If you have just spent unprecedented thousands on a widescreen television set you may be experiencing the frustration of finding that almost no programming takes advantage of all you have paid for.
You will have discovered that completely filling the screen with picture results in people being stretched and squished, or you lose the edges of the picture. For a while the remote control format button gets constant attention as you jiggle from one picture format to another seeking that cinematic experience you were promised in the shop.
You are not alone. Throughout the world, ad agencies, TV producers, film companies and broadcasters - as well as the viewers - are also struggling and juggling formats as each takes differently paced steps along the costly path from analogue to digital television.
In New Zealand we are barely at the start of the process.
The television we grew up with is broadcast in a 4:3 aspect ratio which, until a few years ago, perfectly matched the shape of TVs. Big or small, screens all measured four units wide by three high. Digital high-definition television, where we are (eventually) heading, will be broadcast and watched in widescreen or 16:9 aspect ratio - four units across by just 2.25 high.
That difference is most easily described as going from TV to cinema screen which, of course, is the goal - home cinema. For the same screen height, widescreens are 30 per cent bigger. A less obvious good reason for the change is that our natural field of vision has a shape much closer to 16:9.
Movie ratios are usually even more elongated than 16:9, hence cinema curtains at the cinema.
Because DVDs, ads and broadcasts now come in a range of aspect ratios between the extremes, modern TVs allow you to choose picture settings. To go from the native broadcast format to another they must recalibrate the picture, which some brands do better than others.
If you rent or buy a movie on DVD you will almost certainly watch it on 16:9 with your widescreen gloriously filled. There's no loss or distortion - it looks almost as it was intended to by the film-maker.
In contrast, unless you admire the shape of the TeleTubbies, you might be best to watch most broadcast TV in good ol' 4:3, despite those annoying black bands on the sides, known as pillar boxing.
Zoom functions are likely to lose bits from the top and bottom of the picture and other picture format settings - such as panorama or theatre-wide - will be compromises between stretching and zooming.
Some stretch the sides of the image more than the middle so that at least people in the middle of the screen look correct. Others crop a little so they don't have to stretch so much.
The automatic option can be a good fallback until you get a programme where different camera types have been used and the picture starts jumping in and out with each camera angle change.
Some widescreens offer a 14:9 option, which is really just a convenient halfway-house between 4:3 and 16:9, a ratio broadcasters such as TVNZ use in an effort to keep their old-style TV audience happy - without copping too much flak from those who have paid for, and now expect, that 16:9 sense of cinema.
<EM>Hotwired:</EM> Never mind the quality, feel the width
AdvertisementAdvertise with NZME.