Odd screen rate disruptive to consumers

16: 9 is a fairly common ratio of current LCD screens, making images of standing people swollen or excessive space on both sides.

Since the beginning of the pixel era with products of Atari ST, Amiga or IBM PS / 2 VGA, the normal resolution is based on two screen ratios of 16:10 (more precisely 8: 5). for 640 x 400 pixels or 4: 3 for 640 x 480 pixels.

After that, other resolutions like 800 x 600 SVGA, 1024 x 768 XGA, 1600 x 1200 UXGA and 2048 x 1536 QXGA have the same ratio. Only a slightly special 1280 x 1024 SXGA - 5: 4 aspect ratio.

These designs do not damage the display structure of regular TVs as well as computers so that users are still comfortable when viewing web pages, editing documents .

When widescreen HDTVs emerged, at 16: 9, a new generation of screens came out with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, 1280 x 720, 1600 x 900. Meanwhile, there were very few support games. This rate makes monsters or machines become big. The 4: 3 standard TV signals stretch to fill the screen and make the viewer have to re-set the ratio in the device or choose the device according to a very "mysterious" parameter.

For example, if watching a DVD on a 32-inch widescreen, people will see more images than a 4: 3 32-inch TV because each side has an additional 1.85 inches. But due to the 16: 9 standard device, the person in the movie will be 2.4 inches lower. To keep things normal, users have to adjust and resize images on 32-inch 16: 9 TVs that will be the same as those on 26-inch TVs with a 4: 3 aspect ratio.

So, when you need a 16: 9 wide-screen TV to see a wider image and still want to be as tall as a 4: 3 TV of the same size, it is recommended to multiply the 4: 3 TV diagonal (eg 30 inches) with the number of 1.2238. The result (36.7 inches) is the diagonal size on a 16: 9 widescreen TV that needs to be purchased and edited.

Despite such trouble, strange types of screens still exist as a new creative idea. In Seoul (Korea), one can see that the LCD screen for the desktop is a real square with a resolution of 1024 x 1024. Stranger than that, there is a 26-inch bottom font display on the upper half, but only 15.6 inches in the lower part.

Viet Toan