You may have noticed that when you watch a blockbuster movie on DVD — like, say, The Dark Knight — you still see black bars on the top and bottom of your widescreen TV. That's because a lot of films are shot in aspect ratios that are more "cinematic" than your typical HDTV show. If movies like this are pretty much all you watch, you'll like Philips' latest announcement: a TV with an ultra-wide shape.
The Philips Cinema 21:9 TV (it's hard to know whether to call it an HDTV) is tailor-made for epic movies. The 21:9 aspect ratio (about 2.33:1) will mean virtually no black bars for when you cue up Transformers or Casino Royale, with the picture filling the whole screen without being distorted or cut off. Awesome, though there will be bars on the sides whenever you switch to 16:9 HDTV. And huge swaths of the screen will go unused if you ever (God forbid) watch 4:3 programming.
No specs or a price yet, though Philips says the elongated LCD TV will feature Ambilight tech, a built-in backlight that matches the screen color. The 21:9 set should be available this spring.
DVICE: Philips Cinema 21:9 TV stretches the meaning of widescreen
