Monitor manufacturers have predicted the eventual movement of displays from a 4:3 aspect ratio to 16:9. At present, influences related to both content and manufacturing have us stuck in the middle. According to Joshua Kairoff, senior field engineer for the Industrial Display Division of Pioneer New Media Technologies, based in Long Beach, California, corporate and professional customers generally prefer the product with the aspect ratio that best displays their content. This is despite the fact that it isn't always possible to match the content with the screen. "If you look at a trade show, such as E3, where companies are selling video games, they're showing 4:3 content on 16:9 displays with bars on the sides," he says.

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Rental companies tend to stock 16:9 monitors because those monitors can display a wider range of content. "On a 4:3, if I try to show a 16:9 image, I'll have bars on the top and bottom, and a much smaller display area," Kairoff says. Pioneer sells both 4:3 and 16:9 models and has learned from experience that the rental industry strongly favors 16:9. "It's an economy of scale, and where you want to focus," he says. "The rental industries are choosing to support the most prolific form of display, which is 16:9." For companies that need a 4:3 plasma display only once or twice a year, it's hard to justify the purchase price of a 4:3 plasma screen. Another strong influence for the adoption of 16:9 screens is their use as electronic billboards in public spaces, such as airports and stores. "Traditional billboards aren't 4:3; they're wider," says Kairoff. "Humans prefer wide. We like to see things spread out a bit."

Many of the differences between the two formats are related to the various types of content and how that content needs to be presented. "The issue of aspect ratios hasn't been a problem for the masses," Kairoff explains. "It has just been a problem for the [production] industry. It's the film industry dealing with the differences between print and electronic; the print industry dealing with different form factors; the office industry dealing with A4 versus 8 x 11; or the computer industry dealing with the slight differences between the established VESA resolutions." End users become confused when a monitor has to deal with content from two different industries. It can be hard to explain why a bulleted PowerPoint presentation looks fine if it is stretched to 16:9, while a video presentation looks distorted when it is stretched to the same format.

Kairoff thinks the future lies in the creative use of the 16:9 space. "You have a digital canvas," he says. "You might use part of the display for a 4:3 image and the rest for something else." It might be a commentary on the 4:3 image, a revenue-generating ad or unrelated information. "You see this with Web pages that have bars on the side, or multiple windows. The 16:9 aspect ratio is causing us to rethink what we've been doing. The thing about convergence is that it doesn't just cause everything to become like you; it causes you to be able to explore and do other things."

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