widescreen movies on a widescreen monitor

20 inch is not a full HD you have to get the 23 or the 30 to do that i belive

You fellas need a schooling on aspect ratios. While the apple monitors are widescreen, make no misteak about it, they are not standard, They are around 15:10, while HD content is 16:9. None of the displays are "HD" because a pre-req for being HD is a 16:9 aspect ratio, though the 23 and of course the 30 have the resolution. Smaller movies, i.e. movies that are not based upon visual applearance like most comedies, are in whats known as 1.85:1, which is about 16x9, but a little wider. Movies that take importance on how good they look, like the lord of the rings, spend more on different cameras. Lower budget hollywood films are filmed on 35mm panavision cameras, while "epic" widescreen is on a 70mm filmstock. This gives an ultrawide aspect ratio of 2.35:1, and no real screen other that a big movie theaters would be that size.

...and then you have Ben Hur. Shot at an aspect ratio of 2.76:1 !!! How's that for Epic?

All HD means (I believe) is that the screen supports either 1080i (interlaced) or 780p (progressive) horizontal. It doesn't have to even be widescreen. There really isn't a standard for HD yet.

jimsowden said:

They are around 15:10, while HD content is 16:9.

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To pick nits: Apple 20", 23", and 30" displays are all exactly 16:10. But, yeah, not 16:9.

However, to do full HD, a monitor needn't be 16:9. It needs to support 1920x1080 (1080p vertical res @16:9 ratio = 1920 horizontal res). Hence, the 23" and 30" are HD monitors. It's OK to have extra pixels. The 20" is not HD only because it has a 1680x1050 resolution - close, but no banana.

QCassidy352 said:

thanks for the explanations. I don't see why HD would have anything to do with aspect ratio though... wouldn't that be a whole different issue?

Why does apple choose to make their displays 16:10 instead of 16:9?

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The only reason that HD has to do with the aspect ratio is that if a person wants to see their HD movie on the screen without ANY black bars they will need a 16:9 screen.

I don't know how this whole conversation turned into an HD discussion because the origional question was why do movies still have black bars and when he is talking about movies he is certainly not talking about HD movies seeing as there is almost no way of getting a hold of HD movies. Except for maybe BitTorrent or a rip off of a HDTV channel.

jsw said:

To pick nits: Apple 20", 23", and 30" displays are all exactly 16:10. But, yeah, not 16:9.

However, to do full HD, a monitor needn't be 16:9. It needs to support 1920x1080 (1080p vertical res @16:9 ratio = 1920 horizontal res). Hence, the 23" and 30" are HD monitors. It's OK to have extra pixels. The 20" is not HD only because it has a 1680x1050 resolution - close, but no banana.

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First you say that a monitor does not have to be 16:9 to be HD. This is correct. However, it is not correct to say that a HD monitor has to be 1920 x 1080. No commercial fixed-pixel HD monitor has 1920 x 1080. The highest resolution commercial fixed-pixel HD display is 1366 x 768, which yields square pixels. Plasma monitors less than 50" diagonal don't reach this resolution. Only projection sets have 1080 vertical lines. The criteria for a HD monitor is that it has at least 720 vertical lines. A 1680 x 1050 display more than qualifies. Generally, 1080 HD content is downsampled to the native resolution of a fixed-pixel display. The aspect ratio may be either 4:3 or 16:9. Why anyone would buy a 4:3 HD display is beyond me, but it is allowed under the standard. Although I insist on them, there is no requirement for square pixels.

I see a lot of points that need clarification here still. HD content is inherently 16:9. because it is a standard of either 1080i or 720p. Any widescreen display is capable of displaying a commercial dvd,, like charlies angle’s for example, full on the screen if it is designed to. Like how widescreen tvs all have composite input. All widescreen DVDs actually are 16:9, but the wider ones just “letterbox” the picture to the appropriate aspect ratio. The discussion turned to HDTV because of its standard as a widescreen aspect ratio. It sort of has become a standard for widescreen everywhere, from PAL to Letterboxed shows like ER just because of how prevalent is will be in the future. Back to the apple monitors, which are made by Samsung. I have a Samsung LTM1775 which has an aspect ratio of 15:10. This, though isn’t standard, gives me a computer resolution of 1280x768. Samsung insists on making screens that aren’t standard ratio (I think for a higher ppi count) and we all know the apple screens are made by Samsung. Now if I play a 16:9 DVD on my computer, which knows the exact size of my screen, I will get small bars on the top and bottom to get the full picture. Now if I play that same DVD over my Component DVD player set to Widescreen, I can get a full picture on my screen. Just something more to consider when learning about Screen Aspect Ratios is that while a Widescreen TV May be HDTV, it doesn’t mean its always 16:9. Just the source is.

jimsowden said:

.... HD content is inherently 16:9. because it is a standard of either 1080i or 720p....

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Absolutely not. The are several formats for HD content. It may be 1080i or 720p. It may be either 16:9 or 4:3. Any combination of these two aspect ratios and these two scanning lines fully qualifies as HD. However, it is the number of scanning lines that determine whether content is HD, not the aspect ratio.

MisterMe said:

Absolutely not. The are several formats for HD content. It may be 1080i or 720p. It may be either 16:9 or 4:3. Any combination of these two aspect ratios and these two scanning lines fully qualifies as HD. However, it is the number of scanning lines that determine whether content is HD, not the aspect ratio.

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Ok, I'm not sure about it on paper, and It would make sense that it would be vertical resilution because 720 referers to that. I would really like to see where you got your information out of curioscity. I have been working a seeing HD for years not and never, ever, once have I seen 4:3, so it really isn't worth mentioning.