Interesting FW and AR Trivia

Just for fun, I calculated just how much screen size do I lost when watching wide screen movies with FW over AR.

AR has 17" screen, 16/10 ratio. FW has 16.4" screen, 16/9 ratio. If you do the math, AR screen dimension is 14.4x9 (rounded to the tenth of an inch) while FW screen dimension is 14.3x8. Strictly counting from the whole screen size, AR has 13% bigger screen.

However, due to black bars that you get when watching wide screen movies, you will get nearly identical usable screen area when watching those movies.

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  With 1.78:1 wide screen movies for example, an AR would occupy 14.4x8.1 screen with black bars while an FW would occupy the whole 14.3x8 without any black bars.

• With 2.4:1 wide screen movies, an AR would occupy 14.4x6 screen while an FW would occupy a nearly identical 14.3x6 screen.

In fact, when watching wide screen movies, an AR would only give you 1.7% bigger screen over FW. The AR, however, due to its higher screen resolution (1920x1200 over 1600x900) will give you 44% more pixels. But I am not so sure that the 44% more pixels would give noticeable difference when watching with a small screen of the laptops.

However, when it comes to watch standard 4:3 movies, an AR would give you a huge advantage. For those movies, an AR would give you 12x9" screen, while an FW would only give you 10.7x8" screen. So, when watching standard 4:3 movies, an AR would give you 25.58% bigger screen over FW. The AR, under this condition, would also give you 78% more pixels.

 

i think for computer the current 16:10 screen ratio is more ideal. when reading web sites or documents, the extra screen width is really not necessary.

saying that.. it is nice to have the computer and the tv aspect ratio finally the same.