What is the most used aspect ratio for cinema purposes?

jchalase: What is the most used aspect ratio for cinema purposes?
Also, yeah I know most cinema theaters use film but if it were digital HD, what would the resolution be?

Answers and Views:

Answer by cool_breeze_2444
1.85:1

Answer by Brad/Diana B
1.85:1 for most small theaters. 2.35:1 for screens that present films using the panavision anamrphic prints. Although there are several new ratios out there. 2.4:1 and the older version of widescreen was 2.55:1

The answer to your second question varies. Older digital screens may use 1080i whereas newer theatres use 1080p. Since the source is projected using a high quality DLP projetor, you would not know the difference between a 1080i or a 1080p because the sharpness of the image is modified so that you cannot see the rescanning lines.

Answer by Peter D
1.85 is the movie theater standard, but HDTVs are 16:9 (1.78).

Answer by Big
I would say that the most used aspect ratios for cinema films is either 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. However in the olden days before we had widescreen tv’s the ratio was 1.33:1.

The aspect ratio for widescreen tv’s is 1.78:1 so when watching a video that’s in anything wider than that (1.85:1 and 2.35:1 is wider) the video needs to be letterboxed to fit on the screen. And incase you don’t know to letterbox a video means to add black bars on the top and bottom so that the image on the sides fit on the screen.

Hope this helps.