Real Wide Screen and No More Black Bars

One of the most common questions I get is about the black bars that appear above and below the image with many movies.

After all, a spiffy new HDTV and Blu-ray player will banish the black bars we had with DVDs and old TVs, right? Nope.

But with the right projector, screen, and lens, you can have CinemaScope in your home.

And no more black bars.

Back in the 1950’s, Hollywood came up with the concept of very widescreen movie aspect ratios, with numerous camera, lens, projector and screen variants all aspiring to stretch the horizontal image size.

Film technologies such as Cinerama, Todd-AO, and CinemaScope were developed to increase the visual impact of big budget Hollywood movies, and the trend continues today, with most major “tentpole” movies filmed in what the industry has dubbed simply “scope”, with aspect ratios as wide as 2.40:1 (for every unit of height, the image is 2.4 units wide).

It doesn’t help frazzled consumers that the movie industry describes aspect ratios numerically differently than HDTV set makers. The now-obsolete 4:3 analog TV screen shape is described in Hollywood as 1.33, which is simply the result of dividing 4 by 3. Same goes for HDTV's 1.78:1, which comes from 16:9. Check the three Wall-E images above.

While the majority of movie releases are in the film industry’s so-called “Academy Flat” 1.85 aspect ratio, which is almost, but not quite, the same aspect ratio as 16:9, many are shot in anamorphic widescreen with aspect ratios of varying sizes up to a very wide 2.40:1, where the film camera is fitted with a lens that squeezes the captured image horizontally, making everything in the resulting film frame look tall and skinny.

At the movie theater the reverse occurs, with another anamorphic lens attached to the film projector providing the necessary unsqueezing function, so the audience sees the full intended widescreen images in their proper proportions.

With fixed-frame HDTV sets however, you’ll be seeing black bars when you play a widescreen movie at home. While almost all sets do provide a zoom function that lets you fill out the screen to get rid of the black bars, image resolution suffers and you’ll be missing a goodly chunk of the movie’s left and right side image.

The good news for movie buffs is that it’s possible to have it all at home, and watch widescreen movies in their true original aspect ratio with no black bars, as long as they’re willing to pop for a front projection system, which has never been more affordable.

To get everything to work just right, there are three essential elements to a widescreen anamorphic front projection setup.

First is the projector, which needs to be equipped with a vertical stretch image processing function, which is often called just that (Vertical Stretch), or is also known as Anamorphic Mode 1 Scaling (the function is also found in numerous outboard video processors). This stretches the source image vertically to fill the projector’s imaging system elements, removing the black bars in the process (but also making everything look tall and skinny).

Then, a special anamorphic lens is placed directly in front of the projector’s lens opening, which provides the requisite horizontal stretch to restore the original image proportions.

The anamorphic lens is only used with widescreen movies, and is either manually or automatically moved away from the projector’s lens when not needed.

Finally, a suitably wide front projection screen rounds out the trio, which all the major home theater screen vendors offer. Simpler systems make do with a fixed-frame 2.40:1 screen, but that will leave visible screen area at the sides when watching 16:9 (1.78) programs, and substantial side bars with 4:3 content.

Fortunately, screen makers offer a variety of screen masking system configurations that permit either drop-down or variable horizontal side masking, to hide unused screen area when appropriate.

There’s another big bonus to going with a full anamorphic widescreen projection setup.

When in anamorphic mode, all of the projector’s pixels are used to fill the screen image, which provides about a 30% brightness increase compared to what is achieved with a letterboxed “scope” movie on a standard 16:9 screen.

Here at Home Entertainment’s Palm Springs HDTV Testing & Review Center (my home), I get to watch my widescreen movies on Stewart Filmscreen’s deluxe CineCurve.

This is a fixed height, variable horizontal aspect ratio screen, which features remote-controlled adjustable horizontal side masking and multiple aspect ratio memories to get the screen’s aspect ratio to match exactly with the projected image. While certainly not inexpensive, it’s the most popular way to go for a true high end setup.

Danish screen maker DNP joins the party with their Supernova Epic, another premium curved screen that also features motorized side masking.

Both of these curved screens feature equidistant lens-to-screen paths, which helps to minimize the slight extreme edge softening that sometimes accompanies anamorphic widescreen front projection.

For more on projection screens, check out our Projection Screen 101 article.

On to anamorphic lenses and projectors...