Television Aspect Ratio. The Real Number
It’s a really simple term…what’s the width of a picture to its height. In the still world a typical example would be the common “8-by-10”. When you reduce it, you get to 4x5 in the portrait mode. It’d be 5x4 in the landscape world. Note that it’s just a ratio. It doesn’t matter how big the image is – millimeters, inches, meters, feet, yards – whatever the width is, the height is the same ratio (percentage).
Early TV used a 4x3 ratio. Four wide by three high. Four what? Inches? Feet? Furlongs? It didn’t matter. Whatever the width, the height was determined by taking three-fourths of the width. It goes back to the 4x3 aspect ratio used by Thomas Edison while developing the motion picture camera. That late-1800’s format survived through multiple generations of television till the advent of high definition TV. Made sense. Keep the ratio the same as film and there’s no loss of parts of the image when transmitting on TV1. No black “curtains”, either.
While American television remained 4x3, a ratio that is 1.33:1, through NTSC black & white and color, any number of additional aspect ratios were used in film. Sound imprinted on the edge of film caused a minor change but through the years, 2.35:1, up to 2.76:1 were used by various producers.2 But with each came new projection equipment or projection lenses for theaters. Do a search for anamorphic lenses if you want some fun reading.
Film could do that. For TV to change would mean new TVs or adapters for everyone. The FCC was dead set against that. One of the big selling points of the RCA composite color system was that it was compatible with existing black and white sets.
Then along came HDTV.
In 1996, the U.S. settled on a system of transmitting high definition
television, increasing the number of scan lines from 525 to 720 or 1080. At the same time, they chose to change the
aspect ratio to 16:9 (1.78:1). The new, wider image gave more of a panoramic
view. For a few years, viewers were
treated to side curtains to fill the space when 4:3 programs were shown and with
parts of the images cut off when transmitting movies. We were also treated to
overweight performers when the image was electronically stretched and viewers
on older 4:3 sets sometimes thought they were watching reruns of The Thin Man.
It took a good twenty years until various methods were
developed to change the image size with little distortion.
A comparison of the main two TV Aspect Ratios
So now, we’re entrenched in the 16:9 ratio. You’d think. With the fall off of viewers stations/networks lost eyeballs. Not only were their programs reaching fewer viewers, their promos and commercials were viewed less, too. A lot less if you include bathroom breaks in the calculations. If you can’t promote your programs to as many people, how will they know to tune in?
The promotion folks figured it out. Most stations already displayed the “bug” in the lower right. 24x7 branding (thank you Ted Turner). Why not use the lower screen occasionally for promos and tune-ins. Unfortunately, “occasionally” became “constantly”. 16:9 has disappeared. It’s become more like 16:7 and there are no signs of the promos abating. In fact, some stations have begun adding commercial matter to the screen.
Beyond the consistency of messages is that there is no correlation between promo and program. You may be watching a night scene – police chasing a suspect or a dark basement – and up pops a promo. As bad, a high-key scene where the super disappears into the program. It’s useless as a promo and annoys viewers. Combine that with the promo topic and the program and you can get into some pretty strange or embarrassing screens. Maybe watching Full House when a promo for a special on birth control pops up. Yeah, that one’s far-fetched but you get the idea.
It gets even more complicated when you include streaming and smart phone distribution. Most smart phones display in the portrait mode. That means the aspect ratio is more like 9:16. It’s not a television standard but we’ve all seen it, usually with retranmission of online posts Stay tuned for ATSC3 to see how the industry handles it long term.
What to do? Looks like the answer is, “live with it.” But some coordination of program/promo would be nice. Afraid there’s no money for that.
1 That doesn’t include the issue of TV’s “safe area” which varies with format
2 Surprisingly, IMAX is only 1.43:1
