Widescreen vs. Fullscreen

Even after all this time, the concept of widescreen television is a mystery to a lot of people. The black bars they see at the top and bottom of their screens when watching a DVD on a standard (4:3) television are annoyances. Some people even think the picture is getting chopped off! In this section, we'll explain what widescreen is really all about.

Standard TVs are Square, HDTV and Movies are Rectangles

Aspect ratios describe a screen's proportions in terms of width to height. They are presented in ratios like 4:3 or 16:9. These numbers indicate how wide the screen or picture is relative to how tall it is. Standard television is 4:3. So, it's not really exactly square. If it were, it would be 4:4 (or really 1:1). But as you can see, it's four units of measure wide to three units of measure high. Many movies and High Definition Televisions are 16:9 (or close) which means they are 16 units of measure wide to nine units of measure high. They are wider than your standard TV screen.

So what does all this mean to you? Well, the big thing it has meant for a long time is that Hollywood movies don't fit on standard televisions. To get them to fit, they SHRINK the movies down so you can see the whole picture. This presentation is either called letterbox or widescreen. They DO NOT chop the top and bottom of the movie off. However, if you see a Hollywood movie that fills your standard screen up completely without black bars, then the movie IS usually chopped. They chop off the left and/or right sides of the movie to get it to fit on your screen. So, even though the picture is filling up the screen, you're not seeing all of the picture. The images below illustrate this.