Toshiba TV LCD Widescreen Information

Widescreen (16:9) Cinema-style picture format, also used to describe ?wide? TV screens (16 units wide by 9 units high).

Widescreen Signalling Switches a widescreen TV to 16:9 mode whenever a corresponding signal is detected from either a broadcast (line23) or a VCR or a DVD player (SCART pin 8 level sensing).

Widescreen Information

A widescreen image is a film, computer, or television image with a wider aspect ratio than the standard Academy frame developed during the classical Hollywood cinema era. Silent film was projected at a ratio of four units wide to three units tall, often expressed as 4:3 or 1.33:1. The addition of sound-on-film soundtracks and a thicker frame line in order to hide physical splices in prints caused the frame dimensions to standardize by 1932 to Academy format, which is actually 1.37 but often erroneously called 1.33.

Widescreen was first widely used in the late 1920s in some shorts and newsreels, including Fox Grandeur News and Fox Movietone Follies of 1929, both released on May 26, 1929 in New York City in the Fox Grandeur process. Other films shown in widescreen were the musical Happy Days (1929) which premiered at the Roxy Theater, N.Y.C., on February 13, 1930, starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell and a 13 year old Betty Grable as a chorus girl, 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], both of which were also made in the 70mm Fox Grandeur process. RKO 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 Magnifilm.

By 1932, the Depression had forced studios to cut back on needless expense and it wasn't until the 1950s 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.

Toshiba TV - Widescreen Methodology

Note that aspect ratio refers here to the projected image, which may be different to the image that was initially recorded. There are various methods of producing a widescreen image of any given proportion. These are listed below in the order of popularity in the shooting of films for presentation in a theater.

Masked, aka Flat The negative is shot exposing the Academy Ratio, but the top and bottom of the picture are hidden or masked off a metal aperture plate, cut to specifications of the theater's screen, in the projector. Subsequently, a hard matte in the printing or shooting stages may be used to mask off those areas while filming. A detrement is that the film grain size is thus increased because only part of the image is being expanded to full height. Films are designed to be shown in cinemas in masked widescreen format but the full unmasked frame is sometimes used for television. In such an instance, a photographer will compose for widescreen, but "protect" the full image from things such as microphones and other filming equipment.

Common aspect ratios for flat widescreen are 1.85:1 and 1.66:1, as well as the lesser used 1.75:1 and 2:1.

Anamorphic. As introduced to the general public by CinemaScope, and utilzed by systems such as Panavision and others, anamorphic camera lenses compress the image horizontally so that it fits a standard frame, and anamorphic projection lenses restore the image and spread it over the wide screen. The picture quality is at maximum because this method both uses more of the negative frame than any other traditional 35 mm film process, optically compresses twice the image width, and does not require an intermediate conversion stage.

Super gauges. The full negative frame, including the area traditionally reserved for the sound track, is filmed using a wider gate. The print is then shrunk and/or cropped in order to fit it back onto release prints. The aspect ratio for Super 35, for example, can be set to virtually any projectable standard.

Large gauge. A 70 mm film frame is not only twice as wide as a standard frame but also has greater height. Shooting and projecting a film in 70 mm therefore gives more than twice the image area of non-anamorphic 35 mm film with no loss of quality. Few major dramatic narrative films have been filmed entirely on this format since the 1970s; the two most recent are Ron Howard's Far and Away and Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet. For many years, large budget pictures used to sometimes strike 70 mm blow-up prints for "roadshow" tours in select cities from the 35 mm camera negative in order to capitalize on the extra sound channels provided. The introduction of digital sound systems and diminishing number of installed 70 mm projectors has made a 70 mm release largely obsolete. However, blowups from 35 mm formats to IMAX has recently become popular for a limited number of blockbuster films.

Paramount's VistaVision was a larger gauge precursor to 70 mm film; it ran standard 35 mm film through the camera horizontally to achieve a widescreen effect using greater negative area, in order to create a finer-grained 35 mm prints in an era where standard monopack stock could not produce finer results. Frames were eight perforations wide. Eight-perf photography is sometimes used for shooting special effects in order to produce a finer grained matte that can be used in opticals without image degradation, and is notable for its use in Lucasfilm's original three Star Wars films, among others.

Multiple cameras/projectors. The Cinerama system originally involved shooting with three synchronized cameras locked together side by side, and projecting the three resulting films on a curved screen with three synchronized projectors. Later Cinerama movies were shot in 70 mm anamorphic (see below), and the resultant widescreen image was divided into three by optical printers to produce the final threefold prints. The technical drawbacks of Cinerama are discussed in its own article. Only one feature film, How the West Was Won was shot in "pure," three-camera Cinerama. With the exception of a few films created sporadically for use in specialty Cinerama theaters, the format is essentially dead.

A non-Cinerama, three-projector process was famously pioneered for the final reel of Abel Gance's epic film Napoléon (1927). The process, called Polyvision by Gance, consisted of three 1.33 images side by side, so that the total aspect ratio of the image is 4:1. The technical difficulties in mounting a full screening of the film, however, make most theaters unwilling or unable to show it in this format.

Between 1956 and 1957 the Soviets developed Kinopanorama, which is identical in most respects to the original three-camera Cinerama.

Anamorphic 70 mm. 70 mm with anamorphic lenses, popularly known as "Ultra Panavision" or "MGM Camera 65", creates an even wider high-quality picture. This camera process was most famously used in the 1959 version of Ben-Hur, resulting in an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, one of the widest prints ever used for a feature film. 70 mm anamorphic was not commonly used, due to the very high production costs, although it was favored for epic films such as Ben-Hur in order to capture wide panoramic landscapes and high-budget scenes with thousands of extras and enormous sets. This system is obsolete, despite its ease in setting up.

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