What is Anamorphic Widescreen?
Anamorphic enhancement is a process for widescreen TVs where the original image is compressed by 33% in the vertical axis during encoding. When the player decodes the image, the vertical axis is decompressed giving a higher resolution and greater clarity. Anamorphically enhanced DVDs can be viewed just as easily on fullscreen TVs as widescreen ones although the process is usually not discernible. PC monitors, despite almost universally being 4:3, have a higher resolution than TV sets and so can display the widescreen image in a window 854×480 pixels or higher for NTSC, 1024×576 or higher for PAL). Despite a common misunderstanding, the term ‘anamorphic’ does not ensure that the image will entirely fill the screen of a widescreen TV set.
If you’ve looked at the back of a DVD case these days, you’ve probably seen all the bewildering terminology: 16×9, anamorphic widescreen, enhanced for widescreen TVs…the list goes on and on. They’re all referring to the same thing. Simply put, anamorphic widescreen is a special feature of DVD, that means that the video on the disc packs the most resolution possible by the TV standards of today and the near future. Mind you, we’re not talking about high-definition television-like resolution. While there have been technology demonstrations of HD-DVD (High-Definition DVD), most industry experts believe that such a format is more than a decade away, at the very best case. One of the most confusing terms of DVD has to be the anamorphic 16×9 enhancement. DVD has the capability to store a lot more image information than your regular TV set can display, even though not all discs actually support this feature. So called 16×9 anamorphic TV sets can use this additional information to create a h
Anamorphic widescreen can refer to either a technique of motion picture cinematography that captures a widescreen image on standard 35mm film, or a similar principle applied to DVD recordings to allow for the best picture quality possible. In either case, anamorphic widescreen involves the compressing or “squeezing” of a widescreen image to maximize resolution. Anamorphic widescreen was first used in motion picture cinematography in the 1950s. Thirty-five millimeter motion picture film has an aspect ratio of 1.37:1, meaning it is 1.37 times as wide as it is tall. However, widescreen is 2.39:1, meaning it is wider than the film negative. Prior to the development of anamorphic widescreen, rectangular widescreen images had to be recorded on 35mm film so that their full width fit on the more square-shaped negative, with unused portions above and below the image. The image on the negative resembles a small rectangle within a larger, square frame. Anamorphic widescreen uses the entire frame
Anamorphic enhancement is a process for widescreen TVs where the original image is compressed by 33% in the vertical axis during encoding. When the player decodes the image, the vertical axis is decompressed giving a higher resolution and greater clarity. Anamorphically enhanced DVDs can be viewed just as easily on fullscreen TVs as widescreen ones although the process is usually not discernible. PC monitors, despite almost universally being 4:3, have a higher resolution than TV sets and so can display the widescreen image in a window (854×480 pixels or higher for NTSC, 1024×576 or higher for PAL). Despite a common misunderstanding, the term ‘anamorphic’ does not ensure that the image will entirely fill the screen of a widescreen TV set.
