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Blanked (cut off)
areas
Active image area
(Actual screen area)
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:
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 pro-
duce a better image when using a high quality scaler such as the PFP Controller. The reason is that you will
actually get more lines of resolution (and ultimately more detail) when using anamorphic titles. Basically, a TV
image is made of 480 lines. When using LETTERBOX (the drawing at the top of this 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 and 480 with anamorphic.
A 16x9 aspect ratio screen is impressive when viewing movies and HDTV material. Very few sports, news, and
television programs have adopted this wide-screen format. Watching this type of material on a 16x9 aspect
ratio screen can be confusing or have incorrect geometry - like stretching the image or squashing the image.
The Virtual Wide aspect ratio is the perfect solution to this dilemma. By converting a standard TV (4x3 aspect
ratio) image to 16x9 with precision scaling, no defects in the geometry are visible to the viewer. The Left and
Right edges of the image are gradually, yet progressively scaled to produce a smooth transformation to the 16x9
aspect ratio screen. This makes Virtual Wide a perfect way to fill the 16x9 screen with standard TV aspect ratio
material. Sporting events, TV movies, and even the news can be viewed in the 16x9 wide-screen format.