Why do I still see black bars on my widescreen TV when viewing certain widescreen DVDs and HD broadcast?
Your widescreen TV has an aspect ratio of 16:9 (1.78:1), which is the aspect ratio of HDTV. However, movies are filmed at several different aspect ratios, including 2.35:1. Also referred to as “scope”, 2.35:1 is a very panoramic aspect ratio that provides a wide field of view in the theater. Scope is much wider than your widescreen TV, so it still requires the use of letterboxing (“black bars”) to fit the entire image on screen. Some TVs and DVD players have a zoom function that allows you to blow up the image so it fills the screen, but the sides of the image must be cropped in order to do so.
Related Questions
- My DVD movie says WIDESCREEN on the box but when viewing it I still have black bars on top and bottom of my 16:9 TV?
- Why do I still see black bars on my widescreen TV when viewing certain widescreen DVDs and HDTV broadcasts?
- Why do I still see black bars on my widescreen TV when viewing certain widescreen DVDs and HD broadcast?
