aspect ratio help

Dimetime35c · August 22, 2015

im not understanding what this thing means at all. here's the link to the article http://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/what-is-the-aspect-ratio-4-3-16-9-21-9 what do they mean by this A 58" 21:9 TV is equivalent to a 61" for 21:9 media, but only 47" for 16:9 media?????? that makes no sense. i want to get a 21:9 monitor but would i get a smaller picture if the games i play arent 21:9 compatible? this whole aspect ratio thing is so confusing to me!!!!!!!!

PlayStation 2 · August 22, 2015

It means the screen space will be around (insert inches here) in that aspect ratio.

Volbet · August 22, 2015

This is going to a bit though to explain.

When you see 21:9 media on a 16:9 screen you get black bars at the top and buttom. This reduces the effective screen size, due to the image not fitting the aspect ratio.

This means that the 58" screen can show 21:9 material nativily, that it would take a 61" 16:9 screen to show.

Here is a visual of what i mean:

The blue box is the 58" 21:9 display and the green box is the 61" 16:9 display

Source for the comperison: http://www.displaywars.com/

Glenwing · August 22, 2015

im not understanding what this thing means at all. here's the link to the article http://www.rtings.com/tv/learn/what-is-the-aspect-ratio-4-3-16-9-21-9 what do they mean by this A 58" 21:9 TV is equivalent to a 61" for 21:9 media, but only 47" for 16:9 media?????? that makes no sense. i want to get a 21:9 monitor but would i get a smaller picture if the games i play arent 21:9 compatible? this whole aspect ratio thing is so confusing to me!!!!!!!!

Aspect means the width-to-height ratio. If a screen has a 2:1 ratio, that means it is twice as wide as it is tall.

A 21:9 ratio (2.333) has 2.333 inches in width for every inch in height. A 16:9 display has 1.777 inches in width for every inch in height, so if you had a 21:9 and a 16:9 screen that were the same height, the 16:9 would be shorter in width (and overall size) than the 21:9 display.

When you display a 16:9 image on a 21:9 display, it looks something like this:

So you can see the 16:9 section of the image is the same height, but less width, so the diagonal measurement of that 16:9 section of the display is smaller than the measurement of the whole display. A 16:9 segment of a 60" 21:9 screen is about 47.6".