A Guide For TV Formats

When you read on the backside of a DVD or Blu-Ray cover you might notice that different movies have different formats. Words like Fullscreen – Widescreen - Ultrawidescreen - 4:3 – 16:9 – 21:9 – 1.33:1 – 1.66:1 – 1.77:1 – 1.78:1 – 1.85:1 – 2.35:1 – 2.40:1 might appear and make you wonder? What does these words and numbers mean and is it your Television set or your DVD player thats important here? Below you can find a small guide on TV and movie formats.

In the picture above you see an ordinary 4:3 television set. When TV's were first made in the 60's they were all produced in a 4:3 format. This was the standard up until the 90's where widescreen TV's came about. The Fullscreen format is know by these other terms like 4:3 or 1.33:1 or 1.66:1. The term is mathematical. The number of centimeters to measure the height of your screen you can multiply by the number 1.33 and your will get the width of your screen.

In the picture above you see a widescreen TV. Widescreen TV's came about during the 90's and within a few years it became the favorite TV type among the consumers. Today it is actually hard to buy a fullscreen TV since nearly no shops sell them anymore. The Widescreen format is known as 16:9 format and can be categorized by these types.1.77:1 – 1.78:1 – 1.85:1 - 2.20:1. The formats fill out the TV screen quite well but black areas can appear. If you watch a DVD or Blu-Ray movie it will often be shown in the 2.35:1 format or above which makes horizontal black areas in the top and bottom of your screen, to be able to show the full width of the movie on your screen. If you see a newer TV show like Gilmore Girls the late seasons will fit perfectly since they are shot i 1.78:1 but the first couple of seasons in the show was shot in 4:3 format and this gives you vertical black boxes in the left and right side of your screen. A lot of TV's today scale the images from you DVD to fit the TV screen but this will either give the picture a funny feeling or cut the original image to make it fit.

The new Ultrawidescreen format is generally the same format as you see in the Cinemas. The pictures are very wide and on the new generation of TV's you can make your DVD or Blu-Ray movies fill out the entire screen without have black boxes at all. This means actually that a 42 inch Ultrawidescreen shows you a larger picture than a 46 inch normal widescreen TV. The term used for Ultrawidescreen i commonly known as 21:9 and is divided into the more specific numbers 2.35:1 – 2.39:1 or 2.40:1. The Ultrawidescreen TV shown above can be purchased from Philips. The Concept is still brand new - and therefore the prices are rather high, but my guess is that it will be the common TV in 5 years.

Is there anything more I should know? Well yeah! Told shortly we have come to the place in time where the population of the world starts changing their widescreen TV's for the newer and thinner flatscreen TV's and HD-TV's often referred to as a plasma, LCD or LED TV. The format on these types of TV's are mostly 16:9 widescreen. Terms like HD-ready, Full-HD, 720p, 1080p, 1080i and HDMI flourish in the TV ads.

Types:
Plasma, LCD or LED has got something to do with the quality, look and feel of the TV screen. Plasma will give you a very clear picture but can be really annoying watching TV during the daytime with daylight. Furthermore the lifetime of plasma screens are told to be shorter than LCD.

A LCD type of TV is not so sharp and clear as the plasma but this is good for rejecting the daylight a little. What's bad about LCD is that pixelerrors can occur but usually they dont.

LED is a brand new technology and very cool and stylish. The TV is so thin that its like to put a poster on the wall when you decide to hang up your TV screen.

Resolution:
You be careful now! Don't get cheated when you puchase a new TV screen. Don't buy the cheapest modal available. The future is Digital TV and HDTV (High Def). The first flatpanel TV's came with only 720p resolution and the mark HD-ready, but 720p is not near ready! A true High Def signal is made by 1080 lines across the TV and comes from Blu-Ray and PS3 games in 1080p (progressive) and from digital HD tv channels in 1080i (interlaced). So it is a really good idea to buy the TV with 1080p capability. 

720p:
720p can be seen as 720 lines across your screen which will change 24 times pr. second. Every line in every frame will change. An old european tv has around 400 lines and in USA the TV's normally have about 500 lines - so a 720p TV is almost 2 times better.

1080i:
1080i means that your television can show 1080 lines but the lines only change in every other frame (picture). So line 1,3,5,7 and so on changes in frame 1 and line 2,4,6,8 and so on changes in frame 2. It can be compared to the difference between a 50Hz and a 100Hz TV.

1080p:
At last you have 1080p which changes every 1080 lines on your screen in every single frame (picture) - 24 times pr. second. This gives an exeptional quality compared to what we are used to.

HDMI:
HDMI is not dangerous. It just a new type of cable which will substitute for the old scart-cable. It is important that you buy a TV with 3 sets of HDMI ports, so you can connect with both gaming console, Blu-ray and/or DVD player and also a digital TV box maybe? The HDMI cable transfers both picture and sound in one chord and it does it digitally where the scart-cable did it by analog.

I hope you learned a litte from this short guide to TV-formats. Questions and comments are of course welcome below.

/mads1