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The only wide-aspect presentation I've had was by a design agency bidding for the MSU branding project. Most users still have square-aspect workstations so they'll by default be developing square-aspect presentations; even people with wide-aspect machines (laptops, iMacs, etc) will probably never change the default 4:3 format that PowerPoint uses. Since you can't go wider than you already have, I'd say just get nice projectors with enough resolution that when they have to show 16:9 or 16:10 content it's not unnecessarily compressed—1280x1024 native resolution at least, since that can cut itself down to native 720p (1280x720). ---- Jack Kramer Manager of Information Technology Communications and Brand Strategy Michigan State University w: 517-884-1231 / c: 248-635-4955 From: John Gorentz <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Reply-To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Date: Monday, July 16, 2012 11:23 AM To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] Aspect ratio for LCD projectors and screens Thanks, Jack. In our auditorium we can't go to wider screens, or at least not to wider than the widest of the two we have now. Right now we have two screens of differing size. Our auditorium can be divided into two rooms, but most of the time it is not. When it's used full-size we like to light up both screens; otherwise there is an awkward viewing angle for the people on one side. Having the two screens be of differing size (and therefore of differing brightness) is very distracting, so we want to fix that while we're at it. That means we're going to have screens of about 10-feet in width on both sides, which is about what we have now for the largest of the two. Part of my question is about the behavior of MSU instructors, and of visiting researchers and presenters. They are not going to prepare 16:10 presentations for us if their presentations can't be 16:10 everywhere, including on the main campus. Has anyone seen or even heard rumors of a MSU instructor or visiting presenter preparing powerpoint in 16:10 (or 16:9)? I can imagine some have done videos in that format, but powerpoint is the common currency. John At 10:59 AM 7/16/2012, Kramer, Jack wrote: Video and content is definitely shifting to 16:9 and you do gain some advantages to the wider format (side-by-side document comparisons, etc). I'd say you don't lose much by going 16:9 or 16:10 as long as you're at least 1080p (1920x1080) and, if you can, you keep the vertical height of your images the same (so investing in wider screens). Of course, you also don't gain much either. ---- Jack Kramer Manager of Information Technology Communications and Brand Strategy Michigan State University w: 517-884-1231 / c: 248-635-4955 From: John Gorentz <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Reply-To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> Date: Monday, July 16, 2012 10:42 AM To: "[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[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