16:10 vs 16:9 LCD Ratios

What's the difference? What's preferred?

 

16:9 is the aspect ratio used in widescreen TVs. 16:10 is the aspect ratio used in widescreen notebooks.

What's preferred is irrelevant, since you can't (to my knowledge at least) get a 16:9 display in a notebook.

 

As TedJ said, TV and laptop widescreen is different. Thats why if you play a widescreen DVD on your laptop you will still get black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. That wouldnt happen on a widescreen TV though.

 

Actually no, widescreen DVD's are usually a different ratio than 16:9 (1.778:1), with 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 being common aspect ratios, so widescreen DVDs on widescreen TV's will still have black bars.

 

You would think Hollywood would just agree on one format for DVD/HD TV's? I guess they want us to get out of the house more often

 

Um, those are cinema aspect ratios and have been in use since before widescreen TV/notebooks were little more than an errant dream. I for one would be disappointed if films were only available in 16:9, some films just can't fit into that small a frame.

 

Um, who cares? The point was people with HD TV's still have to put up with black bars on very expensive HD/TV's. I'm not saying we ruin the film industry just for the sake of multi-million dollar home theater..just agree on a wide screen DVD format.

Cheers

Opps, I meant to add that with around 12 cinematic aspect ratios, we will be stuck with some sort of matting with a lot of the older movies. I understand some movie houses have to do matting as well depending on how the movie was filmed to fit their screen size.

With the newer electronic cameras, it should be interesting on which formats the different movie houses will use. Cost aside, I wonder how long the expensive film format will last?

 

16:9 was selected as a compromise, taking into consideration the two most commonly used theatrical ratios are 1.85:1 and 2.35:1... especially when you consider that you may also need to view 4:3 material on the same display.

If you had a native 2.35:1 panel, then 4:3 material would look very lonely in a massive pillarbox, and zooming would discard nearly half the picture.

 

16:9 for notebook screens is usually 1280x786 pixels. And 16:10 is usually 1280x800 pixels. There is hardly any difference between the two... In general 1280x800 (16:10) is more common though...