Learn – Page 4 – Projector Ninja

Aspect ratio doesn't only apply to projectors but also for TV sets or computer monitors. It refers to the ratio between the height and width of the resolution or screen. For instance, a 4:3 display produces a square image. A 16:9 ratio produces a more rectangular shape. In regards to your Projector Aspect Ratio, even if you're dealing with bigger screens you'll still be mostly working with the same aspect ratios of 16:9 or 16:10. The reason for this is because the 4:3 square ratio is an outdated one and most movies and TV shows in the 21st Century are all high-definition or HD. Regardless, the three most common video projector aspect ratios are 4:3, 16:10, and 16:9. Learn more about this topic below. Aspect Ratio versus Projector Resolution The resolution of your projector is directly tied to the aspect ratio. For example, vintage SVGA projectors for old-school CRT televisions and 1990s computers will have a 4:3 aspect ratio for the 800 x 600 resolution. Ditto with HD 720p or 1080p projectors that are intrinsically linked to the 16:9 aspect ratio. Why Are There So Many Aspect Ratio Variants Anyway? There are multiple aspect ratio variants because there are multiple types of screens to show media through. People used to only watch things through cinema houses and their movie screens, which had a 2.35:1 or 23.5:10 aspect ratio. Then came the television era and the square boob tube screen that had a standard definition or SD aspect ratio of 4:3. From there, the high-definition or HD era of DVDs and Blu-Rays came about, leading to HDTV and its 16:9 aspect ratio around the Turn of the Millennium or the 21st Century. This will further expand in the 2010s with the advent of 4K or 8K entertainment that has a 1.9:1 or 19:10 aspect ratio. At any rate, here are some of the examples of aspect ratio variants across the board, from computer screens to TV screens. NTSC or PAL: The 1.33:1 aspect ratio is common among TV broadcasts encoded in the National Television System Committee (NTSC) format of 1954 and beyond. The Phase Alternating Line (PAL) encoding format has a slightly smaller aspect ratio that can be translated to around 4:3. Widescreen HDTV and DVD: HDTV screens and widescreen DVD shows have a 1.78:1 aspect ratio. Most modern shows on cable follow this aspect ratio format or the 16:9 one instead but the extra 0.78 fits well with the proportionally longer HDTV screen. High Definition: High-definition or HD movies and shows will typically follow the 16:9 home theater aspect ratio. HDTV is only a few numbers short, with the discrepancy as slight as the WXGA 16:10 aspect ratio. Standard Definition: Traditional vintage cathode-ray tube television sets followed the at-the-time standard-definition or SD 4:3 aspect ratio until the HDTV came along. 4:3 is quite the ubiquitous universal aspect ratio for almost all vintage formats, including NTSC or PAL. Cinema or CinemaScope: Modern movie theater screens have a 2.35:1 or 23.5:10 aspect ratio. Many a classic film in its original resolution or format is at 23.5:10 aspect ratio that's close enough to the modern 16:9 or 16:10 HD standard. It was the standard of 1970s movies for the most part. Square: If it says Square then it's 1:1. It's a common setting in video editor or movie maker programs. You can crop or squeeze a video you've shot into a 1:1 square aspect ratio sample. It's also the aspect ratio used for the slides of slideshows or slide projectors. Letterbox: 1.85:1 or 18.5:10 is the Letterbox aspect ratio. It's called that because many an HD widescreen DVD renders a vintage movie that has cinema aspect ratio with slight letterboxing or black bars on the top and bottom of it unless you choose to stretch the image to fit the screen, which leads to distortion. PC Widescreen: A PC widescreen follows the 1.6:1 or 16:10 format common in WXGA business projectors and computers in the HD era. The extra screen real estate is common among laptop computer screens used for presentations. Fixed versus Variable Aspect Ratio: Many projectors stick to a specific fixed resolution but cater to different aspect ratios that are similarly sized to it, like a cinematic aspect ratio fitting inside an HD aspect ratio or the minor discrepancy between a 16:9 HD movie and a 16:10 computer user interface. Others can shift from one aspect ratio to another from square to horizontal rectangular or even vertical smartphone screen by shifting lenses or projector screens. Why Do Most Projector Resolutions Follow The Same Aspect Ratio? You'll notice that 1990s and before home theater projectors as well as SVGA, XGA, and SXGA business projectors all follow the same 4:3 aspect ratio. This is because they were all used on standard square-like CRT TV monitors. The current standard is that of the 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio, which covers projectors in the new Millennium like the 720p and 1080p HD home theater projectors and the WXGA and WUXGA business projectors. Some movies end up letterboxed in 16:9 due to their 18.5:10 aspect ratios but for the most part, they fit perfectly. Just crop, scale, or stretch as needed. What Happens When You Watch Something on The Wrong Aspect Ratio? When watching media of a smaller aspect ratio on a bigger screen, like watching a TV commercial on a movie theater, expect black bars to flank the sides or top and bottom of the video image. Letterboxing occurs when a cinema aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is shown in a 16:9 or 1.78:1 aspect ratio widescreen. Black bars are found when a 4:3 old YouTube video is shown in a modern 16:9 YouTube screen until recently when YouTube started changing video screen sizes to suit aspect ratios. The Most Common Aspect Ratios for Projectors: Let's get back to projector resolutions and their respective aspect ratios. The aspect ratios listed above cover all sorts of screens, from movie screens to TV screens as well as PC monitors. There are actually specific aspect ratios for projectors that correspond to their resolution and type. The most common home theater video projector aspect ratios include the following. 480p SD: The 480p (or lower) standard definition projector is typically an LCD (Liquid Crystal Display) projector you can link to VCR, Betamax, and LaserDisc players to display 4:3 aspect ratio media, typically VHS tapes made to run on SD CRT TV with NTSC or PAL resolutions. 720p HD: The 720p HD resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels has a 16:9 aspect ratio. This is the most economical version of HD available and when your device can't take 1080p it usually degrades to 720p instead. 1080p HD: The 1080p HD resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels has a 16:9 aspect ratio. This is the maximum HD resolution available for most DVDs and Blu-Rays as well as HDTV shows (that run at the close enough aspect ratio of 1.78:1). 4K Ultra HD: The 4K resolution of 4096 x 2160 pixels has a 16:9 or 1.9:1/19:10 aspect ratio. Some projectors are true 4K projectors while others use a trick that has alternating blinking pixels that alternate so fast they produce a 4K resolution to the naked eye. 8K Ultra HD: There are no home theater projectors capable of 8K at the time of this writing. However, once they do come along in the near future, then you should know that the 8K resolution of 7680 × 4320 pixels has a 16:9 aspect ratio. In turn, the most common business projector aspect ratios include the following: SVGA: The Super VGA projector type has an 800 x 600 pixels resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio. This digital LCD projector type is commonly used by1990s schools, conferences, and businesses and makes use of the VGA connector. XGA: This projector type has a 1024 x 768 pixels resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio. These projectors connected by USB-A or USB-B as well as VGA to notebook PCs, smartphones, and tablets made in the 2000s. WXGA: This projector type has a 1280 x 800 pixels resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio. It's the aspect ratio used for the latest generation of smartphones and notebook PCs. SXGA: This projector type has a 1280 x 1024 pixels resolution and a 4:3 aspect ratio. It's the higher or HD resolution version of the XGA. WUXGA: This projector type has a 1980 x 1200 pixels resolution and a 16:10 aspect ratio. It's the higher or HD resolution version of WXGA. Simply put, SVGA, XGA, and SXGA all use the 4:3 aspect ratio while WXGA and WUXGA use the 16:10 aspect ratio. This matches the 4:3 aspect ratio of non-HD projectors for home theaters. Meanwhile, HD home theater projectors and their 16:9 aspect ratio are quite similar to the 16:10 aspect ratio of WXGA and WUXGA business projectors. 4K alone has a unique 19:10 aspect ratio. Best Aspect Ratio for Watching Different Media: Modern media nowadays are best viewed with the 16:9 aspect ratio. This covers all the HDTV shows of the 2010s as well as the videogames released for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Wii-U, and Nintendo Switch. Vintage TV shows from the 1990s and 2000s (and even before that) follow the 4:3 aspect ratio. Cinema from before the Turn of the Millennium has the cinema aspect ratio of 1.85:1 that becomes letterboxed in 16:9 screens. The modern cinema aspect ratio of 2.35:1 is a better fit for 16:9 HD. Meanwhile, business video projectors of the SVGA, XGA, and SXGA variety use the square-like 4:3 aspect ratio like in the case of vintage A/V projectors that can be linked to VCRs. Modern computers, laptops, and tablets from the 2000s and 2010s mainly make use of WXGA and WUXGA projectors that have a more rectangular aspect ratio of 16:10. This is a close enough aspect ratio that's quite similar to the 16:9 or 1.78:1 aspect ratio of 720p to 1080p HD home theater projectors. Business versus Home Theater Projector Resolutions The different types of home theater and business projectors were touched upon on the earlier entries. With that in mind, what are these two types of projectors anyway? You can figure it out by the way they're named. To wit: Home Theater Projectors: Home theater video projectors are the projectors you use on your home entertainment or home cinema setup. As opposed to movie projectors, these projectors work for home use. You can use them to view tapes on your VCR or discs on your DVD and BD players. Some modern projectors can even be hooked up cable or satellite boxes for cable TV viewing. Business Projectors: Until the Turn of the Millennium, projectors were more commonly used in business meetings, presentations, and conferences than for home use. Therefore, you have business projectors that typically connect to a workstation or notebook computer in order to project video clips, slideshows, clipart, GIFs, tables, charts, and full movies for (PowerPoint) presentation purposes. Meanwhile, here are the different home theater projectors and their respective aspect ratios. SD 480p: This is the A/V or RCA LCD video projector you can connect to your VCR with a 480p or lower resolution will typically follow the 4:3 standard of the non-HD era of TV displays. These projectors are the home theater equivalent of the SVGA. The 4:3 aspect ratio also covers non-480p resolutions for media such as VHS and Betamax (320 × 486), S-VHS (420 x 576), and LaserDisc (570 x 576 PAL and 310 x 576 NTSC). 720p HD: The 720p HD or 1280 x 720 pixels resolution follows the 16:9 aspect ratio. It's the most economical version of HD that's used for slower computers, media players, cable box signals, and so forth. When the HD signal is downgraded due to technical issues with switches, converters, adapters, and splitters, it will typically go down by 720p. 1080p HD: 1080p HD projectors also follow the 16:9 aspect ratio. This is the maximum resolution considered as HD or high definition until the Ultra HD resolutions of 4K and 8K were introduced. If your projector is running optimally it should produce a 1080p and 1280 x 720 pixels resolution. It's the standard HD format for DVDs and BDs. 4K and 8K Ultra HD: Both 4K resolution 4096 x 2160 pixels and 8K resolution 7680 × 4320 pixels have a 16:9 aspect ratio. They're the future of HD and home cinema entertainment. However, currently, 8K projectors don't exist. However, 4K projectors that are available either go for the exact 16:9 aspect ratio or the more precise 1.9:1 aspect ratio for certain Blu-Ray disc movies and HD cable signals. By the way, the "p" on 1080p and the "i" on 1080i refer to "progressive scan" and "interlaced" encoding formats respectively. Interlaced scanning displays alternating sets of lines and is mostly seen on TV screens. Progressive video scans are the norm for HD video while interlaced scans are more of a relic of CRT TV broadcasts. As for the different types of business projectors, they're listed below with their respective aspect ratios and resolutions. SVGA: This business projector is probably the one most people are familiar with since it was quite ubiquitous in the 1990s. This 800 x 600 pixels resolution and 4:3 aspect ratio device was the de facto projector for simple data, charts, tables, video clips, and PowerPoint Presentations on workstations and laptops with a VGA (Video Graphics Array) connection. XGA and SXGA: XGA used a 4:3 aspect ratio for its 1024 x 768 pixels resolution. SXGA has a much higher 1280 x 1024 pixels resolution that exceeded home theater 1080p HD in pixel count but still followed a 4:3 aspect ratio. These projector types were used for the 2000s era notebook PCs, smartphones, and tablets for presentation and conference displays. WXGA and WUXGA: All the latest PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones from various manufacturers ranging from Apple, Dell, Samsung, Alienware, Microsoft, and beyond in the 2010s make use of WXGA (1280 x 800 pixels) and WUXGA (1980 x 1200 pixels) projectors. Thusly, they follow the slightly bigger 16:10 aspect ratio that's quite close enough to the 16:9 aspect ratio standard of 720p, 1080p, and 4K resolution home theater projectors. What The Projector Aspect Ratio Brings to the Table The shape of your screen dictates aspect ratio. It's related to resolution in that the shape of the screen needed to display a given resolution also determines its aspect ratio. The aspect ratio format is used to determine screen size and shape because even if you were to get higher resolution screens as long as the aspect ratio remains the same it should still fit on the same screen. Certain aspect ratios are close enough to one another that you can't tell the difference when they're displayed back to back. Other aspect ratios result in letterboxing or black bars on either side of the video when displayed on a screen with a different aspect ratio to account for the extra screen real estate. At any rate, when shopping for a home cinema projector, you should know both the aspect ratio and the (native) resolution of your projector to get the right projector screen or wall-size for it to make its square or rectangular display. Image Credit: www.flickr.com