With content of different aspect ratios, adjustments have to be made when showing such content on a display with a fixed aspect ratio. The wider screen provides advantages in multitasking as well as a more immersive gaming experience, and even wider screens with aspect ratios such as 32:9 (allowing for two 16:9 views side-by-side) are available. It is also used in computer monitors, where the term "21:9" can represent aspect ratios of 43:18 and 12:5 in addition to 64:27. It is still prevalent in projection systems, using anamorphic lenses, and supported by a number of consumer electronics devices, including Blu-ray players and video scalers.
Due to it causing pillarboxing with standard 16:9 content, and the resulting low consumer acceptance, this screen format has rarely been used since then. If it actually were 21:9 (2.3 3:1), the fraction could also be expressed in the reduced form as 7:3, relating to the 4:3 of standard-definition TVs.Ĭonsumer TVs with this aspect ratio were manufactured mainly from 2010 to 2017.
Due to its common denominator, 21:9 is more relatable to 16:9, the aspect ratio of regular HDTVs, rather than the correct 64:27. The term "21:9" was chosen as a marketing term, first used by Philips in January 2009. This allows electronic scalers and optical anamorphic lenses to use an easily implementable 4:3 (1.3 3:1) scaling factor.Ĥ 3 1 = 4 3 = "21:9" The 64:27 aspect ratio of "21:9" is an extension of the existing video aspect ratios 4:3 (SDTV) and 16:9 (HDTV), as it is the third power of 4:3, where 16:9 of traditional HDTV is 4:3 squared. The main benefit of this screen aspect ratio, compared to the more common 16:9, is the absence of the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when viewing content in this format, and a constant display height when displaying other content with a lesser aspect ratio. 3:9), designed to show films recorded in CinemaScope and equivalent modern anamorphic formats. " 21:9" ("twenty-one by nine") is a consumer electronics (CE) marketing term to describe the ultrawide aspect ratio of 64:27 (2.