1. Film & Television 1.33:1 1940s Television Film 1.33:1 2.35:1 1950s
At the dawn of television, it adopted the same aspect ration that was common in motion pictures (1.33:1)
In the 1950s the motion picture industry began to offer movies in a wider format. Cinemascope was among the most successful and whose name is identified with wide-screen movies. This strategy was adopted to differentiate movies from television.
In the 1990s the Advanced Television Systems Committee established the wide-screen standard for television broadcast at 1.77:1. This aspect ration was a compromise between coexisting with 1.33:1 images from legacy television programs and the myriad of movie aspect ratios. This made it necessary for movies that were 2.35:1 to be “letterboxed” in order to avoid cropping the images.
2.35:1
1.77:1
1990s
Cinema-scope is a trademark of 20th Century Fox Corporation

2. Film & Television 1.33:1 1940s Television Film 1.33:1 2.35:1 1950s
The same anamorphic principles (optical stretching the image in the horizontal plane) that made the original wide-screen movie presentations possible can be applied to home theater projectors and convert the native 1.77:1 aspect ratio to 2.35:1.
2.35:1
1.77:1
1.33x Anamorphic Lens
1990s
Cinema-scope is a trademark of 20th Century Fox Corporation

3. 16:9 (1.77:1) Digital Widescreen (2.35:1) 4:3 (1.33:1) SDTV XGA UXGA
Starting Aspect Ratio Formats Anamorphic Ratio Final Aspect Ratio
16:9
(1.77:1)
Digital Widescreen
4:3
(1.33:1)
SDTV
XGA
UXGA
1.33 x
5:4
(1.25:1)
1.42 x
1.9 x
D-Cinema 1.3K
SXGA
(2.35:1)
Digital projectors are available in a number of aspect ratios but there are anamorphic lenses, available from Schneider to allow conversion to the two most popular wide screen formats.
1.33 x
16:9
(1.77:1)
HDTV
720p
1080p
DTV