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Widescreen

Widescreen images are displayed within a set of aspect ratios (relationship of image width to height) 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 4:3 (1.33:1).

For TV, the original screen ratio for broadcasts was in 4:3 (1.33:1). Largely between the 1990s and early 2000s A.D., at varying paces in different countries, 16:9 (e.g. 1920x1080p 60p) widescreen displays came into increasingly common use by High Definitions.


With computer displays, aspect ratios others than 4:3 (e.g. 1920x1440) are also referred to as "widescreen". "Widescreen" computer displays were previously made in a 16:10 aspect ratio (e.g. 1920x1200), but nowdays are they usually 16:9 (e.g. 1920x1080).

Film[edit]

History[edit]

Widescreen was first used for The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight (1897). This was not only the longest film that had been released to date at 100 minutes, but also the first widescreen film being shot on 63 mm Eastman stock with five perforations per frame.


Widescreen was first widely used in the late 1920s in some short films and newsreels, and feature films, notably Abel Gance's film Napoleon (1927) with a final widescreen sequence in what Gance called Polyvision. Claude Autant-Lara released a film Pour construire un feu (To Build a Fire, 1928) in the early Henri Chrétien widescreen process, later adapted by Twentieth Century-Fox for CinemaScope in 1952.

(AFD)

Active Format Description

Anamorphic widescreen

Aspect ratio (image)

C-Day

Cine 160

Full frame

IMAX

Letterboxing (filming)

List of common resolutions

List of film formats

Motion picture terminology

Open matte

Pan and scan

Ultrawide formats

Virtual widescreen

Widescreen display modes

(WSS)

Widescreen signaling

for the American Widescreen Museum

Official website

Reel Classics on

What is Widescreen?

(formerly The Letterbox and Widescreen Advocacy Page)

Widescreen.org

compiled by TFT Central (incomplete)

List of widescreen monitors

"The New Era of Screen Dimensions" by Bob Furmanek