A widescreen image is a film, computer, or television image with a wider and shorter aspect ratio than the standard Academy frame developed during the classical Hollywood cinema era. Silent film was projected at a ratio of four units wide to three units tall, often expressed as 4:3 or 1.33:1. The addition of sound-on-film soundtracks and a thicker frame line in order to hide physical splices in prints caused the frame dimensions to standardize by 1932 to Academy format, which is actually 1.37 but often erroneously called 1.33.
Widescreen computer displays
Recently, a great number of widescreen format monitors have been introduced to the market. Many manufacturers have practically abandoned the traditional 4:3 format, instead opting to manufacture 16:10 models due to lower associated manufacturing costs (because a 16:10 monitor with the same diagonal size has 7% less area compared to the standard size screens).