Today, there are more ways to communicate than every before. That’s why you need an AV partner who understands the changing technology and how to make the most of it.

Every month, AVW-TELAV keeps you up-to-date on the latest and greatest technology trends. Whether your brand is traditional or trendsetting, having a finger on the pulse of technology will help you determine the best medium to get your unique message across.   

Going WIDE: The advantage for small rooms

Widescreen (16:9 ratio) is not just about High Definition (HD). There are some definite advantages to creating and showing your presentation in 16:9 (wide) ratios, and the proliferation of widescreen products (like notebook computers, playback sources, etc.) now makes it simple to do a ‘wide’ presentation.

One of the biggest challenges we face, particularly in typical hotel meeting rooms, is ceiling height. Sometimes, we just do not have enough height for an appropriate sized screen relative to the audience size or distance from the screen.

Let’s consider a typical medium-sized meeting room, for example, the Tudor room at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel in Toronto. This room is 25’ wide x 93’ long with a ceiling height of 10’10” (130”). It has a maximum capacity of 290, theatre style, or 140, classroom style. So let’s calculate what standard size screen we can fit under the 10’10” ceiling.

First, we need the bottom of the screen at least 48” off the floor so that people seated at the back of the room can see over the heads of the people in front of them, with an unobstructed view of the screen. So if you take the overall ceiling height, subtract a couple of inches for clearance, and place the bottom of the visible area of the screen at 48” you are left with about 78” of screen height (130”– 48”– 4” = 78”). 

BUT, there is typically a 6” frame around most fast-fold screens that you have to account for in the overall height of a screen. So you are now left with 72” (78” – 6” border) of usable screen viewing height.

A 6’ high screen, in standard 4:3 ratio, is 8’ wide (6x8 screen), which is not a particularly big screen for 290 people, theatre style, or 140 people, classroom style. HOWEVER, if we decide to go widescreen (16:9 ratio), this same 6’ high screen becomes 10’6” wide (6’ x 10’6”). We have gained over 25% more screen width and display area with the same ceiling height!

We can now use larger fonts or put more information on the screen by using two columns and maximize the useable screen area for the audience! For more information on how widescreen technology can give you more screen size in any given room, contact your local AVW-TELAV Account Executive today!