have you ever wondered why most TVs and
monitors were that boxy almost square
shape until recently well back in the
1890s Thomas Edison and his assistant
William Kennedy Dickson introduced a
device for viewing films called the
Kinetoscope this device displayed an
image 35 millimeters wide yep just like
film introducing the four by three
aspect ratio but what is an aspect ratio
well simply put an aspect ratio is the
ratio of the width to the height of the
image being displayed so this same 4 by
3 ratio was adopted by many movie and TV
producers making it the standard for
decades because that's how it often goes
in the film industry once you've adopted
a standard thanks to the cost
oh goodness the cost of the equipment
it's really hard to run around changing
it all the time and so it wasn't until
the early 1950s that widescreen was
conceived and this is kind of funny
originally widescreen despite having you
know obvious benefits was used as kind
of like a marketing gimmick by the movie
studios why watch movies on your 4 by 3
TV at home when you could watch a
widescreen movie at your local theater
not to mention paying more for it and
buying a bag of popcorn while you're at
it
so widescreen ratios became widespread
starting in 1953 with a system called
the Cinerama that used three projectors
on a curved screen now unfortunately
this proved to be too expensive leading
to the development of single projector
widescreen as well as movies produced
for flat screens which is kind of funny
because curved displays are had now
starting to make a comeback is like
technology is almost the same as fashion
at a certain point at first widescreen
films were actually made by removing the
top and bottom edges to create a 15 by 9
aspect ratio very close to what is seen
in most displays today but later 20th
Century Fox collaborated with French
professor Henri Christian who helped to
create a special anamorphic
lens that squished a widescreen image
onto regular film so when played back
through a second anamorphic lens the
resulting image had an aspect ratio of
two point three five to one almost
identical to the modern twenty one by
nine ish filming standard nowadays TVs
very commonly used the 16 by 9 aspect
ratio we've come to know and love
adopted because it could display videos
recorded in other common aspect ratios
without a ton of cropping or Distortion
so not surprisingly this format was
chosen for broadcast HDTV but the story
doesn't stop there sixteen by nine is
also the most popular gaming resolution
and is used with popular streaming
websites like YouTube vessel Hulu
Netflix and countless others not
watching in 1080p that's fine because
sixteen by nine was also chosen because
it down scales easily to other
resolutions but even with the ubiquity
of sixteen by nine many people still
prefer even wider aspect ratios because
they give you a more immersive
experience thanks to the fact that they
fill up more of your visual field flying
through space in no man's sky driving
off-road in dirt three you're just
playing minecraft in a 21 by nine ultra
wide aspect ratio can be deeply engaging
so due to this more and more games are
starting to support 21 by 9 natively and
we're seeing 21 by 9 monitors become
more common in the marketplace so where
does this leave us for the future well I
wouldn't be surprised if the market for
ultra wide content and hardware
continues to grow not just because of
its immersiveness but also because of
its benefits to content creators
productivity minded people and the
manufacturers off displays who
desperately need something new to sell
you and there's also little doubt that
we'll start to see new aspect ratio
standards start to pop up thanks to the
rise of VR the oculus rift for example
uses a 16 by 10 aspect ratio to fill the
wearer's feel the view as much as
possible a new hell maybe we'll just
make our own special linus media group
aspect ratio for optimal loop viewing
after all viewer satisfaction is what
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