Widescreen
Encyclopedia
Aspect ratio (image)
The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the width of the image to its height, expressed as two numbers separated by a colon. That is, for an x:y aspect ratio, no matter how big or small the image is, if the width is divided into x units of equal length and the height is measured using this...
greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio
Academy ratio
The Academy ratio of 1.375:1 is an aspect ratio of a frame of 35mm film when used with 4-perf pulldown. It was standardized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the standard film aspect ratio in 1932, although similar-sized ratios were used as early as 1928.The Academy ratio is...
provided by 35mm film.
For television, the original screen ratio for broadcasts was 4:3 (1.33:1). In the 2000s, 16:9
16:9
16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ...
(1.78:1) TV displays came into wide use. They are typically used in conjunction with high-definition television
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
(HDTV) receivers, or Standard-Definition (SD) DVD player
DVD player
A DVD player is a device that plays discs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. These devices were invented in 1997 and continue to thrive...
s and other digital television sources.
With computer displays, aspect ratios wider than 4:3 are also called widescreen. Widescreen computer displays were typically of 16:10 aspect ratio.
History
Widescreen was first used in the film of The Corbett-Fitzsimmons FightThe Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight
The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight is an 1897 documentary film directed by Enoch J. Rector depicting a boxing match between James J. Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons in Carson City, Nevada on St. Patrick's Day the same year. Originally running at over 100 minutes, it was the longest film that had ever been...
in 1897. This was not only the longest film that had been released to date at 100 minutes, it was also the first widescreen film being shot on 63 mm Eastman stock with 5 perforations per frame.
Widescreen was first widely used in the late 1920s in some short films and newsreel
Newsreel
A newsreel was a form of short documentary film prevalent in the first half of the 20th century, regularly released in a public presentation place and containing filmed news stories and items of topical interest. It was a source of news, current affairs and entertainment for millions of moviegoers...
s, including Abel Gance
Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...
's film Napoleon (1927) with a final widescreen sequence in what Gance called Polyvision
Polyvision
Polyvision was the name given to a specialized widescreen film format devised exclusively for the filming and projection of Abel Gance's 1927 film Napoleon. It involved the simultaneous projection of three reels of silent film arrayed in a horizontal row, making for a total aspect ratio of 4:1...
. Claude Autant-Lara
Claude Autant-Lara
Claude Autant-Lara , was a French film director and later Member of the European Parliament .-Biography:...
released a film Pour construire un feu (To Build a Fire, 1928) in the early Henri Chretien
Henri Chrétien
Henri Jacques Chrétien was a French astronomer and an inventor.Born in Paris, France, his most famous invention is the anamorphic widescreen process, that resulted in the CinemaScope, and the co-invention of the Ritchey-Chrétien telescope , which was anadvanced type of astronomical telescope, now...
widescreen process, later adapted by Twentieth Century-Fox for Cinemascope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
in 1952.
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
released Old Ironsides (1927) in a widescreen process called Magnascope, and MGM released The Trail of '98
The Trail of '98
The Trail of '98 is a 1928 silent drama film featuring Harry Carey. The film was originally released by MGM in a short-lived widescreen process called Fanthom Screen.-Cast:* Dolores del Río as Berna* Ralph Forbes as Larry* Karl Dane as Lars Petersen...
(1928) in a widescreen process called Fanthom Screen.
On May 26, 1929, Fox Film Corporation released Fox Grandeur News and Fox Movietone Follies of 1929
Fox Movietone Follies of 1929
Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 was a black-and-white and color American musical film released by Fox Film Corporation.-Preservation status:...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
in the Fox Grandeur
70 mm Grandeur film
70 mm Grandeur film, also called Fox Grandeur, was a 70mm widescreen film format developed by the Fox Film Corporation and used commercially on a small scale in 1929-1931. It is technically very similar to the Todd-AO 70mm system, marketed from 1955 and still in limited use today...
process. Other films shot in widescreen were the musical
Musical film
The musical film is a film genre in which songs sung by the characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, though in some cases they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate...
Happy Days
Happy Days (1929 film)
Happy Days is an 80 minute musical film, notable for being the first feature film shown entirely in widescreen anywhere in the world. Happy Days (1929) is an 80 minute musical film, notable for being the first feature film shown entirely in widescreen anywhere in the world. Happy Days (1929) is an...
(1929) which premiered at the Roxy Theater
Roxy Theater
The Roxy Theatre was a 5,920 seat movie theater located at 153 West 50th Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, just off Times Square in New York City. It opened on March 11, 1927 with the silent film The Love of Sunya, produced by and starring Gloria Swanson. The huge movie palace was a leading...
, New York City, on February 13, 1930, starring Janet Gaynor
Janet Gaynor
Janet Gaynor was an American actress and painter.One of the most popular actresses of the silent film era, in 1928 Gaynor became the first winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performances in three films: Seventh Heaven , Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans and Street Angel...
and Charles Farrell
Charles Farrell
Charles Farrell was an American film actor of the 1920s silent era and into the 1930s, and later a television actor...
and a 12 year old Betty Grable
Betty Grable
Elizabeth Ruth "Betty" Grable was an American actress, dancer and singer.Her iconic bathing suit photo made her the number-one pin-up girl of the World War II era. It was later included in the LIFE magazine project "100 Photos that Changed the World"...
as a chorus girl; Song o’ My Heart, a musical feature starring Irish tenor John McCormack and directed by Frank Borzage
Frank Borzage
Frank Borzage was an American film director and actor.-Biography:Frank Borzage's father, Luigi Borzaga, was born in Ronzone, in 1859. As a stonemason, he sometimes worked in Switzerland; he met his future wife, Maria Ruegg , where she worked in a silk factory...
(Seventh Heaven, A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms
A Farewell to Arms is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Ernest Hemingway concerning events during the Italian campaigns during the First World War. The book, which was first published in 1929, is a first-person account of American Frederic Henry, serving as a Lieutenant in the ambulance...
), which was shipped from the labs on March 17, 1930, but never released and may no longer survive, according to film historian Miles Kreuger (the 35mm version, however, debuted in New York on March 11, 1930); and the western
Western (genre)
The Western is a genre of various visual arts, such as film, television, radio, literature, painting and others. Westerns are devoted to telling stories set primarily in the latter half of the 19th century in the American Old West, hence the name. Some Westerns are set as early as the Battle of...
The Big Trail
The Big Trail
The Big Trail is a lavish early widescreen movie shot on location across the American West starring John Wayne in his first leading role and directed by Raoul Walsh....
(1930) starring John Wayne
John Wayne
Marion Mitchell Morrison , better known by his stage name John Wayne, was an American film actor, director and producer. He epitomized rugged masculinity and became an enduring American icon. He is famous for his distinctive calm voice, walk, and height...
and Tyrone Power, Sr.
Tyrone Power, Sr.
Frederick Tyrone Edmond Power was an English-born American stage and screen actor, who acted under the name Tyrone Power.-Early life:Power was born in London in 1869, the son of Harold Littledale Power and Ethel Lavenu...
which premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre
Grauman's Chinese Theatre is a movie theater at 6925 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood. It is on the historic Hollywood Walk of Fame.The Chinese Theatre was commissioned following the success of the nearby Grauman's Egyptian Theatre which opened in 1922...
in Hollywood on October 2, 1930, all of which were also made in the 70mm Fox Grandeur process.
RKO Radio Pictures released Danger Lights
Danger Lights
Danger Lights is a 1930 film starring Louis Wolheim, Robert Armstrong, and Jean Arthur.The plot concerns railroading on the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, and the movie was largely filmed along that railroad's lines in Montana...
with Jean Arthur
Jean Arthur
Jean Arthur was an American actress and a major film star of the 1930s and 1940s. She remains arguably the epitome of the female screwball comedy actress. As James Harvey wrote in his recounting of the era, "No one was more closely identified with the screwball comedy than Jean Arthur...
, Louis Wolheim
Louis Wolheim
Louis Wolheim was an American character actor.His trademark broken nose was the result of an injury sustained while playing football for Cornell University. Despite his rugged visage, Wolheim was intelligent and cultivated, speaking French, German, Spanish, and Yiddish. He was also a mathematics...
, and Robert Armstrong
Robert Armstrong (actor)
Robert Armstrong was an American film actor best remembered for his role as Carl Denham in the 1933 version of King Kong by RKO Pictures. He uttered the famous exit quote, "'Twas beauty killed the beast," at the film's end...
on August 21, 1930 in a 65mm widescreen process known as NaturalVision, invented by film pioneer George K. Spoor
George K. Spoor
George Kirke Spoor was an early film pioneer who, with Broncho Billy Anderson, founded Essanay Studios in Chicago in 1907.-Biography:...
. On November 13, 1930, United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
released The Bat Whispers
The Bat Whispers
The Bat Whispers is a mystery film directed by Roland West, produced by Joseph M. Schenck, and released by United Artists.-Plot:A mysterious criminal by the name of "The Bat" eludes police and then finally announces his retirement to the country, while a wealthy Cornelia Van Gorder takes up...
directed by Roland West
Roland West
For the basketball player, see Roland West Roland West was a Hollywood director known for his innovative film noir movies of the 1920s and early 1930s.-Biography:...
in a 70mm widescreen process known as Magnafilm. Warner Brothers released Song of the Flame
Song of the Flame (film)
Song of the Flame is a musical operetta film photographed entirely in Technicolor. It was the first color film to feature a widescreen sequence using a process called Vitascope, the trademark name for Warner Bros.' widescreen process...
and Kismet
Kismet (1930 film)
Kismet was a 1930 costume drama photographed entirely in an early widescreen process using 65mm film that Warner Bros. called Vitascope. The film was based on Edward Knoblock's play Kismet, and was previously filmed as a silent film in 1920 which also starred Otis Skinner.-Production:Warner Bros....
(both 1930) in a widescreen process they called Vitascope
Vitascope
Vitascope was an early film projector first demonstrated in 1895 by Charles Francis Jenkins and Thomas Armat. They had made modifications to Jenkins patented "Phantoscope", which cast images via film & electric light onto a wall or screen...
.
In 1930, after experimenting with the system called Fanthom Screen for The Trail of '98 (1928), MGM came out with a system called Realife. MGM filmed The Great Meadow (1930) in Realife—however, it's unclear if it was ever released in that widescreen process due to declining interest of the movie-going public.
By 1932, the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
had forced studios to cut back on needless expense and it was not until 1953 that wider aspect ratios were again used in an attempt to stop the fall in attendance due, partially, to the emergence of television in the U.S. However, a few producers and directors, among them Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
, have been reluctant to use the anamorphic widescreen size featured in such formats as Cinemascope
CinemaScope
CinemaScope was an anamorphic lens series used for shooting wide screen movies from 1953 to 1967. Its creation in 1953, by the president of 20th Century-Fox, marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in both principal photography and movie projection.The anamorphic lenses theoretically...
. Hitchcock alternatively used VistaVision
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954....
, a non-anamorphic widescreen process developed by Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
and Technicolor
Technicolor
Technicolor is a color motion picture process invented in 1916 and improved over several decades.It was the second major process, after Britain's Kinemacolor, and the most widely used color process in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952...
which could be adjusted to present various flat aspect ratios.
Types
Masked (or flat) Introduced in April 1953. The negative is shot exposing the Academy Ratio using spherical lenses, but the top and bottom of the picture are hidden or masked off by a metal aperture plate, cut to specifications of the theater's screen, in the projector. Alternatively, a hard matte in the printing or shooting stages may be used to mask off those areas while filming for composition purposes, but an aperture plate is still used to block off the appropriate areas in the theater. A detriment is that the film grain size is thus increased because only part of the image is being expanded to full height. Films are designed to be shown in cinemas in masked widescreen format but the full unmasked frame is sometimes used for television. In such an instance, a photographer will compose for widescreen, but "protect" the full image from things such as microphones and other filming equipment.Super gauges The full negative frame, including the area traditionally reserved for the sound track, is filmed using a wider gate. The print is then shrunk and/or cropped in order to fit it back onto release prints. The aspect ratio for Super 35, for example, can be set to virtually any projection standard.
Large gauge A 70 mm film
70 mm film
70mm film is a wide high-resolution film gauge, with higher resolution than standard 35mm motion picture film format. As used in camera, the film is wide. For projection, the original 65mm film is printed on film. The additional 5mm are for magnetic strips holding four of the six tracks of sound...
frame is not only twice as wide as a standard frame but also has greater height. Shooting and projecting a film in 70 mm therefore gives more than twice the image area of non-anamorphic 35 mm film
35 mm film
35 mm film is the film gauge most commonly used for chemical still photography and motion pictures. The name of the gauge refers to the width of the photographic film, which consists of strips 35 millimeters in width...
with no loss of quality. Few major dramatic narrative films have been filmed entirely on this format since the 1970s; the two most recent are Ron Howard
Ron Howard
Ronald William "Ron" Howard is an American actor, director, and producer. He came to prominence as a child actor, playing Opie Taylor in the sitcom The Andy Griffith Show for eight years, and later the teenaged Richie Cunningham in the sitcom Happy Days for six years...
's Far and Away
Far and Away
Far and Away is a 1992 adventure-drama-romance film directed by Ron Howard from a script by Howard and Bob Dolman, and stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Cinematography by Mikael Salomon, with a music score by John Williams...
and Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Branagh
Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from Northern Ireland. He is best known for directing and starring in several film adaptations of William Shakespeare's plays including Henry V , Much Ado About Nothing , Hamlet Kenneth Charles Branagh is an actor and film director from...
's Hamlet
Hamlet (1996 film)
Hamlet is a 1996 film version of William Shakespeare's classic play of the same name, adapted and directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also stars in the title role as Prince Hamlet...
. For many years, large budget pictures shot anamorphically used reserve stocks of 70mm film for SFX shots involving CGI or blue-screen compositing as the anamorphic format creates problems with said effects. It has also been used to sometimes strike 70 mm blow-up prints for "roadshow" tours in select cities from the 35 mm camera negative in order to capitalize on the extra sound channels provided. The introduction of digital sound systems and diminishing number of installed 70 mm projectors has made a 70 mm release largely obsolete. However, blowups from 35 mm formats to IMAX
IMAX
IMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
has recently become popular for a limited number of blockbuster films.
Paramount's VistaVision
VistaVision
VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954....
was a larger gauge precursor to 70 mm film. Introduced in 1954, it ran standard 35 mm film through the camera horizontally to achieve a widescreen effect using greater negative area, in order to create a finer-grained 35 mm prints in an era where standard monopack stock could not produce finer results. Frames were eight perforations wide. Eight-perf photography is sometimes used for shooting special effects in order to produce a finer grained matte that can be used in optical printing without image degradation, and is notable for its use in Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm
Lucasfilm Limited is an American film production company founded by George Lucas in 1971, based in San Francisco, California. Lucas is the company's current chairman and CEO, and Micheline Chau is the president and COO....
's original three Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
films, among others.
Multiple cameras/projectors The Cinerama
Cinerama
Cinerama is the trademarked name for a widescreen process which works by simultaneously projecting images from three synchronized 35 mm projectors onto a huge, deeply-curved screen, subtending 146° of arc. It is also the trademarked name for the corporation which was formed to market it...
system originally involved shooting with three synchronized cameras locked together side by side, and projecting the three resulting films on a curved screen with three synchronized projectors, resuting in an ultra wide aspect ratio of 2.89. Later Cinerama movies were shot in 70 mm anamorphic (see below), and the resultant widescreen image was divided into three by optical printer
Optical printer
An optical printer is a device consisting of one or more film projectors mechanically linked to a movie camera. It allows filmmakers to re-photograph one or more strips of film...
s to produce the final threefold prints.
The technical drawbacks of Cinerama are discussed in its own article
Cinerama
Cinerama is the trademarked name for a widescreen process which works by simultaneously projecting images from three synchronized 35 mm projectors onto a huge, deeply-curved screen, subtending 146° of arc. It is also the trademarked name for the corporation which was formed to market it...
. Only two narrative feature films, The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm
The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm is a 1962 American film directed by Henry Levin and George Pal. The latter was the producer and also in charge of the stop motion animation. The film was one of the highest grossing films of 1962. It won one Oscar and was nominated for three additional...
and How the West Was Won
How the West Was Won (film)
How the West Was Won is a 1962 American epic Western film. The picture was one of the last "old-fashioned" epic films made by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to enjoy great success. It follows four generations of a family as they move ever westward, from western New York state to the Pacific Ocean...
, were filmed in three-camera Cinerama, and several sequences from the latter were actually filmed in Ultra-Panavision
Panavision
Panavision is an American motion picture equipment company specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California. Formed by Robert Gottschalk as a small partnership to create anamorphic projection lenses during the widescreen boom in the 1950s, Panavision expanded its product...
. With the exception of a few films created sporadically for use in specialty Cinerama theaters, the format is essentially dead.
A non-Cinerama, three-projector process was famously pioneered for the final reel of Abel Gance
Abel Gance
Abel Gance was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. He is best known for three major silent films: J'accuse , La Roue , and the monumental Napoléon .-Early life:...
's epic film Napoléon (1927
1927 in film
-Events:*January 10 - Fritz Lang's science-fiction fantasy Metropolis premieres in Germany.*April 7 - Abel Gance's Napoleon often considered his best known and greatest masterpiece, premiers at the Paris Opéra and would demonstrate techniques and equipment that would not be used for years to...
)
The process, called Polyvision
Polyvision
Polyvision was the name given to a specialized widescreen film format devised exclusively for the filming and projection of Abel Gance's 1927 film Napoleon. It involved the simultaneous projection of three reels of silent film arrayed in a horizontal row, making for a total aspect ratio of 4:1...
by Gance, consisted of three 1.33 images side by side, so that the total aspect ratio of the image is 4:1. The technical difficulties in mounting a full screening of the film, however, make most theaters unwilling or unable to show it in this format.
Between 1956 and 1957 the Soviets developed Kinopanorama
Kinopanorama
Kinopanorama is a three-lens, three-film widescreen film format. Although Kinopanorama was initially known as Panorama in the Soviet Union the name was later revised to include its current name prior to the premier screenings in Moscow in 1958. In some countries, including Cuba, Greece, Norway and...
, which is identical in most respects to the original three-camera Cinerama.
Anamorphic 70 mm. 70 mm with anamorphic lenses, popularly known as "Ultra Panavision" or "MGM Camera 65", creates an even wider high-quality picture. This camera process was most famously used in the 1959 version of Ben-Hur
Ben-Hur (1959 film)
Ben-Hur is a 1959 American epic film directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston in the title role, the third film adaptation of Lew Wallace's 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. The screenplay was written by Karl Tunberg, Gore Vidal, and Christopher Fry. The score was composed by...
, resulting in an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, one of the widest projected images ever used for a feature film. 70 mm anamorphic was not commonly used, due to the very high production costs, although it was favored for epic films such as Ben-Hur in order to capture wide panoramic landscapes and high-budget scenes with thousands of extras and enormous sets. This system is obsolete, despite its ease in setting up.
Television
The original screen ratio for television broadcasts was 4:3 (1.33:1). When preparing a film that was originally intended to be displayed in widescreen for television broadcast the material was often edited with the sides truncated, using a technique called pan and scanPan and scan
Pan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...
. Sometimes, in the case of Super35, the full film negative was shown unmasked on TV (i.e., with the hard matte removed), however this causes the 4:3 image to not be what the director intended the audience to see—and sometimes boom mikes, edited out of the shot when the picture is matted, can be visible. Modern widescreen televisions feature a 16:9 (and occasionally 16:10) aspect ratio, allowing them to display a 16:9 widescreen picture without letterboxing (or with a minimal letterbox in the case of 16:10).
In Europe the PAL
PAL
PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television colour encoding system used in broadcast television systems in many countries. Other common analogue television systems are NTSC and SECAM. This page primarily discusses the PAL colour encoding system...
TV format, with its higher resolution than NTSC
NTSC
NTSC, named for the National Television System Committee, is the analog television system that is used in most of North America, most of South America , Burma, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and some Pacific island nations and territories .Most countries using the NTSC standard, as...
format means the quality issues of letterboxed or matted movies on TV is not as severe. There is also an extension to PAL, called PALplus
PALplus
PALplus is an extension of the PAL analogue broadcasting system for transmitting 16:9 programs without sacrificing vertical resolution. It followed experiences with the HD-MAC and D2-MAC, standards that were incompatible with existing receivers but featured a 16:9 aspect ratio...
, which allows specially equipped receivers to receive a PAL picture as true 16:9 with a full 576 lines of vertical resolution, provided the station employs the same system. Standard PAL receivers will receive such a broadcast as a 16:9 image letterboxed to 4:3, with a small amount of color noise in the black bars; this "noise" is actually the additional lines which are hidden inside the color signal. This system has no equivalent in analog NTSC broadcasting.
Despite the existence of PALplus and support for widescreen in the DVB-based digital satellite, terrestrial and cable broadcasts in use across Europe, only Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
, Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...
and the UK have adopted widescreen on a large scale, with over half of all widescreen channels available by satellite in Europe targeting those areas.
Widescreen televisions are typically used in conjunction with Digital
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
, High-Definition Television
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
(HDTV) receivers, or Standard-Definition (SD) DVD
DVD
A DVD is an optical disc storage media format, invented and developed by Philips, Sony, Toshiba, and Panasonic in 1995. DVDs offer higher storage capacity than Compact Discs while having the same dimensions....
players and other digital television sources. Digital material is provided to widescreen TVs either in high-definition format, which is natively 16:9 (1.78:1), or as an anamorphically-compressed
Anamorphic widescreen
Anamorphic widescreen, when applied to DVD manufacture, is a video process that horizontally squeezes a widescreen image so that it can be stored in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVD image frame. Compatible playback equipment can then re-expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen...
standard-definition picture. Typically, devices decoding Digital Standard-Definition pictures can be programmed to provide anamorphic widescreen formatting, for 16:9 sets, and formatting for 4:3 sets. Pan-and-scan mode can be used on 4:3 if the producers of the material have included the necessary panning data; if this data is absent, letterboxing or centre cut-out is used.
HD DVD
HD DVD
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
and Blu-ray disc
Blu-ray Disc
Blu-ray Disc is an optical disc storage medium designed to supersede the DVD format. The plastic disc is 120 mm in diameter and 1.2 mm thick, the same size as DVDs and CDs. Blu-ray Discs contain 25 GB per layer, with dual layer discs being the norm for feature-length video discs...
players were introduced in 2006. Toshiba
Toshiba
is a multinational electronics and electrical equipment corporation headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. It is a diversified manufacturer and marketer of electrical products, spanning information & communications equipment and systems, Internet-based solutions and services, electronic components and...
ceased production of HD DVD
HD DVD
HD DVD is a discontinued high-density optical disc format for storing data and high-definition video.Supported principally by Toshiba, HD DVD was envisioned to be the successor to the standard DVD format...
players in early 2008 after key defections from the HD DVD camp damaged the viability of the format. it still remains to be seen whether Blu-ray will stimulate the sales of HD pre-recorded films on disc, and more HD monitors and tuners. Consumer camcorders are also available in the HD-video format at fairly low prices. These developments will result in more options for viewing widescreen images on television monitors.
Computer displays
Computer displays with aspect ratios wider than 4:3 are also called widescreen. Widescreen computer displays are typically of the 16:916:9
16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ...
or 16:10 aspect ratio. Widescreen (16:9) monitors can be found in resolutions of 1024x576, 1152x648, 1280x720, 1366x780, 1600x900, 1920x1080, 2560x1440 and 3840x2160. Apple's 27" iMac
IMac
The iMac is a range of all-in-one Macintosh desktop computers built by Apple. It has been the primary part of Apple's consumer desktop offerings since its introduction in 1998, and has evolved through five distinct forms....
introduced the 16:9 resolution: 2560x1440 in late 2009. Widescreen monitors are since 2008 the mainstream standard for computer displays
Computer display standard
Computer display standards are often a combination of aspect ratio, display resolution, color depth, and refresh rate.This article describes the different display standards for computer displays.-History:...
.
Transition to widescreen
Until about 2003, most computer monitors had a 4:3 aspect ratioAspect ratio (image)
The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the width of the image to its height, expressed as two numbers separated by a colon. That is, for an x:y aspect ratio, no matter how big or small the image is, if the width is divided into x units of equal length and the height is measured using this...
and some had 5:4. Between 2003 and 2006, monitors with 16:9
16:9
16:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ...
and mostly 16:10 (8:5) aspect ratios became commonly available, first in laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
s and later also in standalone monitors. Reasons for this transition is alleged to be the productive uses for such monitors, i.e. besides widescreen movie viewing and computer game play, are the word processor display of two standard letter pages side by side, as well as CAD displays of large-size drawings and CAD application menus at the same time. In 2008, 16:10 became the most common sold aspect ratio for LCD monitors and the same year 16:10 was the mainstream standard for laptop
Laptop
A laptop, also called a notebook, is a personal computer for mobile use. A laptop integrates most of the typical components of a desktop computer, including a display, a keyboard, a pointing device and speakers into a single unit...
s and notebook
Notebook
A notebook is a book or binder composed of pages of notes, often ruled, made out of paper, used for purposes including recording notes or memoranda, writing, drawing, and scrapbooking....
s.
In 2008, the computer industry started to move over from 16:10 to 16:9. According to a report by displaysearch the reasons for this were/are:
- Innovative product concepts drives a new product cycle and stimulating the growth of the notebook PC and LCD monitor market.
- 16:9 provides better economic cut (panelization) in existing TFT LCD fabs.
- 16:9 products provide higher resolution and wider aspect ratio.
- The widespread adoption of High Definition in the consumer entertainment sector will help end users readily adopt the new products with the wider aspect ratio.
- The 16:9 panels provide an opportunity for PC brands to further diversify their products.
In 2011, Bennie Budler, product manager of IT products at Samsung South Africa, confirmed that monitors capable of 1920x1200 resolutions aren't being manufactured anymore. “It is all about reducing manufacturing costs. The new 16:9 aspect ratio panels are more cost effective to manufacture locally than the previous 16:10 panels”
In 2011, Non-widescreen displays with 4:3 aspect ratios still were being manufactured, but in small quantities. The reasons for this was according to Samsung that the “Demand for the old 'Square monitors' has decreased rapidly over the last couple of years,” and “I predict that by the end of 2011, production on all 4:3 or similar panels will be halted due to a lack of demand.”
In March 2011 the 16:9 resolution 1920x1080 became the most common used resolution among Steam users. The earlier most common resolution was 1680x1050 (16:10).
Suitability for applications
- Since many modern DVDs and some TV shows are in a widescreen format, widescreen displays are optimal for their playback on a computer. 16:9 material on a 16:10 display will be letterboxed. In data processing or viewing 4:3 entertainment material such as older films and digital photographPhotographA photograph is an image created by light falling on a light-sensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic imager such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are created using a camera, which uses a lens to focus the scene's visible wavelengths of light into a reproduction of...
s, the widescreen will be letterboxed. - In the majority of games since 2005, you get wider field of view with a widescreen monitorField of view in video gamesField of view in video games is the extent of the observable game world that is seen on the display at any given moment....
. - Games prior to 2005 usually work better with a 4:3 than a widescreen monitor because of better compability.
Conversion
When monitors are sold the quoted size is the diagonal measurement of the display area. Because of the different ratio, a 16:9 monitor will have a shorter height than a 4:3 monitor of the same advertised size.Since computer displays are advertised by their diagonal measure, for monitors with the same display area, a wide screen monitor will have a larger diagonal measure, thus sounding more impressive. Within limits, the amount of information that can be displayed, and the cost of the monitor depend more on area than on diagonal measure.
Some monitors can be rotated to facilitate tasks that are more limited by the height of the monitor (such as word processing).
See also
- 14:914:914:9 is a compromise aspect ratio of 1.56:1. It is used to create an acceptable picture on both 4:3 and 16:9 televisions, conceived following audience tests conducted by the BBC...
- 16:916:916:9 is an aspect ratio with a width of 16 units and height of 9. Since 2009, it has become the most common aspect ratio for sold televisions and computer monitors and is also the international standard format of HDTV, Full HD, non-HD digital television and analog widescreen television ...
- Active Format Descriptor (AFD)
- Anamorphic widescreenAnamorphic widescreenAnamorphic widescreen, when applied to DVD manufacture, is a video process that horizontally squeezes a widescreen image so that it can be stored in a standard 4:3 aspect ratio DVD image frame. Compatible playback equipment can then re-expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen...
- Aspect ratio (image)Aspect ratio (image)The aspect ratio of an image is the ratio of the width of the image to its height, expressed as two numbers separated by a colon. That is, for an x:y aspect ratio, no matter how big or small the image is, if the width is divided into x units of equal length and the height is measured using this...
- Cine 160Cine 160Cine 160 is a 35 mm film projection process proposed by Allan Silliphant whereby a single frame of film would occupy a length of six film perforations...
- Full frameFull frameIn cinematography, full frame refers to the use of the full film gate at maximum width and height for 35 mm film cameras. It is sometimes also referred to as silent aperture, full gate, or a number of other similar word combinations. It is the original gate size pioneered by William Dickson and...
- IMAXIMAXIMAX is a motion picture film format and a set of proprietary cinema projection standards created by the Canadian company IMAX Corporation. IMAX has the capacity to record and display images of far greater size and resolution than conventional film systems...
- LetterboxLetterboxLetterboxing is the practice of transferring film shot in a widescreen aspect ratio to standard-width video formats while preserving the film's original aspect ratio. The resulting videographic image has mattes above and below it; these mattes are part of the image...
- List of common resolutions
- List of film formats
- Motion picture terminologyMotion picture terminologyThe film industry is built upon a large number of technologies and techniques, drawing upon photography, stagecraft, music, and many other disciplines...
- Open matteOpen matteOpen matte is a filming technique that involves matting out the top and bottom of the film frame in the movie projector for the widescreen theatrical release and then scanning the film without a matte for a full screen home video release.Usually, non-anamorphic 4-perf films are filmed directly on...
- Pan and scanPan and scanPan and scan is a method of adjusting widescreen film images so that they can be shown within the proportions of a standard definition 4:3 aspect ratio television screen, often cropping off the sides of the original widescreen image to focus on the composition's most important aspects...
- Widescreen display modesWidescreen display modesWidescreen televisions provide several modes for displaying video from 4:3 sources. These modes may be selected manually from a remote control, or automatically if an Active Format Descriptor is available.- Normal mode :...
- Widescreen signalingWidescreen signalingIn television technology, widescreen signaling is a digital stream embedded in the TV signal describing qualities of the broadcast, in particular the intended aspect ratio of the image...
(WSS)
External links
- The American Widescreen Museum
- What is Widescreen?
- widescreen.org, formerly The Letterbox and Widescreen Advocacy Page
- Widescreen Resources & Information
- Magnified Grandeur - The Big Screen, 1926-31, David Coles, 2001
- The Widescreen Monitor Guide, inc WS monitor list
- So Everyone Is Wrong... Now What? - explanation where the numbers "16:9" came from
- Screen Diagonal Comparison - tool for comparing "4:3" with "16:9"