Where Are the Ultrawide TVs?

Ultrawide monitors are relatively popular in the world of PCs, but there’s no such option on the TV market. Why is that? I think I know the boring answer to that question, but there are reasons manufacturers should consider it.

Defining an Ultrawide TV

Virtually all TVs out in the wild are “widescreen” with an aspect ratio of 16:9. This just means that for every sixteen units of width, there are nine units of height. Strictly speaking, anything wider than this would be ultrawide, but for our purposes here I specifically mean screens with an aspect ratio of 21:9. No wider, and no narrower. This is the most popular ultrawide aspect ratio in the PC world, and so that’s what I want to see in the TV market.

Why Do We Want Ultrawide TVs?

The simple answer is that if you’re a cinephile, then a lot of the content you watch is presented in 21:9 or very close to it. These films are sometimes referred to as “anamorphic”, since that’s the type of lens used to get those wide views.

This means that whenever you watch films that were meant for the cinema first and foremost, you’ll get large black bars above and below the picture. Turning your “big screen” 16:9 TV into something much smaller. It doesn’t matter how big your TV is, anamorphic movies will always only take up a fraction of the screen and, perhaps more importantly, only a fraction of the resolution.

Apart from being able to enjoy films in a better format, console gamers may also want to enjoy ultrawide gaming, and some PC gamers may feel ultrawide monitors just don’t come in large enough sizes for their taste. Either way, ultrawide gaming may be niche, but it’s still popular in absolute terms, and there would certainly be many players interested in very large ultrawide screens.

Why Aren’t They Being Made?

There are many reasons I could speculate on why we see this format in monitors, but not TVs, but the most likely reason is simply a lack of demand for it. However, how can you have demand when most people didn’t know it was an option?

Current TV aspect ratio and resolution standards are agreed upon by governing bodies. So, if you want that “4K” or “FHD” sticker on your TV set, it must support a certain set of resolutions. With monitors, the set of standards are different, and really only overlap with some 16:9 monitors. Inbetween standards, such as 1440p, are not part of current TV standards, which means that sadly we don’t have 1440p TVs either.

Introducing another TV standard would mean significant complications for content makers, and current gaming consoles would also buckle under the strain of the extra-wide viewpoint. There’s probably also a few practical issues with truly large ultrawide TVs when it comes to boxing them, shipping them, or finding a wall long enough for them.

Finally, for people who aren’t hardcore fans of anamorphic cinematic masterpieces, most of the content they watch will be in 16:9 or the older 4:3, both of which would then have the large black bars we wanted to get rid of with 21:9 content.

Alternatives to Ultrawide TVs

I don’t think we’ll see many if any ultrawide TVs, although some ultrawide monitors are becoming so large that they might technically qualify. No, if you’re not happy with how these wide cinematic movies display on your 16:9 TV, there are a few ways to get a better experience.

First, you can upgrade to an OLED TV. While you will still have exactly the same black bars and image size, OLED’s ability to have perfect blacks for pixels that are switched off really help with anamorphic content. On an LCD screen, even one with local dimming, there’s bloom around the edges of the image, and the unused portion of the screen glows. When watching in a dark room, this can really detract from the picture. That’s a non-issue on an OLED.

If you watch movies by yourself, consider watching them on an ultrawide PC monitor. I do this for movies that my spouse isn’t interested in watching, and since I’m sitting quite close to the monitor, my 34″ ultrawide screen still gives a great cinematic experience.

I also quite like watching cinematic films using one of my VR headsets. Here you can similate the whole cinema, it’s perhaps the closest thing to having the cinema experience at home.

Perhaps the best solution currently for watching cinematic content with an anamorphic aspect ratio is to use a projector. This lets you dial in the largest image your wall can accommodate, and of course you can’t actually see the unused portion of the LCD.

While I don’t seriously believe we’ll every get proper ultrawide screens to catch up with cinematic standard, that’s exactly what happened before when 4:3 TVs transitioned to widescreen 16:9, and then cinemas simply went wider to incentivize people to go to the movies.