ABSTRACT
Widescreen 525 is an extension of the equipment and systems currently in use in order to provide wide aspect ratio images with somewhat improved resolution. This makes use of the bandwidth overhead that is currently built into most systems beyond what can be transmitted to viewers. Widescreen 525 can be implemented at equipment costs that are the same as or only a few percent higher than those of current, comparable gear, depending upon the implementation choices. The fundamental theory of Widescreen 525 is alteration of the horizontal scanning and related functions, leaving virtually everything else in the system intact. This makes the image wider, yielding a 16:9 aspect ratio, with the same number of lines in the raster. One of the important enablers for Widescreen 525 is the availability of digital equipment at about the same cost as analog. Making this practical is the use of the relatively new Serial Digital Interface (SDI) standardized by SMFIE.
