Why letterbox movies still shown with widescreen?

[ITPaladin]

I downloaded some movies from Movielink.
Watching Hostage and it is in letterbox. Is this just the way it is or is there some setting I am missing?

 

[JSt0rm]

the aspect ratio of your monitor and the aspect ratio of a movie are different. Any widescreen tv will have some letterboxing with certain movies. There are 2 different aspect ratios that they use for movies. I don't remember what they are. Somebody else could fill this in.

 

[Sunrise089]

I also do not recall the exact ratios, but the 16:9 widescreen standard of televisions and perhaps monitors (or is it 16:10) is matched to HDTV broadcasts, and while it is similar to movie ratios, it is normally not as wide. You will find movies that come closer to filling your screen with no bars, but your best bet for perfection is an HDTV broadcast.

 

[darkswordsman17]

Well actually all widescreen movies should be letterboxed on your monitor. Why? Your monitor's aspect ratio is 16:10 (1.6:1), while movies are either in 16:9 (1.85:1) or 2.35:1 ratio. It is rather annoying having the letterboxing, and it makes you wonder why they didn't go with 2.1:1 ratio and make all widescreen TVs/monitors have that ratio. I mean at least they could've come up with some type of a standard and make all films adhere to that.

 

[djheater]

Originally posted by: darkswordsman17
Well actually all widescreen movies should be letterboxed on your monitor. Why? Your monitor's aspect ratio is 16:10 (1.6:1), while movies are either in 16:9 (1.85:1) or 2.35:1 ratio. It is rather annoying having the letterboxing, and it makes you wonder why they didn't go with 2.1:1 ratio and make all widescreen TVs/monitors have that ratio. I mean at least they could've come up with some type of a standard and make all films adhere to that.

I was just wondering the same thing as OP. Thanks for the info.

I jsut bought a 26" widescreen LCD TV it's native res. is an odd 1280x720 which my Geforce6600GT supports thankfully. I plopped LOTR:TTT into the DVD on my PC as a sample and had pretty thick letter boxing.
Bleh, wish I could get rid of that.

 

[DRavisher]

Originally posted by: djheater
I jsut bought a 26" widescreen LCD TV it's native res. is an odd 1280x720 which my Geforce6600GT supports thankfully. I plopped LOTR:TTT into the DVD on my PC as a sample and had pretty thick letter boxing.
Bleh, wish I could get rid of that.

You resolution is quite perfect actually (1280x720 is one of the two standard HD resolutions, the other being 1920x1080). Most "HD-TV ready" TVs over here (Norway) have some obscure resolution that absolutely no content uses what so ever.