Your argument is flawed. Take any hardback, paperback except for those with obviously wacky proportions and work out the ratio.

It will always be 1.50 or thereabouts. Which is closer to 4:3 than 16:9.

110 mm x 178mm
( http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Standard_s...paperback_book )
The ratio is 1.618 (the Golden Ratio).

I grabbed a random book off my shelf, which happened to be Misery by Stephen King. It's paperback and the same size as all my other books.

It is 11cm wide by 17.5cm high.

Which is a ratio of roughly 1.59.

I'm not asking you to explain about tv and monitors. I'm talking about a device that works on portrait and landscape. Just give a simple list of advantages, surely that isn't difficult?

Print magazines, a lot of which are digital, are closer to 4:3

For example, on my desk right now Wired 1.35; T3 1.27; WhatCar 1.38; Star Trek: The Official Starships Collection 1.29

The iPad and a nexus (for example) do not have the same diagonal measurement, I assume that is why apple chose 7.9 for the mini. That size allows it to have no disadvantages over the 7 inch tablet market that it was pitched against.

I assume that some of the 8 inch tablets have been launch to try and counter that.

To get the original you need PressReader.

However most tabloids and paperbacks are near as dammit 16:10, the size tablets have gravitated to.
However readership is often minuscule compared to video streams.

No disadvantages? Widescreen films don't even begin to fill the screen ... not necessarily a disadvantage, but damnably irritating.

A widescreen film, will not fill the screen on either a 16:9 or 4:3 device. However if you are watching the same film on an iPad mini or a nexus 7 the picture will be the same size, well actually slightly bigger on the mini.

If by filling the screen, you mean it leaves borders, well I find that when I watch a movie, I tend to focus on the thing I'm watching rather than everything around it.

Was in PC World today and had a play with the Nexus 7. I really like it. It's really small and light and easy to carry around and I didn't have any problems with the screen for the few minutes I played with it. I don't think I'll bother with the iPad Mini. I know a Mac user like me should be drooling over iPads but I think different My dad also had a look at the Surface Pro and he really likes it so I think he's gonna buy it.

Anything 'delivered' in cinescope will look even more desperate on 4:3.
However much will is produced towards 16:9 as a compromise.

Bonanza looks great on the iPad.

Well. We're not in the movie forum but in the tablet forum so I'm not going to go into the basics about aspect ratios and just say that as long as you're happy with a 4:3 display for movies and TV content then that's all that ultimately counts I suppose.

Come now. Every TV program up to mid/late 1990s is ideal. I forget that proper aspect ratios and anamorphic content is something that isn't that important to some!

http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-10/why-get-ipad-mini-over-ipad

Can you explain what you mean by desperate. For example, if I put the same film on the iPad mini and the nexus 7 will I see different films? Will one show more than the other?

Your right, we are talking about a tablet format so I'm not sure why the starting point would be displays that are used in landscape when a tablet needs to be used in both.

Anyhow, I notice that no disadvantages have been listed which is hardly surprising.

I was stuck into reading that magazine.

Yes, I said prior with tablets that once you get into HD the benefit of 4:3 is erased.
So the 2012 Nexus 7 with minimum width of 800 pixels and that Tesco Hudl/Nook HD with 900 do not need 4:3.

And the iPhone jumped to 16:9(phone standard) when it went 4" size., though that was as much to keep width the down.

I'm not sure why you keep jumping around referring to (now) resolution. The number of pixels has nothing to do with the actual width of the screen on the device.

A simple example would be to look at the demos on YouTube of an iPad mini and nexus 7 side by side. It shows web browsing, movies, home pages. I can see no disadvantage of the mini over the nexus 7.

I'll state again, I like the nexus but I spent several hours with both before I chose the iPad mini and screen real estate was one of the deciding factors.

This idea that movies and video are better suited to 4:3 displays has nothing to do with how it looks or technical details like the aspect ratio of modern content and everything to do with the fact it's Apple. I've only ever encountered that 4:3 argument from Apple fans and only after the iPad was released! Of course with web browsing and reading it's just a matter of personal preference as there are no real advantages or disadvantages.

Maybe we are misunderstanding each other. I am not suggesting that watching tv or movies at a 4:3 ratio is a good idea, and I never do it.

However, a 16:9 tv show looks no different on an iPad mini than it does on a nexus 7.

There appears to be no disadvantage under any circumstance.

how about an 8" 4:3 tablet vs 8" 16:9 tablet?

How did my thread asking for advice on which tablet to buy end up as a discussion on screen aspect ratios?

That's easy! Since almost all android and windows tablets are 16:9, it's just a way of saying "buy Apple, it's the best!".

Yes, you would then get a bigger picture.

I already said in an earlier post, I expect that is why apple chose the screen size they did and why you are seeing 8" 16:9 tablets now.

The iPad mini was released to compete with the nexus 7 size tablets.

That still doesn't give any disadvantage to the 4:3 screen on the mini, assuming we accept the nexus is a useable size screen.

The trade off is the iPad is slightly bigger, but it has helped that they have made the bezel narrow.

So it's a way to trick me into buying an iPad Mini, even though I'm leaning more towards the Nexus 7 and even more so since playing with it in PC World yesterday?