The diagonal size is used in marketing the displays, BUT it’s the true starting point for all the monitors’ characteristics. A monitor manufacturer doesn’t write down “20 inches” on a piece of paper and then turn around and design both 4:3 and 16:9 monitors with that 20 inch diagonal.
Go here and play around with the filter settings on the left. In particular, I suggest starting with widescreen no vs. widescreen yes.
For the non-widescreen monitors, you’ll notice that resolution tops out at 1600x1200, and the longest diagonal is 21.3 inches. The cheapest of those monitors is a rather pricey $779.99.
Conversely, the highest resolution widescreen monitor is 2560x1600 monster at 30 inches and over a thousand dollars. However, if we look at the more popular 1920x1200 size (a 16:10 ratio and the same vertical resolution as the non-widescreen monitors in the last paragraph), we see a number of monitors for as low as $189 ($350 for a nice 24 inch).
So yes, in a theoretical world where everything started with the monitor’s diagonal and built from there with a fixed pixel density, you’d be right. But in practice, for the monitors that actually exist and that you can actually buy, you’re going to get more bang for your buck from a widescreen monitor. And, more importantly, it’s going to be roughly identical to your 4:3 monitor only with a bunch of pixels slapped on to either side of the screen.
I think what NoJustice is thinking is that if you have two TVs whose horizontal size is the same, the wider one will have more screen area. And that part is correct. Also, “resolution” as you are defining it INCLUDES the aspect ratio! ‘800x600’ is by definition a 4:3 aspect ratio while ‘1920x1080’ is a 16:9 aspect ratio - so you CANNOT have two resolutions the same while having different aspect ratios!
However, and here’s where I think you’re screwing up, NoJustice is that a 32" widescreen does NOT have more “screen area” than a 32" standard, because 32" is the DIAGONAL measurement - which is where the “hypotenuse” comes in - the diagonal screen measurement bisects the screen and becomes the hypotenuse of two right trianges.
If you have a ratio of 16:9 for widescreen and 4:3 standard then you can use those to find the height/width based on this.
Edit: wow, I think I actually got my math and theorems right! haven’t used that in 15 or 20 years now, little rusty
Let’s go with a 25" diagonal because the math is less sloppy for me
pythagorean’s theorem tells us a^2 + b^2 = c^2
we already have c = 25".
In a Right triangle with sides 4 and 3 (4:3), the hypotenuse is 5.
To figure out the height and width of a right triangle w/a hypotenuse of 25, we can just use the fact that in similar triangles ABC and DEF, A/D=B/E=C/F
Since we know that, in this case, A=4, B=3, C=5 and F=25, we can determine that D=20 and E=15 - meaning the screen is 20" high x 15" wide, or 300 in^2
Using the same math, but substituting 16, 9 and 18.36 for A, B and C, we get sides of roughly 21.75" and 12.25", giving us an area of about 266.4 in^2
Tell me, if they have the same horizontal size, how can one be wider? :dubious:
Of course, I’ve never contradicted this, but as has already been made clear, comparing screens with different aspect ratios by their diagonal measurement is utterly meaningless. Comparing the area of different shapes by a single linear measurement is always meaningless. Regardless, Airk wasn’t even doing that. He was comparing the aspect ratios themselves, and baldly stating that one had more “screen area” than another with no regard to any measurement at all. He then went on to define screen area as the number of pixels at the same resolution, which is as bad as your comparison of different widths with the same horizontal size.
:smack::smack::smack:
And I am trying to point out that you can’t divorce aspect ratio from resolution - you can’t have different aspect ratios for different resolutions - aspect ratio is part of resolution.
This is really simple. Consider a 4 by 4 square. It has an area of 16. Now consider reducing the length of one side by 1, and increasing the length of another side by 1, to make a rectangle 3 by 5. The area of that rectangle is 15. The most space-efficient shape for a figure with 4 sides is a square, and the further away from “square” the shape gets, the more area it sacrifices.
That’d be great if we were talking about fencing in a field using the minimum amount of fencing, but we aren’t. The square shape allows you to minimize the perimeter while maximizing the area. But if your costs are based primarily on the area (such as with a TV or monitor), a square shape doesn’t really mean much.
That really doesn’t make any sense. The perimeter of the television set doesn’t have anything to do with anything. It’s just an arbitrary measurement after the fact.
If we’re interested in viewable area, the only two things that are important are the number of square inches of the viewable area and the dpi of said viewable area. The availability of those things boil down to the cost of the material making up the viewable area. A manufacturer doesn’t magically get more area because he decides to go with a square shape – he still has to physically produce the viewable screen material to fill out that square. Cost is a nice, straight-forward way of measuring those constraints.
Besides, if it weren’t for cost, the optimum screen would be just a little shorter than my ceiling and a little narrower than the width of my living room wall – which, appropriately enough, would make it widescreen.
These are different things. If it costs Fancy TV Manufacturer (FTM) $2 to produce 1 square inch of LCD screen, his extra costs are negligible as to how he arranges those squares. Making a square TV only saves FTM money on creating the perimeter - in this case, the housing surrounding the LCD screen.
