I was just wondering what is the difference between full screen and widescreen tv's besides the two lines at the top and bottom of the screen?
I'm curious too. I know the difference between wide screen and full screen movies like on dvd, that being that you get the whole picture with wide screen while full screen has to cut parts out to fit it on screen. I don't see any advantage to a widescreen TV unless it somehow shows a widescreen movie without the black rectangles.
When they shoot movies for cinematic release it is in a wide aspect ratio, usually something like 1.7 to 1 or 2.2 to 1 (not the exact numbers), which corresponds to the screens you have in the movies. Televisions have an aspect of 4/3, or 1.33 to 1, so obviously movies filmed for theater do not fit well on a TV screen. They way they get around it is to do "Pan & Scan", so when watching on TV, instead of seeing the entire image, you only see a potion of it, and they pan from side to side to basically show the most important part of the image. When you watch a wide screen movie on a regular TV, you obviously get the black bars at top and bottom. Similarly, when you watch regular TV on a widescreen TV, you will get black bars down each side. You also see a lot of people "stretch" a regular TV image to fit a widescreen, whioch basicallly makes all the people look short and fat.
Here's the screen shots that will show you what davo is talking about. As HDTV becomes more prevelant, the traditional 4 by 3 aspect ratio is going to go away. http://www.starwars.com/episode-ii/feature/20020925/
in addition, watching movies on an HDTV allows for progressive scanning and a better picture. The difference is rather remarkable, in my opinion.
Lest anyone think I'm dispensing erroneous info, I should point out that you can get HDTV with a traditional 4 by 3 aspect ratio. I just don't think those will last long.
all lot of current show broadcast in widescreen too. so they look like they should on a widescreen tv. you dont get black bars down the side if you watch tv on a widescreen. the tv will allow diferent strecth methods to fit the screen. they are pretty clean and dont make the people look short and fat. you really cant tell the difference.
