Watching widescreen movies on iPad's 4:3 screen

[TheRenfro]

When I first heard of this device I thought it would be a great alternative to my MacBook to watching movies while in bed, on an airplane, or wherever else I could use it. But after finding out it has a 4:3 screen i'm pretty bummed. I remember a few years ago before I bought an HDTV I hated watching widescreen movies on my old TV (which was also 4:3), and it'll probably be the same with the iPad. I guess i'm going to keep using my MacBook as a portable movie device....unless iPad 2.0 has a wider aspect ratio.

And since it won't run Flash I sure hope Hulu has an app in development.

 

[Diapason]

When I first heard of this device I thought it would be a great alternative to my MacBook to watching movies while in bed, on an airplane, or wherever else I could use it. But after finding out it has a 4:3 screen i'm pretty bummed. I remember a few years ago before I bought an HDTV I hated watching widescreen movies on my old TV (which was also 4:3), and it'll probably be the same with the iPad. I guess i'm going to keep using my MacBook as a portable movie device....unless iPad 2.0 has a wider aspect ratio.

And since it won't run Flash I sure hope Hulu has an app in development.

The movie will play letterboxed. So what?

What counts is the number of pixels in the x-axis. They could have used an x-res of more than 1024 pixels, but probably it would have ended up with a thing which is too big for its target, and/or many other apps would have been more difficult to work with. Think about a word processor running on a wide-screen in portrait mode