Movie Aspect Ratios

...Or, Why are there black bars on my TV?

Movies have pretty much always had different aspect ratios, depending on what the director wanted. The aspect ratio is the size of the width of the movie as compared to the height. For example, Star Wars has an aspect ratio of 2.35 to one, meaning that the movie is 2.35 as wide as it is high.

There are three main types of aspect ratios: 1.333:1, 1.85:1, and 2.35:1, with the latter being the most common.

However, for years, TVs have been in the aspect ratio 1.333 to one.

When VHS came out, it only supported a 1.333:1 aspect ratio at full resolution. This required the chopping of the sides of 1.85:1 movies and 2.35:1 movies in order to fit the screen.

With the advent of DVDs, directors decided to put the whole movie on a disc, regardless of the aspect ratio, to be viewable on all televisions.

So while with VHS, movies looked like this:

With DVDs, it looks like this:

Yes, there are black bars, but at least the whole movie is viewable.

With modern widescreen TVs, this has become less of a problem. These TVs are 16 by 9 (1.77 to one) and so the 1.85:1 movies cover almost the whole picture. However, 1.333:1 movies have black bars on the sides, and 2.35:1 movies still have black bars on the top and bottom, though these bars are smaller.