Philips Set for Movies, Squashing TV Shows
January 16, 2009
Philips have announced a 56” LCD TV which equates to the cinematic 21:9 (i.e. 1:2.39) ratio. I’ve heard people moan about having those black bars which effectively letter box the image so that the whole image fits onto the screen. Whilst I’m not a fan of the black bars (VLC media player has an option to digitally alter the ratio without losing any of the image) which is understandable when you consider that movies are designed for screens that are a lot wider than they are tall.
The reason even widescreen TVs cut the top and bottom off is because 16:9 isn’t wide enough (it’s the equivalent of 1:1.78); short of the conventional 1:1.85 and 1:2.39 cinematic ratios. Making a TV that’ll conform to the 1:2.39 cinematic ratio isn’t an ideal solution though, as it isn’t tall enough to display regular TV content. That means it’ll shrink the image to fit with black bars on the left and right of the image for all the other resolutions.
If you wanna learn more about the fundamentals of screen ratio; there’s a great Wikipedia article here. Image via: Show It In Public
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You would have thought that a simple thing like this would have been sorted out by now! As I’m sick of hearing my parents moan about this lol
@Oooodz, lol, whenever I’m with peeps that moan about it, I tend to explain that it’s the way that the director intended it to be seen. All of the ratios got messed up over time though, and I can see why Philips have done this as more movies are being released in the extremely wide 1:2.3 ratio. I blame 16:9, as peeps thought that actually was cinematic widescreen, when it’s not.