Widescreen HDTV Born From Cinematic Influence
If you are shopping for a new television set, today's offerings may come with a lot of confusing terms and initials printed on the box and spouted by the so-called experts working in the electronics departments of many retailers. However, one common thread of most of the current offerings is the limited availability of the old standard, almost square television screens, mostly replaced by widescreen HDTV sets. While the evolution of the television set for home use seems to have picked up steam in the past decade, it was in the 1980's that the widescreen HDTV set was initially conceived.
There is little doubt that digital signals provide a clearer picture on television broadcasts, and provided that new widescreen HDTV set is connected to a high definition input signal, the resulting picture can be obvious. However, from the first days of broadcasting the television viewing standard offered a 4:3 aspect ratio, resulting the seemingly square pictures. As motion pictures were made in the 1930's and 1940's, they were made for the widescreens used in movie theaters, offering a much better image on the larger screens.
As digital recording finally broke through the technologies barriers nearly every movie is filmed in digital format and when shown on a standard 4:3 aspect ratio television, known as letterbox, there are black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, not shown on a widescreen HDTV set.
With Improvement Comes Additional Costs
In the 1980's manufacturers around the globe struggled to agree on standardized technologies for digital broadcasting and reception and finally agreed on the 16:9 aspect ratio leading to the refinement of widescreen HDTV sets. Resolution was also defined to represent the number of pixels displayed on the widescreen HDTV, height and width, with a standard of 1080, either interlaced or progressively scanned accepted.
The first widescreen HDTV went on sale in the United States in 1998, which was the very beginning of the confusion involved in choosing a widescreen HDTV set based on its resolution. Many argue that the 1080p, progressive scan sets offer the best resolution, but the 1080i, interlaced offers a great picture while using less bandwidth, making it faster to send the signal through cables from internet.
The vertical display resolution is the most common form manufacturers use to indicate the resolution of the widescreen HDTV, but the width is also part of the equation concerning the clarity of the picture. To accurately determine the resolution, the vertical and horizontal numbers should be multiplied to determine the total number of pixels being displayed on the widescreen HDTV.
