So when will games start offering 16:9 res?

Soon I think... Game development takes something like 2 to 4 years (not counting Duke Nukem Forever...) So expect the support at least during that time period from now. With paches even sooner. Full support can take longer, because it will take something like 8 to 10 years until the screens that we have now will tear out. And there will be a lot of cheap old 4:3's and 16:10's available for many years until the stores run out of them.
I am still using my sturdy old 24" 4:3 tube monitor that is at least 6 years old, even more, and it is still kicking hard. The image is still sharp, so it can take at least a couple of years until I need a new one.
Same situation is with many other people who don't buy completely new machine in every two years.

I am interested in those 16:9 aspect screen, because they are ideal for dvd-movies. When the games will start using that aspect, there is no any real reason to use anything other in home / leisure use.

Yeah, I guess it'll just take time. Windows doesn't even currently support 16:9, which is annoying trying to watch movies using my HDTV as a monitor. And I swear I heard Duke Nukem Forever is coming out next year or so....

Duke nukem is always coming out next year... Look like i'll have to get rid of my box crt

I'm in no rush. Yeah, the field of view is great but, unlike crts, they don't look as hot at anything other than their native resolution. In effect, they may mandate an update to your video card and/or system to smoothly pump out pixels at 1920x1080 or so.

I heard Duke actually was finished and ready for release. Unfortunately, it was for the Sega Genesis, so they started over again.

I don't know how I feel about that. I like widescreen and currently use 16:10 1920x1200 for my home pc. I'm not sure that I would want to trade off more vertical space on my computer display though, which I do use applications on (not just movies and games).

As for games supporting new resolutions, I haven't written one myself, but I have tooled around in OpenGL. I see no good reason why games aren't coded to support any resolution from the outset. On the 3D side, it's pretty basic math to do and OpenGL certainly supports it (of course DX would too)...
The only place I see getting a little tricky might be with UI component layouts in some circumstances. (If I'm missing something on the issue I'm happy to learn though)

I don't think that 16:9 is appropriate for websurfing and worprocessing. The later would even do better on a 9:16 screen (tilted). But 16:9...? Nope! It's like reading your newspaper through a letterbox...

16:9 should work fine for games and multimedia. But for programming, wordprocessing, etc... Not nice at all!! On laptops, it would be like going back to 9 inch displays (vertical), if the manufactorer haven't made an extremely wide notebook. But that would be rather rediculus I think...

AHH, I like my 16:10, I don't want 16:9 even tho it won't make a big diff. Do some trig and figure out how much it won't actually make a difference compared to what you have now. Thats if you're using a 16:10 right now...

@Milleman,

I hear you, coding on a widescreen monitor is annoying. All that space, but half of it is useless. The only nice thing is that you can have your tool bars on the side without sacrificing too much horizontal space.

I bet some of the reason that they can't just allow games to work at any resolution has to do with testing. The companies probably test at the given resolutions and don't want angry users complaining when something doesn't work properly, especially concerning different aspect ratios.

As for complaints about 16:9 vs 16:10, the difference is barely noticeable. It is kind of annoying if you've just bought a new 30" display, but the 16:10 resolution won't be phased out of games for many years I'm sure.

I'm sure when Duke Forever comes out we won't even notice, you know cause we'll be busy eating our hats, wondering why hell froze over, and running away from the flying pigs.

*grin*

I suppose the jump from 16:10 to 16:9 just feels like part of a continuing push to take more vertical space away.

In the view of a computer user I feel I will be losing desktop space! As at any given inch size, you will almost definitely lose vertical desktop space.

E.g. My prediction is that the 24 - 27" range of 16:9 displays will use 1920x1080 instead of 1920x1200. So the advantage from the shift is only that playing movies on the display will better utilise the physical dimensions (i.e. look bigger than what they do on 16:10).
However general desktop usage will lose out!

Hopefully though it will allow price shifts to make bigger panels become even more affordable to allow a jump up to the next resolution anyway??

well...all the half-life games support 16:9 allready, and assasins creed only runs in 16:9...most new games (like unreal) offer the resolutions, but they look funny unless its a native resolution