There is, thank goodness, the shape of things to come. Its name is High Definition Television and compared to the video pictures we're used to, HDTV's specifications are certainly impressive. To avoid seeing these raster lines we're supposed to sit 7 screen heights back from an NTSC display. First of all it's aspect ratio has gotten much wider. This statistic is a little subtle because the overall resolution of HDTV is not two times better than NTSC, its more than five times better.
Video resolution is established by the total available pixels inside a display.
That number is calculated by multiplying the vertical lines times the horizontals. The answer is 3 screen heights. These numbers are extremely significant because the designers of HDTV appreciated that a wider aspect ratio coupled with a vastly improved picture would provide the viewer far more involvement with the program. It was determined by exhaustive research and testing that a 30 degree field of vision would not only excite the central portion of the human visual system, but the peripheral vision as well. Thus if video was ever going match the impact of the movies it needed, quite literally, to change its image.