List of True 16:9 Resolutions

125 thoughts on “List of True 16:9 Resolutions”

1. very good information.

2. thanks just what i needed

3. I just signed in to thank you for taking the time and making this. I find it extremely useful and I keep it open in a browser tab at all times.

4. Thank you for this information 🙂

5. thanks for sharing this 🙂

6. This conversions of 16:9 aspect ratio really helped. I’m building a video tube and I do want to have quality videos without compromising on file size since most internet users are on metered connections. Thanks so much.

7. Thanks very much, I check this always again and again for fitting images to 16:9 to enjoy them in fullscreen.
   This helps really 🙂

8. How is 1600 x 900 not a 16:9 ratio?

9. It is, it’s just not divisible by 8, which rarely matters anymore in modern encoders though.

10. my thanks dude awesome information and on point !
    thanks much

11. Valiosa y útil información.
    Gracias!!

12. For 2560 x 1440, you have “27 inch monitor” written in the Standard column. The standard should be WQHD.

13. Yes, you’re right. Not much of a standard. I’ve changed it to WQHD and added some other names.

14. Very good list.

    When I need to set some window size (and position) to match the 16:9 aspect ratio, I always use this free windows app, “sizer” – http://www.brianapps.net/sizer4

15. My goto list of reference since I found the original post many years ago. Thank you.

16. not blocks of 16 x 16 the ideal?

    Did bit of work with internet radio/tv back in 2000s, from a radio background i absorbed absorbed video bits, H.264 for PS + Apple adopted, I was telling people bout it 2004, given processor and storage limitations, I used

    512 x 288 for personal copies,

    I’d swear for sure H.264 optimal with both sides wholey divisible by 16, and it was best to adjust the height to a 16 multiple over strict adherence to 16:9, most likey my memory is wrong, because ALL memory is wrong, at least incomplete.

    Was there anything about 16×16 back then? OH, I guessed, never confirmed, 16×16 had to do a super efficient scaler for compression, 2 squared and (2 squared) squared, 2 orders of magnitude from an area of 256 to 2

17. Well, the only reason I added the 8×8 highlights is because back when I made this list, the ffmpeg-based GUI encoder I was using would only work with resolutions that were multiples of 8, perhaps an artifact of H.261 having fixed size 8×8 transform blocks, or an attempt at following common resolutions:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/8ixs5p/why_are_the_most_common_screen_resolutions/

    In terms of not adhering to 16:9 resolutions, it’s possible you’re thinking of the D-1 SMPTE digital recording video standard, which used non-square pixels to represent NSTC (720×480) and PAL (720×576), both resolutions adopted by the DVD standard, staying the same whether the image was 4:3 or 16:9.

    These are indeed divisible by 16, and 16×16 is the maximum macroblock size for most MPEG family codecs, so this would indeed maximize compression efficiency because larger macroblocks allow for better compression of larger images. For example, HEVC replaced macroblocks with coding tree units (CTUs) that can support samples up to 64×64 to more efficiently code large images in 4K video.

    720×480 and 720×576 don’t come from there, but 16×16 probably does.

    480 and 576 come from the luma sampling rate adopted by the industry when converting analog video into digital, which itself comes from the nature of analog NSTC and PAL signals which included a vertical blanking interval so you wouldn’t see the retrace on old TV sets. “This blanking interval was originally designed to simply blank the electron beam of the receiver’s CRT to allow for the simple analog circuits and slow vertical retrace of early TV receivers.”:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NTSC#Technical_details

    Effectively, NTSC had 525 lines of content per frame, with 483 visible and later 480 visible, and PAL had 625 lines per frame with 576 visible:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/480i
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/576i

    Then, to fit a 4:3 480 line picture according to the Rec. 601 sampling rate, you would end up with 704 pixels wide, which was bumped up to 720 pixels to account for inconsistent widths of analog NTSC and PAL motion pictures:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pixel_aspect_ratio#Background

    So, 16×16 being the largest multiple-of-2 macroblock that can divide digital NTSC and PAL resolutions cleanly may have been a factor in the design of H.261 which used macroblocks to address compression limitations in the non-DCT-based H.120 (H.261 luma samples were 16×16):
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.120
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.261

    Nowadays, you should probably just use standard 720p and up. This article was originally meant as a way to identify useful square pixel resolutions for digital NSTC 16:9 content for the web, because 480p would be 853.333… px wide in 16:9, and neither 853 nor 854 would work in that encoder, and I didn’t want to settle for 360p.

18. Thanks, simple but effective

19. I’ve needed this page for so many times, so thank you so much

20. So there is no real 16:9 resolution for my 3840×1600 monitor to use when a game doesn’t support ultrawide. This explains why the highest 16:9 option I get is 2560×1440.

21. Is there a way I can send you something for a coffee/beer?

22. What’s the best resolution to dowscale to 720p? Like how 864p is the best downscale for 1440p.

23. I’m don’t know how 864p is the best downscale for 1440p… it’s not a factor of 2, but unless you’re doing nearest neighbor scaling for whatever reason, e.g. scaling pixel art, it shouldn’t matter with any decent scaling algorithm. What exactly are you looking to do here?

24. June 20, 2022
    Hi – I’m researching DVD ripping/conversion to digital outputs, looking for resolutions that will yield good results, balancing storage size requirements vs. quality of output on digital players, computer moniters, and built-in TV upscalers.

    I came across your list here, and it is helpful. The products I’ve been testing with so far are the current versions of WinX DVD Ripper – Platinum, and WonderFox DVD Video Converter (also rips DVDs). Wonderfox offers an h265 encoder (for excellent compression) and a drop-down list with many selectable resolution values, one of which is 960 x 640. This resolution seems to meet your “true 16:9″ and divisible by 8 criteria.

    I’m test-ripping DVDs from a variety of manufacturers, and in many Widescreen formats (Widescreen, enhanced for Widescreen TVs; 1.85:1; Letterbox; 2.35:1 enhanced for 16×9 TVs, etc.). I’m reviewing my outputs on a 27″ ASUS monitor at 2560 x 1440, and on an LG 60” 4k UHD tv (which has its own built-in upscaler), and the outputs look good (to me, anyway).

    Looking forward (given TV industry technology directions), would you see any “downside” issues with ripping/converting DVDs to a resolution of 960 x 640, for playing on any screen-size up to 60″ diameter? I, like many others these days, have a large collection of DVDs (about 1,000) I’d like to digitize, so I’m hoping to find a resolution with a good balance between storage size and viewing quality that would allow my digital library of converted DVDs to be functional for many future years, without requiring a massive amount of terabyte drives (one set for primary/usage, and one set for backup).

    Thanks to all for any thoughts you might care to share on this.

25. Technically, widescreen DVD-Video is non-square pixels in D-1 format, so 720×576 for PAL/SECAM, and 720×480 for NTSC, so I prefer to keep the original resolution and apply the correct aspect ratio, through, for example, the MKV metadata, although not all players support this.

    A lot of DVD sources, however, are garbage, so you may actually wish to apply high quality filters and crops during the encoding process instead, using square pixels. In this case, you do anything you want, really, so long as you aren’t accidentally downscaling, e.g. 896×504 for 720×576 PAL content.

    If you are looking to encode the content for TV upscalers, however, it might be best to keep the format as original as possible, including interlacing, so that the TV may use its hardware upscalers and deinterlacers as designed for DVD content. Whether that works in practice with ripped content is something you’ll have to test with your own particular setup and players. Same for whether the result will be superior.