As more PCs add support for WUXGA and WSXGA+, AV vendors are broadening their aspect ratios to 16:10, 15:10 and 17:10 – with some growing pains along the way.
Is bigger better? It’s almost a rhetorical question when it comes to aspect ratios, where AV and PC vendors are steadily expanding their product line-ups beyond 16:9. Today, the most widely used widescreen aspect ratios are 16:9 and 16:10, but 15:10 and 17:10 are moving into the market.
"At the moment, the industry is certainly leaning towards 16:10 aspects for business use,†says Alan Dempster, European product specialist for projector and visual communication at Canon, which recently launched a 16:10 WUXGA LCOS panel.
16:10 is becoming more common in the enterprise market partly because of its flexibility in terms of the applications it can handle.
“16:9 is video-centric, and 16:10 is computer-centric,†says Anders Løkke, international marketing and communications manager at projectiondesign, a Norwegian projector vendor. “16:10 can obviously display 16:9 and 4:3 ratios inside it without compromises, and like a television, the user can alternate between ratios. As such, it is the most flexible wide screen ratio. For instance, WUXGA can display almost any format desired without altering scaling – so 1:1 pixel mapping – and the ratio will be dependent on its application.â€
Currently the market for new widescreen formats is relatively small, but interest already spans a variety of verticals.
“Corporations are interested for videoconferencing capabilities, and schools would like it but cannot afford it just yet,†says Alison Hau, product manager for ViewSonic’s projector business line. “The main users interested are gamers and graphic designers, but a majority of these users are still more interested in widescreen LCDs versus projectors.â€
Why now?
The pro AV world often is influenced by the consumer AV world, and aspect ratios are no exception. That’s because unless, for example, an enterprise client already has a good understanding of pro AV, they often specify products based on their experiences as consumers.
“We do expect to see more widescreen projection on the market, first and foremost driven by the 16:9 and HDTV dominance in the consumer world,†says Benny Svardal, vice president of research and development at Cyviz, a Norwegian company whose products include video walls.
Another reason for the growing selection of aspect ratios is because laptop vendors are adding support for wider formats to their products – the latest example of how the AV industry often follows the lead of the PC industry.
“For example, manufacturers such as HP and Dell are already producing a number of machines with WUXGA (1920 x 1200) and WSXGA+ (1680 x 1050) resolution,†Dempster says.
Interest in widescreen formats also is showing up in markets outside of Europe, such as North America.
“We are beginning to hear more about 16:10 as a format, mostly because laptops support it,†says Terry Coffey, a spokesperson for Draper, a U.S.-based maker of screens and mounts. “As a result, we have started offering screens in 16:10 and 15:9 formats.â€
Supporting aspect ratios beyond 16:9 is one way that AV vendors can differentiate themselves in the eyes of integrators and end users. But for now, it’s somewhat of a niche play because most of the market isn’t yet clamoring for more than 16:9.
“We will see more 16:10 projectors as manufacturers look to broaden their portfolio, but it is our belief that the sweet spot will continue to be at the traditional aspect ratio,†says ViewSonic’s Hau.
Other vendors take a similar view.
“16:10 is here, and it’s fast becoming a standard for computer resolutions,†says Løkke of projectiondesign, which currently offers 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10 products. “The market demand for wide-aspect-ratio projectors will grow. It is the new 4:3.â€
What’s the difference?
Aspect ratio choices are based on a variety of factors besides what the client’s existing equipment – such as laptops – support. One is price.
“It has been our experience that 16:9 continues to be the most demanded ratio, mainly because the price difference between 16:9 and 16:10 becomes the deciding factor,†Hau says. “For ViewSonic, the largest user of projector equipment continues to be education facilities, which have strict budgets they must adhere to.â€
Some projector vendors see pricing being one of the biggest factors, if not the factor, determining the market for wider products.
“If pricing continues to decline, then budgets will support them, which will increase demand, and in turn supply will increase,†Hau says.
Another adoption factor is the types of applications found in a particular market. Verticals such as medical, simulation, mining, oil and gas regularly use high-resolution software, which can make the most use of the extra pixels.
One example is the Norwegian oil and gas company StatoilHydro. In a May 2008 interview with InAVate, the company said that it prefers 16:10 because the computer graphics cards it uses support 1920 x 1200 rather than 1920 x 1080.
“We believe that the 16:10 is best because it covers all the formats below it,†Helge Andersen, StatoilHydro’s task manager for audiovisual and multimedia said. “It is much more satisfactory than trying to squeeze 1200 pixels into a 1080 display. We are thinking about the readability, which is a big issue.â€
Connectivity standards also influence those choices.
“Content availability, increased display resolutions, improved bit depth and higher bandwidth, easier-to-use display interface standards like HDMI 1.3 and DisplayPort should also help to boost the sales of new projectors the next couple of years,†says Cyviz’s Svardal.
What’s the best fit?
As the selection of aspect ratios grows, so does confusion and in turn the challenges that integrators face.
“It is a real pain in the rear for integrators to deal with,†says Darren Cheshier, CTS-D, an engineer at Conference Technologies, a U.S.-based integrator. “Most clients do not realize there is a difference [between the various aspect ratios]. There is real demand for ‘widescreen’ or ‘HD.’ They know they want something, but they are quoting consumer buzzwords.â€
One issue is backward- and forward-compatibility, which is among the reasons why 16:10 is becoming popular.
“It encompasses all other interesting ratios, so is very versatile,†says projectiondesign’s Løkke. “The fact that they [the client] are not locked into using that aspect ratio is not important, but what is important is forwards and backwards compatibility.â€
Hence the importance of looking at the client’s video sources and applications when deciding which aspect ratio to recommend. The wrong choice can result in degraded quality.
“One of the best pieces of advice that we can offer our customers is to buy a [projector] with a native resolution that matches his or her notebook computer,†says Canon’s Dempster. “Many users have sophisticated notebook computers, running at WSXGA+ resolution or higher, only to sacrifice the quality of their presentation by running their PC through a native XGA (1024 x 768) projector. Apart from having the wrong aspect ratio, projector products of this resolution have to compress the video signal, significantly compromising image quality in the process."
Another example: If the display or projector will be used mainly for HD content such as films, then 16:9 may be the best choice. However, even that rule of thumb doesn’t apply in every case.
“An interesting aspect ratio that we’ve seen is one used for cinema or television: a 16:9 picture positioned inside a 16:10 format that is running the subtitles in the [bottom] .1 of the picture,†Løkke says.
Some see 16:10 becoming the market’s sweet spot.
“The 16:10 format is a good compromise between the ability to watch full-screen 16:9 video content without too large borders, and the practicality of having a slightly taller format for office application use,†says Cyviz’s Svardal.
For other applications, wider formats might not be cost-effective because they’re an odd fit for the content displayed.
“For small, single personal displays for business PC use, a taller format is more suitable to enable an efficient work situation – for example, to enable showing multiple open programs in readable size,†Svardal says. “A display large enough to show in real size single A3 page in landscape or two A4 pages in portrait side-by-side simultaneously, in addition to having space for menus around the edges, is a good format for a typical office work situation. This would, at minimum, require a 20-inch diagonal display in A3 landscape format (1.41:1), while a 16:9 format (equaling 1,78:1) display would need to be 24 inches to achieve the same, and a 16:10 display requires in [this] case a minimum of 22 inches diagonal.â€
For other clients, the choice of aspect ratio comes down to the ability to work with multiple sources in their native formats.
“They might want to be able to run a PC in 4:3 aspect ratio, a DVD player in 16:9 format and another application in 16:10, so we then need to look at more customized aspect ratios,†Svardal says.