I was very pleased to read in EE Times about the debate on fundamental HDTV specs ("Feuds fulminate, as feds finish up HDTV", 1995-08-07). A member of the American Society of Cinematographers was quoted to have claimed that they have never been included in the decision-making process by saying "we contend we were never invited to the party." Let me exclaim that "the general public was not even informed of the party!" As an end customer, I have been advocating the ideal aspect ratio of 1:1 for physical display devices in letters published in EE Times ("Don't forget aspect ratio", 1990-12-10) and in IEEE Spectrum ("1:1 digital television", 1995-07).
What is the general public faced with? The computer manufacturers inherited the aspect ratio of 4:3 from the TV screen. As a result, creating, editing and viewing documents of letter-size (17:22) or legal-size (17:28) or European A/B size, or landscape-orientation or portrait-orientation on the computer monitor are very difficult and confusing, to say the least. Such headaches would be completely non-existent if simple 1:1 were the only aspect ratio for the human interface.
More advanced cinema formats called Imax and Imax-HD, often used for educational films, are close to square, and Imax-Dome (formerly Omnimax), which gives a spectacular viewing experience, is round. The ultimate human-computer communication media, such as direct retinal scan at 4096 x 4096 pixels and 3-D holographic display, feature inherent aspect ratio of 1:1. This is consistent with the fact that the human visual field is circular. Thus, nature has the answer, folks.
Critics say that there is a historical and psychological Golden Ratio (1:1.61803) for most eye-pleasing shape. In fact, none of the present and proposed display formats follows this ratio (4:3 = 1.33, 16:9 = 1.78). For about 5 years, I have gathered more than 100 examples of reference manuals, advertisement flyers, envelopes, etc. all featuring aspect ratio of 1:1. The popularity of Compact Discs has helped. So did the comic strips "Family Circus" by Bill Keane and "Ziggy" to some extent. I have placed most of my personal and family knowledge into "HyperInfo Intelligent Knowledge Object Organisation System" which is a collection of Apple HyperCard stacks with card size of 512 x 512 pixels. So, I can happily live in a virtual world of 1:1 aspect ratio.
One of the demonstrations of the HDTV wide-screen sets with aspect ratio of 16:9 shows external Picture-In-Picture or "Picture-Out-Picture", to display 2 windows on the same screen. This is as ludicrous as the Near-Video-On-Demand which wastes the 500-channel bandwidth with movies staggered at 15-minute intervals.
In conclusion, I believe that the most rational and logical choice of aspect ratio based on rational thinking and common sense is the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) 1:1.
Thank you very much for your attention.
P.S. If you decide to publish my comments, I would appreciate your including my E-mail address.
