Moving from broadcast NTSC/PAL to computer displays freed VJs from fixed 4:3 resolutions

Broadcast video locked output to roughly 640x480i in the 4:3 aspect ratio via the NTSC (North America) and PAL (Europe) standards. As VJs adopted computer-industry display technology in the 2000s, they gained arbitrary resolutions and widescreen formats: a laptop using DVI can output a wide variety of resolutions up to ~2500px wide, and with a Matrox TripleHead2Go one computer can drive three displays with a single image coordinated across them. This shift enabled widescreen canvases, multi-projector wraps, and projection onto architectural surfaces — forms impossible under the fixed broadcast paradigm — making aspect ratio and resolution a foundational concern for configuring VJ output.

Examples

A 1993 NTSC setup was locked to 640x480 4:3; a mid-2000s setup with a TripleHead2Go could span three side-by-side projectors from one laptop, coordinated as a single wide image.

Assessment

Explain why the move from broadcast to computer display technology expanded multi-projector VJing, naming at least two concrete capabilities it unlocked.