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This has come up in other discussions here. This is actually something I learned about recently also, I think on information posted on Projector Central.
The question is, does it matter if I buy a digital projector that has a native widescreen format instead of standard? (Or some may ask, "what does that even mean?")
The answer is YES, it MATTERS! A native resolution means the resolution that the manufacturer designed the projector to send an image to your screen at. Most, if not all, the time all lower resolutions that you feed to your projector will be UPSCALED to the native resolution for display, and higher resolutions (if accepted by the projector) will be DOWNSCALED to the native resolution for display, assuming your projector does resolution conversion internally. For downscaling, it's often listed that the projector will "auto sync" to certain higher resolutions for display.
A native standard (4:3) format projector will act just like a 4:3 television, putting a standard picture on your wall. If you send it a standard 4:3 image, it will fully fill the projector image. If you feed a widescreen picture to a 4:3 projector, it will show the widescreen image, with black bars at the top and bottom, just like if you were watching a widescreen movie on a 4:3 television.
A native widescreen projector (usually 16:9) is designed to show widescreen images. If you watch a 4:3 image, like analog television, on a widescreen projector, it will display black bars on the sides of the image.
So it's a tradeoff either way, right? Not necessarily. Read on!
Let's take for example a popular format nowadays for front digital projectors, XGA. XGA is by itself a standard 4:3 image resolution, with the capability to display 1024 vertical image lines (determining the side to side or horizontal resolution) and 768 horizontal image lines (determining the vertical resolution since it's an issue of how much information you can fit in the screen from top to bottom--make sense?) or 1024x768 resolution. Note that if you reduce the resolution ratio of 1024x768, dividing each number by the common factor of 256, (remember elementary school math fraction reductions?) you get a ratio of 4:3. So if you feed a lower resolution image in standard 4:3 aspect ratio to the projector, say 480p resolution, or 640x480, (still a 4:3 ratio) the projector will upscale the image to 1024x768 by adding in some extra lines. Note that these extra lines will just be duplicates of the one next to it, so the picture will look fuller and edges not be as jagged, but will not have the extra detail of a native high resolution image. You're not adding any new image information. Similarly, if the XGA projector "auto syncs" to a higher resolution you're trying to send to it, say 1440x1080, it will then still show the image but will take out some lines to only show 1024x768. You'll still see a great picture, but you won't see the full resolution image that is being fed to the projector. (the display will just go beserk with crazy lines if it can NOT display the higher resolution, such as trying to show a progressive image on an analog television)
Now, what if you show a widescreen 16:9 image on a standard 4:3 XGA projector? Again, there will be black bars at the top and bottom of the picture. The entire width will still be filled, so you'll still be using the full 1024 horizontal resolution. But now instead of 768 vertical resolution, you'll have only 576 lines of vertical resolution being used for the picture, with another 96 lines on top of the image showing only black space and 96 lines below the image showing black space. (to show the math, 1024x576 reduces in a ratio to 16:9 by dividing both numbers by 16, and 768-576= 192 total lines of unused resolution, or 96 on top and 96 on bottom) Now your beautiful XGA projector is only using 576 lines of vertical resolution, not 768!
Why is this important? Because today's resolution standards (such as 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) are all expressed in terms of VERTICAL resolution. You have to have 720 lines available of vertical resolution to display 720p! So if you're watching a 16:9 movie on a 4:3 XGA projector, you not even seeing 720p, but instead only 576p visible (probably), which while better than 480p, won't give you the nearly the quantum leap in image quality as 720p. (576 lines is 1.2 times as many lines as 480, but 768 is 1.6 times as many lines as 480, and 1.33 times as many lines as 576, so you may even say that 768 fully used lines provide 33% more resolution than 576 fully used lines showing the same image)
Now take a native widescreen projector, and again let's talk about XGA. To get the same XGA vertical resolution of 768 lines, for a 16:9 format if you do the math the horizontal resolution comes out to be 1365.33333333. So let's say WIDESCREEN XGA resolution, properly known as WXGA, is 1366x768. If you watch your 16:9 movie now, in 720p resolution, your projector will show all 720 lines of vertical resolution. (and probably more, as we discussed!) So a WXGA projector WILL show a widescreen movie in full 720p.
Now what if you watch a standard 4:3 television image on a widescreen WXGA projector? Again, you get the black bars, but now they are on the sides of the picture. So now you're only using 1024 of the 1366 available horizontal resolution lines. But do we care about this? NO!!! Notice that if we do this, the 4:3 image takes up 1024x768 lines, which just puts us right back at normal XGA resolution. Since vertical resolution is the more important one for display, we can still fully show 720p resolution and more!!!
Does this settle the issue, though? Unfortunately, not. When you factor cost into it, many people decide for themselves that they're okay with going with a cheap 4:3 projector now, and that's fine. Then there's an issue of different widescreen aspect ratios. If you have a widescreen 16:9 projector (16 divided by 9 = 1.78 ) and watch a movie with a widescreen ratio of 2.35, you'll still get black bars at the top and bottom of your widescreen projector image, although they won't be as drastic as on a standard 4:3 projector. (note that there are a very few projectors out there that do have a native widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85/1 or higher to fully accommodate these wider ratio movies) And you must also ask yourself the question of how much you watch various formats. If you primarily watch 4:3 images, such as standard television, you may be fine with accepting that widescreen movies will be smaller and have less resolution, and opt for a native 4:3 projector. Me personally, I'm designing my theater for movie use primarily, and I'll accept that when I do watch 4:3 movies or television, those images will be smaller and have less horizontal resolution.
Hope this helps and isn't too long or confusing to read!
CHRIS
Luke: "Hey, I'm not such a bad pilot myself, you know"
The question is, does it matter if I buy a digital projector that has a native widescreen format instead of standard? (Or some may ask, "what does that even mean?")
The answer is YES, it MATTERS! A native resolution means the resolution that the manufacturer designed the projector to send an image to your screen at. Most, if not all, the time all lower resolutions that you feed to your projector will be UPSCALED to the native resolution for display, and higher resolutions (if accepted by the projector) will be DOWNSCALED to the native resolution for display, assuming your projector does resolution conversion internally. For downscaling, it's often listed that the projector will "auto sync" to certain higher resolutions for display.
A native standard (4:3) format projector will act just like a 4:3 television, putting a standard picture on your wall. If you send it a standard 4:3 image, it will fully fill the projector image. If you feed a widescreen picture to a 4:3 projector, it will show the widescreen image, with black bars at the top and bottom, just like if you were watching a widescreen movie on a 4:3 television.
A native widescreen projector (usually 16:9) is designed to show widescreen images. If you watch a 4:3 image, like analog television, on a widescreen projector, it will display black bars on the sides of the image.
So it's a tradeoff either way, right? Not necessarily. Read on!
Let's take for example a popular format nowadays for front digital projectors, XGA. XGA is by itself a standard 4:3 image resolution, with the capability to display 1024 vertical image lines (determining the side to side or horizontal resolution) and 768 horizontal image lines (determining the vertical resolution since it's an issue of how much information you can fit in the screen from top to bottom--make sense?) or 1024x768 resolution. Note that if you reduce the resolution ratio of 1024x768, dividing each number by the common factor of 256, (remember elementary school math fraction reductions?) you get a ratio of 4:3. So if you feed a lower resolution image in standard 4:3 aspect ratio to the projector, say 480p resolution, or 640x480, (still a 4:3 ratio) the projector will upscale the image to 1024x768 by adding in some extra lines. Note that these extra lines will just be duplicates of the one next to it, so the picture will look fuller and edges not be as jagged, but will not have the extra detail of a native high resolution image. You're not adding any new image information. Similarly, if the XGA projector "auto syncs" to a higher resolution you're trying to send to it, say 1440x1080, it will then still show the image but will take out some lines to only show 1024x768. You'll still see a great picture, but you won't see the full resolution image that is being fed to the projector. (the display will just go beserk with crazy lines if it can NOT display the higher resolution, such as trying to show a progressive image on an analog television)
Now, what if you show a widescreen 16:9 image on a standard 4:3 XGA projector? Again, there will be black bars at the top and bottom of the picture. The entire width will still be filled, so you'll still be using the full 1024 horizontal resolution. But now instead of 768 vertical resolution, you'll have only 576 lines of vertical resolution being used for the picture, with another 96 lines on top of the image showing only black space and 96 lines below the image showing black space. (to show the math, 1024x576 reduces in a ratio to 16:9 by dividing both numbers by 16, and 768-576= 192 total lines of unused resolution, or 96 on top and 96 on bottom) Now your beautiful XGA projector is only using 576 lines of vertical resolution, not 768!
Why is this important? Because today's resolution standards (such as 480p, 720p, 1080i, 1080p) are all expressed in terms of VERTICAL resolution. You have to have 720 lines available of vertical resolution to display 720p! So if you're watching a 16:9 movie on a 4:3 XGA projector, you not even seeing 720p, but instead only 576p visible (probably), which while better than 480p, won't give you the nearly the quantum leap in image quality as 720p. (576 lines is 1.2 times as many lines as 480, but 768 is 1.6 times as many lines as 480, and 1.33 times as many lines as 576, so you may even say that 768 fully used lines provide 33% more resolution than 576 fully used lines showing the same image)
Now take a native widescreen projector, and again let's talk about XGA. To get the same XGA vertical resolution of 768 lines, for a 16:9 format if you do the math the horizontal resolution comes out to be 1365.33333333. So let's say WIDESCREEN XGA resolution, properly known as WXGA, is 1366x768. If you watch your 16:9 movie now, in 720p resolution, your projector will show all 720 lines of vertical resolution. (and probably more, as we discussed!) So a WXGA projector WILL show a widescreen movie in full 720p.
Now what if you watch a standard 4:3 television image on a widescreen WXGA projector? Again, you get the black bars, but now they are on the sides of the picture. So now you're only using 1024 of the 1366 available horizontal resolution lines. But do we care about this? NO!!! Notice that if we do this, the 4:3 image takes up 1024x768 lines, which just puts us right back at normal XGA resolution. Since vertical resolution is the more important one for display, we can still fully show 720p resolution and more!!!
Does this settle the issue, though? Unfortunately, not. When you factor cost into it, many people decide for themselves that they're okay with going with a cheap 4:3 projector now, and that's fine. Then there's an issue of different widescreen aspect ratios. If you have a widescreen 16:9 projector (16 divided by 9 = 1.78 ) and watch a movie with a widescreen ratio of 2.35, you'll still get black bars at the top and bottom of your widescreen projector image, although they won't be as drastic as on a standard 4:3 projector. (note that there are a very few projectors out there that do have a native widescreen aspect ratio of 1.85/1 or higher to fully accommodate these wider ratio movies) And you must also ask yourself the question of how much you watch various formats. If you primarily watch 4:3 images, such as standard television, you may be fine with accepting that widescreen movies will be smaller and have less resolution, and opt for a native 4:3 projector. Me personally, I'm designing my theater for movie use primarily, and I'll accept that when I do watch 4:3 movies or television, those images will be smaller and have less horizontal resolution.
Hope this helps and isn't too long or confusing to read!
CHRIS
Luke: "Hey, I'm not such a bad pilot myself, you know"
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