pctechguide.com

Widescreen Digital Video

There are quite a few digital channels transmitting widescreen programmes and movies for viewers with a widescreen television and the general trend is clearly towards the introduction of widescreen as the standard picture size for digital TV. The digital receiver will have an option in the set-up menu to select the type of television it is connected to – either 4:3 or 16:9 widescreen. The MPEG decoder in the receiver or set-top box is signalled when it is receiving a widescreen transmission and processes it in a way which is dependent on the display it is feeding. If the display is 16×9, no processing takes place but if the display is 4×3, the decoder will zoom or crop depending on its capability and on the viewer preference expressed in the installation setup:

  • it may take a centre cut-out, with the same height but severely cropping the sides
  • it may display a 16×9 letterbox, with all the picture but with large black bands top and bottom
  • it may crop a bit off either side, taking the ratio aspect down to just 14:9, leaving somewhat thinner black lines top and bottom
  • it may automatically distort a 14:9 cropped picture to fit a 4:3 screen.

In the UK the term “anamorphic” is used to differentiate a 16×9 widescreen picture which fills the whole frame, from a 16×9 letterbox with blank lines at the top and bottom of the frame. In the USA the terminology used is 16×9 full frame and 16×9 letterbox respectively.

 

Filed Under: Digital Video

Latest Articles

LP to CD Split

If you record an entire side of an LP at a time, you're likely to want to subsequently divide the recording up into discrete tracks and to individually name each track. Audacity allows this to be achieved in a couple of different ways. One method involves actually splitting the recording … [Read More...]

HDTV

Japan had pioneered HDTV for decades with an analogue implementation. However, both it and a similar attempt in Europe ultimately failed. Japan again took the lead in digital HDTV, this time along with the USA, who began digital HDTV … [Read More...]

SIMMs

Memory chips are generally packaged into small plastic or ceramic dual inline packages (DIPs) which are themselves assembled into a memory module. The single inline memory module or SIMM is a small circuit board designed to accommodate … [Read More...]

Guides

Recent Posts

MSI 890GXM-G65 Review

Price: $127. The MSI 890GXM-G65 motherboard packs a lot of power in a very small space. Bang for buck you are getting a lot for your money.is an Intel … [Read More...]

HSDPA

High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is a new mobile telephony protocol that provides a smooth evolutionary path for UMTS networks … [Read More...]

Graphics Card Removal

Replacing your graphics card is easy and the only tools you'll need are a Phillips screwdriver and - just in case you're cack-handed - a pair of … [Read More...]