How well can 16:9 projectors do 4:3, and vice versa? (1 Viewer)

[Eric_Nathan]

If I play 4:3 stuff on a 16:9 native projector, is the quality dropoff minimal or really big? Take the 4805 for example. Is it good at 4:3?

 

[Jim Mcc]

There is no quality dropoff, you'll just have black bars on each side.

 

[Allan Jayne]

The horizontal resolution has to be at least 960 across for fixed pixel projectorsa to get the full resolution of DVD. This is needed so the 4:3 area excluding the side bars will have 720 pixels across. If the DVD player is doing the sidebar formatting, the video signal path bandwidth for 480p component video has to be 18 MHz, not 14.

Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[Pat Frank]

Horizontal resolution is not something that often gets dealt with in these discussions, which is interesting. I don't think it's generally well-known that even expensive DLP projectors that offer 720p vertical resolution don't match up with the horizontal requirement for HDTV at 720p. But I would imagine that the reason that issue doesn't generally come up is because it's not something the user can normally see on the screen.

Anyway, that's something valid for comparison between projectors, but not something that would affect a change in resolution in the same projector. So I think the answer to the poster's first question is still "none".