Widescreen images are a variety of aspect ratios used in film, television and computer screens. In film, a widescreen film is any film image with a width-to-height aspect ratio greater than the standard 1.37:1 Academy aspect ratio provided by 35mm film.
For television, the original screen ratio for broadcasts was 4:3 (1.33:1). In the 2000s, 16:9 (1.78:1) TV displays have come into wide use. They are typically used in conjunction with Digital, High-Definition Television (HDTV) receivers, or Standard-Definition (SD) DVD players and other digital television sources.
With computer displays, aspect ratios wider than 4:3 are also called widescreen. Widescreen computer displays are typically of 16:10 aspect ratio. Widescreen 16:9 computer monitors are also available.
History
Widescreen was first widely used in the late 1920s in some short films and newsreels, including Abel Gance's film Napoleon (1927) which had a final widescreen sequence in what Gance called Polyvision. Paramount Pictures released Old Ironsides (1927) in a widescreen process called Magnascope, and MGM released Trail of '98 (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 in New York City in the Fox Grandeur process. Other films shot in widescreen were the musical Happy Days (1929) which premiered at the Roxy Theater, New York City, on February 13, 1930, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell and a 12 year old Betty Grable as a chorus girl; Song o’ My Heart, a musical feature starring Irish tenor John McCormack and directed by Frank Borzage (Seventh Heaven, A Farewell to Arms), 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 The Big Trail (1930) starring John Wayne and Tyrone Power, Sr. which premiered at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood on October 2, 1930[1], all of which were also made in the 70mm Fox Grandeur process.
RKO Radio Pictures released Danger Lights with Jean Arthur, Louis Wolheim, and Robert Armstrong on August 21, 1930 in a 65mm widescreen process known as NaturalVision, invented by film pioneer George K. Spoor. United Artists released The Bat Whispers directed by Roland West on November 13, 1930 in a 70mm widescreen process known as Magnafilm. Warner Brothers released Song of the Flame and Kismet (both 1930) in a widescreen process they called Vitascope. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, after experimenting with the system called Fanthom Screen for The Trail of '98 (1928), came out with a system called Realife in 1930. MGM filmed The Great Meadow (1930) in Realife—however, it's unclear if it was ever released in the widescreen process due to declining interest of the movie-going public.
By 1932, the Great Depression 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, have been reluctant to use the anamorphic widescreen size featured in such formats as Cinemascope. Hitchcock alternatively used VistaVision, a non-anamorphic widescreen process developed by Paramount Pictures and Technicolor which could be adjusted to present various flat aspect ratios.[2]
In Europe the PAL TV format, with its higher resolution than NTSC 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, 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, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, Scandinavia 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.
16:9 TV displays have come into wide use. They are typically used in conjunction with Digital, High-Definition Television (HDTV) receivers, or Standard-Definition (SD) DVD 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 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 and Blu-ray disc players were introduced in 2006. Toshiba ceased production of HD DVD players in early 2008 after key defections from the HD DVD camp damaged the viability of the format. As of 2010[update] 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.
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