Understand the Effects of Aspect Ratio Before Purchasing a Wide Screen

When you purchase an HDTV, you are going to need to get used to variances in aspect ratio. Before the introduction of HDTV, aspect ratio was something that you didn’t really have to think about. Television broadcasts were in 4:3 aspect ratio and movies were changed to a 4:3 aspect ratio before they were put on tape or DVD. Therefore, unless you were really involved with television technology, you probably didn’t know a whole lot about aspect ratios.

With HDTVs, however, you need to become well acquainted with aspect ratio. Once you hook up your HDTV, you might find that some of your favorite television programs have bars around the sides. These black bars may be above and below the image, to the right and the left of the image, or even all around the image. This is all because of aspect ratio.

The bars that you see around the image on your screen are put there in an attempt to maintain the proper aspect ratio of the image being displayed. If you remove these bars, which is possible with many televisions, the image will become distorted because it is essentially being stretched to fit into the size of your screen. Therefore, you are going to need to choose between filling up the entire screen space or maintaining the proper aspect ratio.

Personally, I prefer to just give up the space and deal with the black bars. When I first got a wide screen television, the bars were really annoying and distracting. It also irritated me because I felt as if I wasn’t getting what I paid for. After all, why pay for all that extra screen space if I am not going to be able to use it all? Anymore, I don’t even notice the black bars. In fact, depending upon the channel I am watching, the black bars may come and go during commercials and it doesn’t even bother me.

If you haven’t purchased a wide screen television yet, however, this might bother you at first. Since you don’t see these black bars when you look at the televisions on display at the showroom, you might feel a bit ripped off at first. So, you need to be prepared for this characteristic of wide screen televisions.

You also need to be prepared to purchase the right DVDs for your wide screen televisions. Check on the back of the box to make sure it is in a 16:9 aspect ratio. Otherwise, you will experience the bars on your television while watching movies as well.

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