Aspect Ratio

Aspect ratio is the shape of the TV screen. Old TV’s were all in 4:3 which is almost a square. Now most modern TV’s are all in 16:9. The 16:9 aspects give the viewer a panoramic view which immerses the viewer into the action that is happening on screen. This makes for better viewing.

Pan and scan

Pan and scan is when the editors at a TV station will crop out the most important part of the screen to fit into the 4:3 aspects. When this is done we lose lots of the whole screen meaning that we miss lots of the picture going on in the background. You can also use letterboxing instead of pan and scan to fit widescreen into 4:3.

However when you have a TV show that is in 4:3 and it has to fit onto a 16:9 screen then if you don’t convert it then the picture will be very stretched. To prevent this from happening you have to pillarbox the screen so that two black bars appear on either side of the screen.

A standards converter automatically converts any aspect into the other.