How to Understand Standard vs. Widescreen Aspects Ratio of HDTV/Digital TV

Aspect ratio is a critical part of your HDTV experience. Often, lack of knowledge in this area leads to poor viewing quality in spite of spending loads of money. Here we will help you understand standard vs. widescreen aspects ratio of HDTV.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

1. Understand the best aspect ratio for your screen. A 4:3 screen is best suited for standard programming while a 16:9 screen is best suited for wide screen programming.
2. Understand the concerns surrounding 4:3 screen. The common concerns with 4:3 screens are the letterboxing effect and a mismatch between the TV and video-source aspect ratio. The letterboxing effect referrs to the black bars appearing on the top and bottom of the screen when the image fails to fill the screen. Zooming the picture can solve this but it leads to a dip in the picture quality and also cut off the picture from the extreme left or right. The mismatch between a TV and video-source leads to the picture being vertically stretched. This problem can be solved by setting your TV type to 4:3 in the set-top-box. But due to this you may see black bars above and below the image. If your TV has the vertical compression feature, you can set your DVD to 16:9 which will give you a clearer and sharper picture.
3. Understand the concerns surrounding a 16:9 screen.
4. The first issue is the vertical letterboxing, where you have black bars on the left and right side of the screen. This can be solved by zooming the picture, but it will lead to the image being cut from the sides and the sharpness will decrease. Another solution is to readjust the TV’s aspect ratio to full. This will fill the screen but the picture will be horizontally stretched. The third solution for the problem is to readjust the aspect ratio to the nonlinear stretch mode. Though it will fill the screen the image will be distorted from the sides and it will work well only on some TV sets.
5. The second issue is windowboxing, wherein black boxes appear on all four sides of the screen. This can be solved by using the zoom control, but will lead to a slightly hazy picture.
6. The third problem is letterboxing even on a wide screen. If a movie is filmed for ultra wide screen, even your wide screen TV may suffer from letterboxing. This can be solved by the zoom control with a little compromise on the image sharpness.

Tips & Warnings

• Look for the aspect control option on your TV. Most HDTV sets have this feature, but if yours doesn’t you will need it in either your set-top-box or DVD player.
• 4:3 and 16:9 are the two main aspect ratios. If you see any other, remember that they will be more or less in the same league as these two with just minute changes.
• Don’t let the black bars go untreated. As far as possible, fill the screen using the zoom option with the picture. If you let the black bars stay on your screen for a long duration, you risk a burn-in problem with your TV set.
• Check your sets for the extent of aspect ratio control you will get. If you have a 480i or 480p source, you may get full control but if you have a 720p, 1080i or 1080p source, your choices may be limited.

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