What is wide screen presentation enhanced for 169 TV?

Answer 1

It's all to do with aspect ratios. An aspect ratio is the shape of an image, so a film format that is twice as wide as it is high will have an aspect ratio of 2 : 1. Traditional television has an aspect ratio of 4 : 3, so it is 4 wide and three high. Widescreen television is 16 : 9 so it looks wider than 4 : 3. and that is where the problems lie - film is normally a different aspect ratio than television so when a film is converted to DVD, the shape has to change. When it is being mastered, there is now a choice of 4 : 3 or 16 : 9 aspect ratios. The choice in this case is to format the film to 16 : 9 hence the claim "enhanced for 16 : 9" in fact, it is rarely enhanced because every shot will have part of the image cropped from the sides (or the top and bottom in some cases). There are some clever gadgets called ARCs that do the job (Aspect Ratio Converters). Not only do they re-size and re-shape the image, they can also control the area of the original image that is captured. Most films are converted dynamically, meanign that the area converted will move from one shot to the next.