Jeff7
Lifer
- Jan 4, 2001
- 41,596
- 20
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Originally posted by: PizzaDude
Originally posted by: Jeff7
There are going to be some protests if this happens. My dad is among the crowd who says "What are those black bars? Get rid of them!" when he sees a widescreen DVD. He will not watch a movie that is widescreen format. He just can't stand it, he says that "the black bars are too distracting."
I meanwhile hate letterboxed versions because they chop off about 25% of the movie.
It doesn't chop off any of the picture, it's just formatted differently so you can use the whole screen. I have a 4:3 TV right now and would much rather watch a fullscreen dvd because then the picture is a full 27" instead of having the "distracting" black bars...
No, it chops the picture. Watch Star Wars Episode 4 in 4:3 format sometime. At the end, C-3PO and Chewie are chopped off. Well, you can at least see Chewie's right arm.
Maybe "letterbox" isn't the right word. The DVDs say "Full Screen".
And cropping the picture manually doesn't always do it, as sometimes the main characters or action is happening at the sides of the screen, which calls for panning - the "pan and scan" I see mentioned.
I can always see when a pan is being done on a movie formatted for full screen. It always looks like a really jittery.
I still just find it a bit disgusting that the corporations are so obsessed with fat profits that they can't decide on one damn standard and stick with it. Were there standards wars for the 4:3 ratio? Was there a lobbying effort for the benefits of the 5:4 ratio? Or maybe the 3:2 ratio, for those who dislike infinitely repeating decimals?
That's the point I tried to make to my dad. Or at the theater, don't the HUGE "black bars" at the top and bottom of the screen bother him then? (The black bars are of course the walls of the theater behind the screen.)Originally posted by: notfred
I don't know why black bars bother people. They're equally as distracting as the black and/or silver frame around the whole picture that is the edge of the TV. That is to say, not at all.
The black bars are static, and thus should not be distracting. If they had a pattern of Chris Farley dancing nude, then they'd be distracting, and probably lead to mass suicide. But they are just black. No problem.
Well, I suppose you could always reprogram the DVD player's firmware to include the nude Chris Farley theme......Originally posted by: PizzaDude
I just think it's ridiculous to waste screen space like that.
