found this website to be informative and concise

http://www.dvdaust.com/aspect.htm

Thank you "Save Ferris" - a good information page.

Yes, thank you "Save Ferris."

http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/index.htm

Glad I could contribute here. It seemed very handy and not long winded.

cleared up some questions i always had about formats.

True. It'll be a good tool for me to use on a few of my "slower" friends who still can't grasp the concept of ARs.

Is 1.85:1 actually called "widescreen?" I mean, I know that widescreen can mean 1.85:1 (or wider), but I've never heard of widescreen specifically referring to 1.85:1.

It's important to make it clear that widescreen can be wider than 1.85:1, otherwise some people will think that a widescreen DVD (or HD disc) should fill an HDTV.

well on the 'film formats' page of the same site it gets into much deeper info and describes several formats as 'widescreen' :

http://www.dvdaust.com/film_formats.htm

What, no Tohoscope, no Shawscope?

Actually, the term "widescreen" can be used for any aspect ratio larger than 1.37:1. That includes both 1.66:1 and 1.78:1, which are common aspect ratios that are less wide than 1.85:1. You're right that wider than 1.85:1 is also called widescreen as well.

The page also has a few other errors. The first entry calls the first film projector the Kinetograph, which actually was a camera. The projector was the Kinetoscope, and released in 1894. Also, it used the standard 4-perf 35mm, which was 1 and 3/8 inches wide (edit: my bad, he was talking about the image frame, which was about an inch) and was an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. 1.37:1 didn't become the standard until synchronized sound via an optical soundtrack printed onto the film was brought into the equation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetoscope

Also, for some reason on the page, Cinerama 55 and Ultra Panavision are placed before Cinerama/Panavision, when the ordering should be reversed, since the page is in rough chronological order.

Besides calling 1.85:1 just "widescreen," the page also thats that it's "the standard screen format used in cinemas today." However, the next entry on digital television confusingly states that 2.35:1 is "the most common" aspect ratios used in cinemas. obviously one of these statements is wrong.

Overall though, it's a nice simple page good to introduce the various formats.

Some other sites I like are "How Film is Transfered to Video":
http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~leopold/AV/FilmToVideo/

Wikipedia also has a nice in-depth look at aspect ratios, though with not as good of visual examples:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)

The "film formats" page on that site does mention those formats. Shawscope gets its own entry, while Tohoscope is included in a list of other formats at the end:

http://www.dvdaust.com/film_formats.htm

Interestingly, the page has two entries for the standard 1.85:1 frame. One is labeled "Matted 1.85:1" while the other is called "Widescreen 1.85:1," furthering the author's insistence that 1.85:1 has at some time somewhere been standardized as "Widescreen." As far as I can tell, the only difference with the two entries is that "Widescreen 1.85:1" includes a digital soundtrack.

Also, he repeats the error of using Kinetograph instead of Kinetoscope when talking of Edison's projector that he did on the aspect ratio page.

I think the error is that he calls it a projector, he should keep 'Kinetograph' and refer to it as a camera--since the rest of the aspect ratio page is about camera types.

About damn time!!

I have a couple of nitpicks too, under the CinemaScope-Panavision entry.

First, the author writes that CinemaScope was "copyrighted" by Twentieth Century Fox. The word he's looking for is "trademarked," not copyrighted. The two are not interchangeable.

He also writes "CinemaScope, or Panavision as it is now called, is the most common format shown in cinemas today." This might lead one to think there was simply a name change. Actually, Panavision was a rival company that improved upon the anamorphic process. Panavision essentially put CinemaScope out of business.

Thanks, that's a very informative page too. I like how they show a still from KILL BILL Vol 1 in the Shawscope entry. That wasn't really a Shaw Bros. film.