Not to throw wood in the fire, however, is 3D in square or rectangular pixels?

>Not to throw wood in the fire, however, is 3D in square or rectangular pixels?

I'm not sure if you meant a 3D model or something else?
Anyway, in the 3D world you don't work with pixels, but mm, cm, inch and so on.
Although I have a hard time trying to find the logic behind the Imperial measuring system I don't think it operates with "rectangular inches".
At least the Metric system does not ;-)
When rendering 2D images from 3D models you usually have the choice to enter aspect value to make it conform to the myriad of different video resolutions.

BTW, I have one big problem with my ATI RAdeon card - it doesn't have a 1280x960 mode, but only 1280x1024, which does not give square pixels unless I want to run it with black rectangles on the sides of my screen :-(
For some reason all the other resolutions are "correct" in that they have the same aspect ratio (4:3)

I've seen about a half and half split on that. Some cards offer 1280x960 and some offer 1280x1024. I think Microsoft pushes the 1280x1024 because i see that mentioned in their help literature. At 24 bits, it also fills more of a 4MB VRAM space than 1280x960 does. 1280x960 wastes the VRAM by not using it all. However, to maintain consitent ratios, it would be nice of the 1280x1024 manufacturers allowed the user to choose 1280x960 instead.

I'm just waiting to get a 19" monitor so i can go to 1600x1200 and be done with the problem. :)

Broadcast television resolution standard is CCIR 601. The standard calls for 720x480
pixels.

Not to throw wood on the fire either, but ... pixel count resolution has very little to do with broadcast resolution. The DV standard for NTSC is 720 x 480. That does not directly correspond to the horizontal and vertical resolution of a broadcast TV. Actually the Horizontal resolution is much less that. That is the reason that SVCD 480 x 480 works. The Horizontal resolution of the TV is less than that. The problem with SVCD is the bit rate not the pixels. I hope an engineer will jump and and explain it because I am not good at it. The key is that your TV is analog not digital. (those of you with digital TV please be quiet, I am a still in the stone age here)

K

720 x 480 is the DV standard. Broadcast digital is 720 x 486 NTSC.

From the Adobe support page:

D1 or "digital video" (also referred to as CCIR-601or ITU-R 601) is an international television standard for component video. It has a 4:3 frame aspect ratio, a .9:1 pixel aspect ratio and either a 720x486 screen resolution (D1 NTSC) or 720x576 (D1 PAL). Another video format with a non-square pixel aspect ratio, DV has a resolution of 720x480 pixels and uses D1 pixel aspect ratio. Because D1 is an international standard, you can use it with video formats for both NTSC (National Television Standard Committee, the broadcast standard in the U. S. and Japan) and PAL (Phase Alternating Line, the broadcast standard in Europe). The D1 video standard is commonly used with professional desktop digital video systems, whereas NTSC format is commonly used with consumer-grade desktop digital video systems. D1 comprises rectangular (i.e., non-square) pixels, instead of the square pixels for most Mac OS- and Windows-based systems.


Dave T2

>I'm just waiting to get a 19" monitor so i can go to 1600x1200 and be done with the >problem. :)

That may solve the aspect problem, but it certainly will give you other problems if you're running 1600x1200 on 19". I have been using a 19" for years, but 1280 is the absolute max horizontal res that I'm comfortable with.