope is 2.66:1), also in use are masked sizes 1.85:1 and 1.66:1. Therefore 16:9 (or 1.78:1) is a relatively good compromise, but a compromise nevertheless. 2.35:1 would start looking ridiculous on a small TV, and the black bars on the sides would be huge when showing older/transitional 4:3 stuff.

Anyway, these should not be that big problems for computers, as the aspect ratios of laptop screens can often be (and often have been) something more unconventional than 4:3 (or 16:10). For example, I think Sony Vaio has used a 16:9 screen size for a long time.

Almost every game that supports 16:10 also supports 16:9. I've been using a 1080p with a computer for a year and haven't seen an exception to that yet. 

In fact, because there are more console ports now, game assets such as menu backgrounds are using the 16:9 ratio images from the console version.

Why not just design the monitor with a 90-degree swivel option so that it can be used as portrait for PC use and landscape for TV use?
Might take some firmware or software optional switching along with the rotation to do the trick.

I think the problem is that 16:10 is an excellent standard to keep to! It's VERY close to the Golden Ratio (1.61something:1 - think 'A' size paper) which time and again has been demonstrated to be the most attractive rectangle to humans, probably because it's close to the ratio of our field of vision.

Put your dock/menubar along the left edge of the screen. Get Opera and put the tab bar along the right edge of the screen. That way your web area is more vertically oriented.

Sharing glass keeps the costs down which means more and better screens for everybody.

I'd just like to point out that games running on the source engine have properly supported 4:3 16:10 and 16:9 aspect ratios from the start, so to name a few of the more popular:
HL2
HL2:ep1
HL2:ep2
SIN:Emergence
Portal
TF2
CSS
DoD:Source

To show long pages take the wide screen and
rotate 90 degrees into portrait more. A lot or
screen can do this.

This is just a reflection of what people are already doing. No need for all the confused formats 1080P works just fine. I am not sure why anyone would want dead space on the edges wile watching a movie.
I have used 1020x1080 for a year and it works very well. Why have a separate format for TV and computer when they both do the same thing?

I think they should just convert movie theaters and TV cameras to 4:3 and leave my computer alone.

You loss the .5 all around on the HD receiver because it is over scanned. This is the area where the caption and other info like the time code is. It happens on all screens even your old tube TV. You computer is more than likely putting black in this area so it appears that nothing is being cut off.

The Amiga did not have square pixels, which is why it was so good at video. It had NTSC compatible pixels which were taller than they were wide. This was because of the way a composite color video signal is encoded.

Why all the strange ratio?

Can we all use an easy ratio like 16:8 or 2:1?

Make it easier for scaling too.

Right now I'm currently using a sharp 42" HDTV as my only monitor. Call of Duty 4, Bioshock, Unreal Tournament 3 do support those resolutions (1920x1080) FYI. 
So not all hope is lost. Now I am starting to wonder which game supports that weird curved odd ball Alienware DLP.

If you use your computer for more than watching movies, say work??? than you'd know that losing vertical resolution is a big deal.

Maybe, in your case, it's the 22-inch screen's "ultimate oddity that should be banned worldwide" 1680x1050 resolution which lops off the sides of the 1920x1080 HD receiver's signal - if that one is digitally mapped pixel-for-pixel, that is. I got no such problems with 24-inch 1920x1200 displays.

Nova

Movies don't use only anamorphic 21:9 or 2.35:1 formats (original cinemascope is 2.66:1), also in use are masked sizes 1.85:1 and 1.66:1. Therefore 16:9 (or 1.78:1) is a relatively good compromise, but a compromise nevertheless. 2.35:1 would start looking ridiculous on a small TV, and the black bars on the sides would be huge when showing older/transitional 4:3 stuff.

Anyway, these should not be that big problems for computers, as the aspect ratios of laptop screens can often be (and often have been) something more unconventional than 4:3 (or 16:10). For example, I think Sony Vaio has used a 16:9 screen size for a long time.

This is why CRT's are better.
Ok, so they're as deep as they are wide, and weigh half a ton, but they're better.

Personally, I know both Half-Life 2 and Counter Strike offer a "16:9" option.

Having just spotted it the other day I was quite surprised; I imagined the game engine would intelligently choose the aspect ratio based on resolution. Who would play at 1920*1200 with 4:3?

Admittedely, while most Hollywood blockbusters use the cinemascope format(1:2,35) many use variations(1:2,4)(to avoid paying the cinemascope royalty :-)) or one of the two regular widescreen formats(american widescreen 1:1,85, european widescreen 1:1,66). Then there's the 1:2 of 70 mm and of course all those old movies in Academy format 1:1,33(4:3).

In the old days, when cinema screens were in the Academy format and cinemascope was brand new the projectionists would often zoom in on the middle of the image in order to fill the screen(much like was common in the VHS days), thereby cutting off the sides of the image. And then when the cinemas bought new cinemascope format screens most films were still being shot in Academy, they would zoom in on the image to fill the screen, thereby cutting off the top and bottom of the image.

Most people I know have their widescreen tellies set to stretch the image in order to fill the screen. Which looks most peculiar when the broadcast is letterboxed 16:9 which then gets stretched to resemble cinemascope with black bars on the top and bottom.

My point is that the desire to fill the whole screen under all circumstances is self-defeating and the surest way towards crappy looking pictures. In some ways I am lucky when doing graphics for the event market, I get to know exactly what hardware will be playing back the video. I get to work with the designer and together we define the aspect ratio that is most appropiate for the gig(circular screens is all the rage in Oslo now for example, but we've also done triangular and I think these look particularly cool). But when a game or movie or webpage is made the designer cannot know what aspect ratio it will be seen in, and most likely it will be seen in all manners of aspect ratios with all kinds of different stretching. This makes it much harder to commit to a particular aspect ratio and really use that format for all it is worth. From that point of view, and from the point of view of consumers who are hardly aware that aspect ratios exist, one format to rule them all would be preferable...

b

I think this is a logical way to go. Right now I can run my computer to my tv and scale the rez, but when I hook up my HD receiver to my 22" 16:10, I lose the :.5 on either side of the screen.

What's wrong with a standard, native resolution shared across our media devices?

Wider is not better for this. If anything some folks have been missing the "taller" part of the 4:3 ratio, which will be addressed when the world quads all the current resolutions (as you mentioned in the 3840 30" monitors that are on the horizon).

This is an industry move that does not help the consumer, and, as such, should be flatly given a strong negative response.