Aspect ratio calculator (16:9, 4:3, 21:9)

1920 × 1080 is 16:9: both sides divide by their greatest common divisor, 120, to give 16 and 9, and the width is 1.7778 times the height. ITU-R BT.709 defines 1920 × 1080 as the HDTV picture format, and the same 16:9 shape covers 1280 × 720, 2560 × 1440 and 3840 × 2160 (4K UHD).

No. Ultrawide monitors sold as 21:9 are 2560 × 1080 (64:27, 2.370), 3440 × 1440 (43:18, 2.389) or 3840 × 1600 (12:5, 2.4), while 21:9 itself is 2.333. The label is rounded marketing, and the gap shows up in practice: true 21:9 video on a 3440 × 1440 panel fills 3360 × 1440 and leaves a 40 px pillarbox bar on each side.

Multiply the new width by the original height over the original width: new height = new width × H ÷ W. Scaling 1920 × 1080 to 1280 wide gives 1280 × 1080 ÷ 1920 = 720. The other way round, new width = new height × W ÷ H, so a 4:3 picture 1080 tall is 1440 wide. Round to whole pixels at the end, and to even numbers for most video encoders.

Letterboxing adds bars above and below when the picture is wider than the screen, such as 16:9 video on a 1024 × 768 display, which gets 96 px bars. Pillarboxing adds bars on the left and right when the picture is narrower, such as 4:3 content on a 1920 × 1080 screen, which leaves 240 px on each side. Zooming to fill removes the bars but crops the picture, by 25% in that 4:3 case.

Digital cinema uses two DCI container shapes: flat at 1.85:1 (1998 × 1080 in the 2K container) and scope at 2.39:1 (2048 × 858). On a 1920 × 1080 TV, a 2.39:1 film shows letterbox bars of about 138 px above and below, and a 1.85:1 film bars of about 21 px, because both are wider than the TV's 16:9 (1.78:1).

Accuracy depends on your inputs and the method's assumptions. Decimal arithmetic uses 50 significant digits, but estimates, numerical methods and source data can be less precise; the displayed rounding does not remove those limits. It is checked against 9 worked examples whose answers come from independent sources; for example, “Full HD” is checked against Python 3.8: fractions.Fraction(1920, 1080) = 16/9.

ITU-R BT.709-6 — HDTV picture format 1920 × 1080 at 16:9; DCI Digital Cinema System Specification — flat 1998 × 1080 (1.85:1) and scope 2048 × 858 (2.39:1) containers.