What aspect ratio is this native to?

[ColbyDolby]

It seems for some time most movies I find are in 720x304 (45:19) aspect ratio. I have searched around for hours trying to figure out why anyone would use that since its obviously not 16:9!?

My question is whats the purpose or advantage of that? I thought we all bought widescreen monitors so we didnt have black bars at the top and bottom :P

[Hoser Rob]

No, it's not 16:9, bit it's close to 2.35:1, which is standard cinemascope aspect ratio. I think the reason it's not exactly that is that many encoders prefer to have the pixel dimensions a multiple of 16.

But movies that aren't straight to video are not generally 16:9. You are going to get black bars unless you have some sort of scaling in your player or tv, or if you want to reencode and expand and crop. Which would be a ridiculous pain in the ass IMHO, though there are some people who want to try that. However, if they're too dumb to try sitting closer to the screen I have no interest in trying to explain how to reenccode it.

[ColbyDolby]

Ah ha! Your answer led me to the information I was looking for. This is what I found:

1.77:1 or 1.78:1 (16:9) HD video standard

2.39:1 or 2.40:1 A current widescreen cinema standard

I didnt know cinema widescreen was anamorphic. I thought it was 16:9

Thanks!

BTW I have no interest in reencoding.