About Dave Hathaway Expertise Questions about any aspect of Home Theater Systems including video-- TV and projectors, projection screens, High Definition Television ,audio/video receivers, DVD, speakers and placement, wiring, Satellite TV systems. Familiar with all these areas from the operating priciples, system design and installation viewpoints.
Experience Electronics engineer with 30 years experience, own a small Home Theater Business and do custom installs of Home Theater, Dish Network Satellite, Surround Sound systems, TV antennas, plus commerial and industrial satellite and TV distribution systems.
Question I'm doing a science fair project for school. My question is which aspect ratio is the best for viewing an image. My hypothesis was that 16:9 would be the answer because that is used on most HDTV's. After experimenting, it turned out that my hypothesis was correct. Now I need to find out one thing. Why is it the best one? Why is 16:9 better than 1.66:1 or 2.35:1? I know that the human field of vision is more wide the high. I've searched on the Internet and I can't find the ratio of your vision. What is the ratio of the human field of vision?
Thank You
Answer Hello Saurabh,
The HDTV ratio is very similar to the aspect ratio of the human vision. This is one reason this ratio was selected for HDTV.
The old 4 by 3 aspect ratio of standard TV was somewhat the result of the capabilities of the technology of the time in the making of picture tubes. TV started with a round glass picture tube and placed a nearly square ratio ( 4 X 3)picture on the the phosphor face of the tube. We have gone for more than 50 years with the round or nearly round picture tube for TV sets.
There are now a limited number of rectangular HDTV sets with glass picture tubes. These tubes are expensive, big and heavy and not very popular for this reason. A 34" diagonal glass HDTV tube weighs nearly 60 lbs. A similar size HDTV with an Lcd projection design is half this. A 50-60" HDTV lcd set will weigh less than 75 lbs. So technology held up large screen and wide ratio TV sets for a long time.
The 16 X 9 HDTV picture ratio is similar to the most popular movie aspect ratios used in the making of most motion pictures. It is thus very easy to convert movies for showing on HDTV as the picture fits the screen without black bars top and bottom or on the ends. Lots of movies are, of course , shown on TV and this also helps drive the HDTV aspect ratio.
I found quite a number of fairly techincal articles on human vision and its aspect ratio by searching google for "human vision, aspect ratio". You may want to take a look at some of them.
Hope this gives you food for thought. If so, and you have more questions, just come back in with a follow up.
