I wanted to know which display would be better for desktop computing: a normal 1600x1200 pixel display or a widescreen 1680x1050 pixel (HDTV) display. The widescreen, would be more efficient for movies. I remember doing this once before, so I decided to write it out this time. To simplify my analysis, I chose to consider only 20.1" diagonal viewing areas, with the aforementioned resolutions.
For the widescreen, I calculate the display is 17" by 10.6", giving a viewing area of 181.6 square inches. For the 4:3 ratio display, I got 16" by 12" inches, and a viewing area of 193.9 square inches. This is a 6.7% bigger display area for the 4:3 ratio display. More generally, if the diagonal length is fixed, a square maximizes the area of a rectangle.
To compare the resolutions, the widescreen gives 1.76 megapixels, and the 4:3 ratio gives 1.92 megapixels. This is a 9.1% increase in pixel count for the 4:3 ratio display.
In conclusion, you win with the 1600x1200 20.1" non-widescreen display in terms of specifications, but they are generally more expensive (partly due to TFT manufacturing realities) but more compatible with video games (until recently). The wide screen, however, might be a more natural design because of our rectangular viewing perspectives.
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