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As you can see, our screen in this example is a 1.85:1 ratio. The dashed lines
show the area that we ‘blanked’. If you recall, watching a letterbox movie on a 4:3
screen gave us black bars; therefore with letterbox movies, we’re not losing any
information!
The ‘other’ type of widescreen is called ‘ANAMORPHIC’. The image is still a
widescreen format, but instead of ‘blanking’ the top and bottom, we simply reduce
the overall height of the image:
19
Blanked (cut off)
areas
Active image area
(Actual screen area)
As a result, all objects will be ‘short and fat’ (like the circle above), right? Well, not if
you’re using software that is anamorphic. Most (but not all) DVD movies have an
anamorphic option.
Anamorphic material will always produce a better image when using a high quality
scaler such as the VHD-4403 ULTRA. The reason is that you will actually get more
lines of resolution (and ultimately more detail) when using anamorphic titles (assum-
ing your display device has that capability). Basically, a TV image is made of 480
lines. When using LETTERBOX (the drawing at the top of the page), we’re ‘throwing
away’ information by blanking the top and bottom. The end result is that there will
only be around 360 lines of information on the screen. With anamorphic, 480.
ASPECT RATIOS