Phillips are touting a new ultra-wide LCD TV, with a 21:9 aspect ratio. The being to bring that cinema experience to your lounge room. 16:9 is so yesterday, right ? Not exactly…
It’s not exactly a terrible idea, especially if you’ve ever been watching a movie and been annoyed that despite laying down a boat-load of cash for your new widescreen (16:9) TV, the movie still doesn’t fill the screen. In too many cases you’ll still see black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. This is due to the movie not being in 16:9, but usually in the wider cinema format of 2.35:1 or 2.40:1.
Confused by all of this ? Well that’s not surprising. The difference between how movies are filmed, displayed in the cinema, and displayed in our lounge rooms, is a complete mess. Just when you think your transition from 4:3 to 16:9 would be your last one, that may not be the case. Sounds crazy right, it is.
So ultimately we’re not going to see a standard format from end-to-end. Cinemas around the world are never going to shrink they’re screens to 16:9 and widescreen 16:9 displays are now so entrentrenced in the home and business that it’s not going to change either. So sadly we’re stuck with letterboxing and cropping of content.
If you have a dedicated home theatre room in which you only watch movies, then maybe this Philips screen will appeal to you, but it’ll suck for watching 16:9 TV and DVDs.
