RSS FeedPeople Need To Understand Widescreen Better
I was recently reading an 'article' at Toms Hardware titled "16:9 Screens Popular, But Movies Go Wider". This article, if one were to call it that, is chock full of grammatical errors, and, well, I can sum it up in one sentence: "Widescreen monitors (or tvs) are cheaper to produce, and thus cheaper to buy, but some movies are not the same aspect ratio as the standard widescreen monitor or tv."
Now, it is sorta neat to read about why they are cheaper to produce (manufacturer's being able to cut more panels from these 16:9 and 16:10 sizes than a standard 4:3 size), but the article really got me with this:
The trend is not changing again, and I'll tell you why, after the break.
The trend is not changing again, because there is no trend, really. Widescreen is generally thought of us 16x9, or 1.78:1 aspect ratio. But many films use wider aspect ratios, and then even on an HDTV one will find the 'black bars' that many think of as 'covering up' the image (in actuality, it is (generally) empty space - a good overview of this is found at whywidescreen.com).
But back on topic. What angered me the most about the aforementioned article was for the writer to say that things are changing - when in fact wider aspect ratios have been around since, oh I don't know, Ben-Hur. Ben-Hur was filmed in 1959. Yes, Ninteen-Fifty-Freakin-Nine. FIFTY years ago. And it used one of the widest aspect ratios ever, clocking in at 2.76:1.
Now, this is all well and good, and the writer used sort of a gimmicky little ploy there (to get conversation in the comments started I guess), but it also raises the question of, well, if some movies are so damn wide, are we going to have wider than 16:9 TVs? The answer is, probably not. If we had even wider sets, then 1.78:1 movies, or 16x9, would become the new 4:3: they would either have to be stretched to fit the screen of you would end up with black bars on the sides. As you got closer to a wider ratio movie, it would fill more space, and of course look better; but since 16x9 is the norm for widescreen, we'll most likely see 16x9 tv's for some time - at least until we can simply fold out extra tv on either side.