system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why have we settled on 16:9 as the standard aspect ratio?
gpt
16:9 is the aspect ratio that can most easily handle all of the other historical aspect ratios (like 4:3 for broadcast TV, 2.2:1 for Panavision (movies), 2.39:1 for Cinemascope) with a minimum of picture loss and a maximum of the screen used. When they were developing the HD standard and needed to come up with an aspect ratio, a committee member actually cut out rectangles of equal area in the various historical and candidate aspect ratios. when they were laid over one another with the centerpoints matching, the smallest rectangle that would contain all of the other rectangles had a ratio that was very close to 16:9.