Hi to all,

the wallpapers in the membersection are nice - but why not also in widescreen. I think a lot of members have a widescreen monitor, and all new videos are produced in 16:9 format.

greetings
lex harker

I think Lex Harkers "a lot of" statement is a gross understatement.

The facts are, most use monitors with better than 1024x768 now and Private could probably do like many others, a statistic run of visiting browser res. The fact you need broadband to use much of the services here points towards a tech savvy customer base wich probably use fairly up to date computers.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_display.asp

Also the very core biz of Private IS media so not having the widescreen support in 2009 is very puzzling indeed.

Taking a look at the res. offered we see 800*600/1024*768 and 1152*864. Now, there are NO monitors being made TODAY with those resolutions if we are talking about common desktop monitors by major brands. The only non WS res. that seems to pop up in 17" and 19" is 1280*1024 wich is a bit stretched out 4:3 vertically. Also some high end 20" 4:3 monitors with 1600*1200 seems to exists but they are a dying breed. So we can conclude 4:3 are fading away and this shouldnt be a priority and if providing any non WS wallpaper 1280*1024 should be the choice.

So over to Widescreen. Here we have two trends as of late. We see 16:9 and 16:10 screens. If any doubt check Samsungs and LGs onslaught of new cheap 22"-23" models with 1920*1080 or why not look at Apples brand new 21.5" and 27" iMac's they all use 16:9 ratios. And ofcourse let's not forget general Full-HD TV sets wich are 1920*1080.
16:10 monitors seems more oriented towards productivity use with generally better quality panels and the dominating size here is 24" and 22" even though other 16:10 sizes are common. Popular in laptops are 1440*900 and 1280*800. And in the 22" desktop space 1680*1050 is probably still the dominant 16:10 screen res until 1920*1080 replaces them.

So optimal would be both a 1920*1200 and a 1920*1080 download but if there would have to be a choice I would go with 1920*1200 and I will explain why.

We havn't talked about wallpaper design but this is just as important. Now this isnt about me complaining about free stuff but rather about enabling you (Private) to make the most of peoples choice to actually use their monitors to promote YOUR products, make the most of this.
Take the last two wallpapers that as of this time are "Sluts in deep trouble" and "A real swinger's orgy". The text in the pictures is being partially covered by the start-menue at the bottom and icons in left and right side columns in most default Windows or OSX systems here.
So generally you should consider the outer edges of a wallpaper "off limits" for information you want to project. Someone seems to have had the right idea with the "Porn Wars" wallpapers. I also like that they are not so "busy" in the sense they actually act as a background and I can still get a nice contrast from it against the stuff I have on the screen that I am working with.

Before I talked about 1920*1200 as my prefered option for ONE WS wallpaper option and this comes back to the "off limit" edges where you can only center, tile or stretch a wallpaper in windows XP (atleast in my default windows XP sp3). So where a 16:9 wallpaper on a 16:10 screen would either stretch and get wrong aspect ratio or center and get a mono-colored frame around the picture I find the opposite alternative better. You basicly make a 16:10 picture overscan on a 16:9 screen so that its edges goes a bit outside the visable area. This requires taking into consideration both overscanning on 16:9 monitors and space required for start-menues and docks at the bottom. Windows XP is probably important to consider for quite some time into the future. Windows 7 have better ways to scale a wallpaper so here this isnt a problem and I bet OSX also have better ways compared to Windows XP.

So there you have it. 1280*1024 and 1920*1200 would pretty much cover all the monitors out there today with some considerations taken into the creation of the wallpapers. An extra 1920x1080 option would be optimal for not having to deal with overscan on windows XP.

Also please take this as my very personal opinions. There are no laws about how to really make a wallpaper, Im only giving you my amateurish take on how to make your nice wallpapers even better!

thanks for your time
Bandis

Just some last minute thoughts here.

Going with just a one WideScreen option wallpaper 16:10 1920*1200 res brings some problems to other 16:9 screens other than 1920*1080, even with some overscan accounted for. 1280*720 and 1366*768 are 16:9 wich does exist in the wild although they are becoming less common. Still a wallpaper with size 1920*1200 centered in windows XP would be far too "zoomed" in with a 1280*720 monitor.

So even if it could work in majority of cases I would opt to finally go with three different sizes here, or rather three different aspect ratios. There is no point that I can see to make several sized files of the same wallpaper within the same aspect ratio. Just use the highest resolution and let the operating system scale the picture down if necessary.

1.
1280x1024 (5:4) Covers 640*480,800*600,1024*768,1280*960,1600*1200
It's not 4:3 like 1024x768 but very close and it's the most common non widescreen LCD monitor standard around today. For thoose still on 4:3 like 1024*768 or 1600*1200 a minor stretch would happen.

2.
1920*1080 (16:9) Covers 1280*720,1366*768,1920*1080
The very definition of full hdtv resolution that is now standard in all major TV sets today and a rising star in the computer world of inexpensive 22"-23" ws monitors. Apple deemed fit to develop an entirely new line of lcd-panels for the format with their latest iMacs and other brands use 16:9 res screens in for example laptops like 1366*768 as an example or HD-Ready branded TVs.

3.
1920*1200 (16:10) Covers 1280*800,1440*900,1680*1050,1920*1200
Probably most current monitors out there exists within this space today with 1280 and 1440 being popular laptop screens and 1680 being used in 22" and 1920 in 24" high end monitors.