YouTube shifts to a widescreen view of internet video
By Richard Lawler 
posted Nov 25th 2008 4:31PM
posted Nov 25th 2008 4:31PM
While YouTube is still just dipping an experimental toe in the HD waters, it's throwing old school 4:3 out the window for good, adjusting video players and webpages to 960 pixels widescreen aspect ratios. If you want the most resolution the service can offer, URL tweaks will still be in order but expect to see black bars to the sides each and every time you're RickRolled from now on. Naturally, opinions are mixed about the change, with 16:9 heads mostly cheering the news and others complaining their 4:3 vids are shrunk, plus any content uploaded with top/bottom bars already inserted is even smaller, but we'll sacrifice that for a better look at Bulletproof Monk, if we could just find it on the site.
You'd think they'd give users the option between 16:9 and 4:3, not that I'm complaning.
I'm sure some will also complain when analog signals are relieved from duty in '09. Progress seems to be progressing...
About time!
the rest of the world except the US has had widescreen TV for 11 years now and widescreen camcorders for even longer!
A lot of people here are very reluctant to give up 4:3. If I had a nickel for every time a customer tells me they'd rather have a 4:3 set to see the top of the picture rather than see out wide but lose the tops of peoples heads, I'd have a lot of nickels.
** For those of you that have stumbled upon the page and don't know 16:9 doesn't crop the top and bottom, but 4:3 does as well as the sides. Also you're not losing anything in the black bars, and I mean anything. Black bars aka "letterboxing" occurs when the video/film was shot in a different aspect ratio than the screen you're watching it on, nothing as "chopped off".