Editing Widescreen (section)

== Television ==
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The original screen ratio for TV broadcasts was 4:3 (1.33:1). This was the same aspect ratio as most cinema screens and films at the time TV was first sold commercially. 1930s and 1940s films in 4:3, such as ''[[Gone with the Wind (film)|Gone with the Wind]]'', have always been displayed on television in 4:3, filling the entire frame.

When preparing a film that was originally intended to be displayed in widescreen for TV broadcast the material was often edited with the sides truncated, using techniques such as center cut or [[pan and scan]]. Sometimes, in the case of Super 35, the full film negative was shown unmasked on TV (that is, with the [[hard matte]] removed). However, this causes the 4:3 image not to be what the director intended the audience to see, and sometimes boom mics, edited out of the shot when the picture is matted, can be visible. Current TVs feature a 16:9 aspect ratio, allowing them to display a 16:9 picture without [[Letterboxing (filming)|letterboxing]].

[[File:Sony_KV-W2812S.jpg|thumb|An early (1994) Sony widescreen television]]

Japan saw its first commercially available widescreen TV models in 1992<ref name="nyt-japan">{{cite web |last1=Pollack |first1=Andrew |title=Japanese Taking to Wide-Screen TV |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/09/15/business/japanese-taking-to-wide-screen-tv.html |website=The New York Times |access-date=6 January 2024 |date=15 September 1994}}</ref> and TV networks began broadcasting in [[EDTV]] widescreen in 1995, starting with [[Nippon TV|NTV]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Corporate History |url=https://www.ntv.co.jp/english/an/ch.html |website=NIPPON TV |access-date=6 January 2024 |language=en}}</ref>

The first widescreen TV sold in the United States was the Thomson Consumer Electronics RCA CinemaScreen, released in 1993.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/03/24/RCA-offering-widescreen-television/5451732949200/|title = RCA offering widescreen television}}</ref> In Europe, the [[PAL]] and the French [[SECAM]] [[Standard Definition]] systems employed higher resolutions than the US [[NTSC]] Standard Definition system, which meant the quality issues of letterboxed or matted movies on TV were not as severe.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://learn.corel.com/blog/ntsc-vs-pal-what-are-they-and-which-to-use/|title=NTSC vs PAL: What are they and which one do I use?|last=Baltz|first=Aaron|date=2014-08-21|website=learn.corel.com}}</ref> There is also an extension to PAL, called [[PALplus]], which allows specially equipped receivers to display a PAL picture as true 16:9 with a full 576 lines of vertical resolution, provided that the station employs the same system. Standard PAL receivers will receive such a broadcast as a 16:9 image letterboxed to 4:3, with a small amount of color noise in the black bars; this "noise" is actually the additional lines which are hidden inside the color signal. [[Clear-Vision]] supports an equivalent widescreen system for NTSC analogue broadcasting.

Despite the existence of PALplus and support for widescreen in the [[DVB]]-based digital satellite, terrestrial and cable broadcasts in use across Europe, only [[Belgium]], [[Republic of Ireland|Ireland]], the [[Netherlands]], [[Austria]], [[Germany]], the [[Nordic countries]] and the [[UK]] have adopted widescreen on a large scale, with over half of all widescreen channels available by satellite in Europe targeting those areas. The UK, in particular, began moving to widescreen with the advent of [[digital terrestrial television]] in the late 1990s, and commercials were required to be delivered to broadcasters in widescreen as of 1 July 2000, on their widescreen "[[C-Day]]".

Widescreen televisions are typically used in conjunction with [[Digital data|Digital]], [[High-Definition Television]] (HDTV) receivers, or Standard-Definition (SD) [[DVD]] players and other digital television sources. Digital material is provided to widescreen TVs either in high-definition format, which is natively 16:9 (1.78:1), or as an [[anamorphic widescreen|anamorphically-compressed]] standard-definition picture. Typically, devices decoding Digital Standard-Definition pictures can be programmed to provide anamorphic widescreen formatting, for 16:9 sets, and formatting for 4:3 sets. Pan-and-scan mode can be used on 4:3 if the producers of the material have included the necessary panning data; if this data is absent, letterboxing or centre cut-out is used.

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[[HD DVD]] and [[Blu-ray]] players were introduced in 2006. [[Toshiba]] ceased production of [[HD DVD]] players in early 2008. Consumer camcorders are also available in the HD-video format at fairly low prices. These developments will result in more options for viewing widescreen images on television monitors.