These days it is very common to see ultra-wide gaming monitors with desktop computers. These monitors are very popular with the PC gamers. These monitors are not only super wide, but they also have very high FPS frequency. Some of them also come with a curved surface. It is a delight to play games on these monitors but when watching movies or playing videos, they show black bars on left and right.
These side black bars are displayed because the video being played has a resolution aspect ratio (height to width ratio) that does not fit the entire screen for ultra-wide monitors. What is the use of having a great (and expensive) monitor when we have to watch the side black bars?
This is where a browser extension called UltraWideo comes to our rescue. This extension can automatically change the aspect ratio of the videos being played on many online sites. According to the developer, it works on all of the globally popular streaming and video sites. It is available for the Google Chrome web browser and the Mozilla Firefox web browser. All the other web browsers based on the Chromium or Firefox code should also support it.
After installing this extension in your web browser, you can start watching any video. It will automatically change the aspect ratio for those videos. We can also invoke the UltraWideo extension interface by using the hotkey “Ctrl + .” (holding Ctrl and pressing full-stop).
In the UltraWideo interface we can choose the modes and the scale. There are three modes available – normal, upscale and stretch. In the upscale mode, it will make the video fill the entire available space, cropping some content, and preserving aspect ratio. In the stretch mode, it will make the video fill the entire available space, preserving the content, but not the aspect ratio. The scale can make the video scale up or down depending on the mode selected.
Now with the help of UltraWideo web browser extension, we can enjoy watching all the videos without the black bars on the side on ultra-wide computer screens.
You can get the UltraWideo Browser Extension for Firefox from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/ultrawideo/.