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Almost every laptop sold in the past 5 years has had an aspect ratio of
either 16:9 or 16:10.

One of our professors specifically went with a 4:3 model 4 years or so ago
so that he wouldn't have to fiddle with PowerPoint when coming up with
something that would display correctly on projectors at conferences and
seminars which had 4:3 aspect ratios.  When he replaced that laptop earlier
this year, he went with a wide aspect ratio model, not only because it's
even harder now than then to get a 4:3 laptop, but also because more and
more sites he was giving talks at had already switched over to wide aspect
ratio projectors.  Also, video drivers on the wide aspect ratio laptops
have improved since the earlier purchase to the point where even with a
built-in wide view, it will display sensibly on 4:3 projectors (the wide
ratio model he had tried for comparison at the earlier date insisted on
stretching or squishing the PowerPoint output when sending to a 4:3 aspect
ratio projector; his new wide ratio model scales it intelligently).

As long as the old 4:3 projector in our main conference room holds up,
we won't go out of our way to replace it. In one of our smaller conference
rooms, we've gone with a 16:10 projector which can handle 720p HDTV directly
and scales the higher-def signals, and that has worked out fine so far.
In another location, a software upgrade for some specialized presentation
software used there dropped its support for 4:3 output, so we replaced the
projector with a wide aspect ratio model.

Using an existing screen with the wide aspect ratio projector means that
the overall image will be smaller, but in our two cases, that has not been
a problem. In both cases, when the 4:3 view was stretched to fill the
screen, the lower edge of the image became a blinding hazard for people in
typical viewing positions who happened to look behind them to see if that
was their heads' shadows at the bottom of the screen. Now the lower edge
is somewhat higher without having to narrow the overall view down, and only
the extremely tall are at risk.
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                                George
 
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George J Perkins                  http://www.pa.msu.edu/people/perkins/
Biomedical Physical Sciences
567 Wilson Road, Room 1209B       Phone: 517-884-5467
East Lansing, MI  48824             FAX: 517-353-4500
 

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From: John Gorentz [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, July 16, 2012 10:42
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [MSUNAG] Aspect ratio for LCD projectors and screens

Are any of you finding that people want to make powerpoint presentations with a 16:10 aspect ratio instead of 4:3? 

I've asked our faculty if they've seen that being used anywhere that they give talks, and they say no.   Everything is still 4:3.  

But we have a vendor who is preparing specs to use to use for a bid for videoconferencing-on-the-cheap for a couple of lecture rooms, and their people are trying to tell me everything is going 16:10.   In one of our rooms it may be OK to have a screen with that aspect ratio -- it just means the 4:3 images that our people project will be smaller and higher, and that people in the back rows won't have to look through the heads of people in front of them.  In that room a smaller image might be OK compared to what we're doing now.   And maybe we can live with the image not filling the screen in that case.   (I like the image to fill the screens, black-border to black-border.)  

But we have an auditorium with two screens and two 4:3 projectors in which I'm reluctant to make a change like that unless the world of academic presentations for both teaching and research is really going 16:10.   (But our Polycom codecs still do H.323 document sharing in 1024:768 resolution.)

Any comments or observations on this topic?

John Gorentz
Computer Services Manager
W.K. Kellogg Biological Station