Television screens today come in two shapes. The most familiar one is called 4:3, which represents 4 inches of width for every 3 inches of height. You can also buy wide-screen, or 16:9, televisions, which take the same shape as many movies. Wide-screen sets don't match up with the current squarish shape of regular TV (most of which is formatted for 4:3, still the vast majority of TVs that people own), but because 16:9 is the standard for HDTV and DVD, it's just a matter of time before the balance tips toward wide-screen.
Many people choosing between 16:9 and 4:3 TVs wonder how much picture they'll be missing when viewing differently shaped programs. DVD and other wide-screen video shown on a standard TV have black bars, known as
letterbox bars, above and below the wide-screen image. Conversely, regular programs shown on a wide-screen TV have
pillarbox bars on either side of the picture, unless the TV is set to stretch, crop, or otherwise distort the image.
To find out exactly how much picture you'll be missing with either kind of TV, check out our calculator below. Just enter the diagonal screen size and aspect ratio of the set you're considering, then click the Calculate button.
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