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INTERACTION DESIGN PRINCIPLES FOR INTERACTIVE ...

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on any television set where the image is cropped to 4:3. Therefore, these areas should<br />

contain only background information. All navigation and relevant iTV components must<br />

be kept in the center cut-out safe zone. Also, the entire application may be shrunk to 75%<br />

of its original size to fit in a letterbox format on a 4:3 set. In this case, any text on the<br />

screen must be large enough to remain legible (Baker, 1999).<br />

4.2.3 Resolution<br />

The maximum resolution of NTSC television sets is 720 x 486 pixels (compared<br />

with computer monitors, which are 800 x 600 pixels or better). HDTV, on the other hand,<br />

can have a resolution of up to 1920 x 1080 pixels. In addition, whereas the NTSC format<br />

uses rectangular pixels, the HDTV format is composed of smaller, square pixels,<br />

resulting in a noticeably crisper image. Figure 4.7 illustrates that a single pixel on a<br />

NTSC TV is about four and half times larger than a pixel on HDTV (Cringely, 1998).<br />

Figure 4.7 Comparison of NTSC vs. HDTV Pixels<br />

More importantly, because most computer monitors also use square pixels, HDTV<br />

is more compatible with computers in terms of design and image distortion.<br />

To compensate for the distortion that occurs when the same image appears<br />

horizontally stretched on an NTSC compared to a television screen due to the difference<br />

in pixel size, design work on a computer should be done on a file that is 768 x 576 pixels.<br />

This dimension is optically correct for a 4:3 aspect ratio (British Broadcasting<br />

Corporation, 2002).<br />

89

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