The New Wide Screen

Many projectors have been popping up with specifications that boast a true wide screen experience. If you want to know if you have a wide screen projector that is taking full advantage of what a wide screen offers, you may want to read on.

When purchasing a projector, you will notice that the resolutions are usually offered in VGA or WVGA, XGA or WXGA, and so on. The W in front of the designation is the notation for “Wide� and therefore means that the projector offers a native aspect ratio of 16:9.

But if you look carefully at the resolution for a WXGA, it will tell you it is 1280x720p. This is extremely good resolution and really should be nothing to complain about, but an SXGA resolution offers 1280x1024p. Basically what this is telling us is that the wide screen version (16:9) of XGA is less resolution than the SXGA, which is still a native aspect ratio of 4:3.

Yet another note, is that the XGA itself is still a better resolution than the WXGA in regards to height, with 1024x768p. When you are reading resolution stats, remember that it is always written Width x Height. Keeping this in mind, the XGA resolution has more pixels vertically than the wide screen version of itself.

The new projectors that are offering a true wide screen are the ones that have compensated for the loss in vertical resolution. There is also a kind of stretching that occurs to the image when a 16:9 projector does not fully compensate for its horizontal resolution as well.

You obviously notice the difference between the 1280p of WXGA versus the 1024p of XGA, but this isn’t always enough to make up for the ratio. The Sanyo PLV-70 is an example of a projector that was able to add a few more pixels on the horizontal end to achieve a wide screen that reflects a superior image. The PLV-70 distributes 1366x768p, giving almost a hundred more pixels horizontally and matching the XGA resolution vertically.

The extra lines of resolution do make a difference, but only to the trained eye. Those who already own a WXGA projector and have not seen the comparison will hardly want to sell their projector and get a new one. However, for those die hard fans that just can’t get enough, make sure you are getting the true wide screen experience and purchase a projector with the additional pixels. They will eliminate most “gaps� that are due to the stretching effect.