(Known as 21:9 or 2.35:1)
Ever wonder why you still see black bars on your display device, why that new movie won’t fill the whole screen? The answer is anamorphic widescreen. As DVD and DVB (Freeview) were introduced 16:9 widescreen was adopted as the display standard for consumer equipment, your flat panel or projector screen is more than likely in the 16:9 ratio with older square type CRT TV’s being a 4:3 ratio. Anamorphic widescreen is a 21:9 or 2.35:1 ratio, which leaves the viewer with black bars or a zoomed image, the solution on a projection system is choosing an anamorphic compatible projector, lens and screen.
The anamorphic widescreen format began in the 1950’s with directors wanting to express a greater visual impact on 35mm film this was achieved by optical compression. The optical compression is what results in the black bars appearing on the projection screen (or flat panel display). Previous generations of devices such as DVD players have tried to overcome this limitation by zooming the image, this has led to inherent issues of its own namely incorrect screen geometry. Because of the vertical stretch people and objects look tall and thin making the picture somewhat unnatural. Leave the black bars in place and you lose about one third of your 1080P projectors resolution, dropping down to around 810 resolution lines.
To achieve anamorphic widescreen, a compatible projector then requires an additional lens to provide the 21:9 ratio image this lens system optically enlarges the image by 33% in the horizontal plane with no stretch or geometry issues, giving the viewer an image utilising all 1080 lines of resolution and fills the screen to the top, no more black bars. Next time you are in a commercial cinema watch the screen after the previews have appeared, the curtains roll back to give the 21:9 screen size.
By utilising an anamorphic lens and compatible screen you are able to view the movie as the director intended, with no optic distortion in the enlarged image. With the flick of a switch the motorized anamorphic lens is able to engage or disengage to provide the correct video ratio for the source material. Anamorphic screens are available with side masking topology in either manual or motorized operation to cater for 16:9 and 4:3 TV broadcasts and DVD images.
