Those Dell 20 inch widescreens are quite cheap these days and they work beautifully as a combo computer/xbox monitor thanks to the multiple inputs (they also have an s-video and a composite video in, so in total you could have a computer, your 360, and two older systems all piped through one monitor). Splurge!

Let her pound the sh*t out of you... film it.. sell on internet.. buy 20" LCD!

How do they measure wide screen TV's, anyway? Does the 20 inches correspond to width, or what? Is it a diagonal measurement? If so, it would be (duh) wider, but also quite a bit shorter vertically, no?

I was kind of wondering the same thing.

they're measured diagonally just like regular aspect ratio tv's. So yeah, a 30" widescreen is wider and shorter than a regular aspect tv, and has the same surface area on the screen as a result. However, when watching something widescreen, the elimination or reduction of the letterbox bars results in a larger effective viewing area than on a 30" widescreen than on a 30" regular screen.

Additionally, Podunk, you can go through the system options in your 360 and set the view to regular 4:3 display rather than letterboxed as long as you run in 480p or 480i. 720p and up is a forced widescreen ratio, so that'll run letterboxed regardless.

I picked up a Dell 24" a few months back for a combo 360/PS2/PC display and its lovely. At the time they had a "going back to school" sale, combine that with a few well bought coupons off ebay and I got the sucker for $713 shipped. The 20" Dells go for pretty damn good prices and look great to boot, a friend owns a 20" and loves it. Just a little warning, even with a Dell monitor you'll be looking a some slight letterboxing though as the displays are 16:10, not standard 16:9 aspect ratio. Of course there is a work around to that

Given a fixed diagonal distance, a rectangle has more surface area the closer it gets to a square. The wider screen has less surface area. Am I reading something wrong?

I have this theory that 16:9 is more pleasing to the eye because you are used to having information presented to you that way in the real world.

The vast majority of what you want to see while walking around is in a fairly narrow band of vision centered on the horizon. When people think of their peripheral vision, I don't know many people that think of what they can see up or down, they think about what they can see side to side.