Notice anything different about the laptop below? Look harder.

Not a groundbreaking announcement, sure, but Dell had a prototype XPS laptop with a true 16:9 screen on display.

Current widescreen laptops employ a 16:10 screen that's not quite suitable for optimum video playback. The reason lies with the aspect ratios of widescreen video, where 1:78:1 (16:9) is considered standard wide-aspect.

On a traditional laptop, then, the image will have minor black borders on the top and bottom, assuming that you want to view it without stretching the video. The black borders are exacerbated with really wide-aspect video - 2.35:1, for example - and that effect should be partially minimised with a genuine widescreen panel. As a guide, a 2.35:1 film would consume 68 per cent of the screen on a 16:10 laptop, increasing to 76 per cent on this model: it's wider, right?

Considering just how much widescreen multimedia content is on the typical user's PC, Dell's 16:9 seems to be a winner on first glance. The 16in panel packs in a native resolution of 1,920x1,080 (1080p). We should see the XPS model launched in Q3 this year.

All HEXUS CES 2008 content