A Salute to Your Widescreen Flatscreen

There's no getting around it, the old, squarish box that used to sit in everyone's living room -- and once qualified as among the most cool electronic gadgets -- is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Here at Axess, of course, we're proud to provide the best of these newer LEDs flat screens, but the fact that the widescreen television has become the default mode for television is very big news. That's true for everyone, not only for electronics manufacturers.

The fact of the matter is these kind of television are indicative of a number of subtle cultural changes. Here's one example. Even some non-cinema geeks are probably vaguely aware that, since the mid-1950s, movies literally changed their shape from a rough approximation of the box-like aspect ratio of the old standard television to the widescreen formats that are now standard for almost every movie. Now, of course, televisions are widescreen so that means that films that were once routinely altered -- and sometimes out all recognition -- to fit the old "standard" frame, are now very widely seen in either their original aspect ratio or something reasonably close, at least most of the time.

And the fact of the matter is that the movie-going experience and the home entertainment experience have never been closer. Even as movie theaters turn to an all-digital format, causing purists like director Quentin Tarantino to grouse that modern movies are nothing but "TV in public," products like Axess's amazing portable wireless speakers are recreating theater-like sound in homes everywhere. Meanwhile,  television shows -- particularly on cable -- never have been more interesting

All in all, we think this is pretty great change...and not just because we're lazy cheapskates who like to watch great entertainment in our pajamas, but maybe that's part of it, too.