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Widescreen v.s. Fullscreen

S

steppinthrax

Diamond Member
I guess this is kind of a stupid question. I have a regular CRT 40" TV. When I rent movies from the video store most of them have the black bar on the top and bottom. I'm assuming this is wide screen. Anyway occasionally I get lucky and get movies that are in full screen where it takes up the entire TV. I was curious why are movies going Wide screen. I was looking up and found in the past it was to hide editing and splicing of the movie. Plasma and LCDs are wide then regular TV. So these Widescreen DVDs don't show black bars on those TVs?????
 
Originally posted by: steppinthrax
I guess this is kind of a stupid question. I have a regular CRT 40" TV. When I rent movies from the video store most of them have the black bar on the top and bottom. I'm assuming this is wide screen. Anyway occasionally I get lucky and get movies that are in full screen where it takes up the entire TV. I was curious why are movies going Wide screen. I was looking up and found in the past it was to hide editing and splicing of the movie. Plasma and LCDs are wide then regular TV. So these Widescreen DVDs don't show black bars on those TVs?????
Click to expand...

There is a ton of info out there since this is a very old concern.
When you watch a movie in a theater, is it not widescreen?
Do you realize that movies which are not widescreen (Pan and scan) chop off parts of the picture?
Enjoy/Ignore your black bars or else buy a new TV (although that will not completely solve the problem).
 
To expand on that answer just a little, what is the aspect ration of your tv? When you say "regular", do you mean 4:3, or is this a 16:9 display?

If it is 4:3, then every time you show a widescreen movie, you will see black bars. That's the unfortunate truth of it. The plus side is that as long as there is still standard tv, you will get to watch it in its native 4:3 with no bars...at least until all tv goes to 16:9.

But even if you have a 16:9, or widescreen, display, you still get the black bars - just smaller. This is because there are multiple aspects of movies. There are three main aspect ratios: (I'm going on memory here)...1.78 to 1 (16:9), 1.85 to 1, and 2.35 to 1. Even with a widescreen display, when you show a movie in a 2.35 to 1 ratio, you will see significant black bars on the top and bottom.

In the end, just get used to it. Unfortunately, there will not be a single standard for a long time (if ever), and if there is, it won't be the current widescreen format.
 
"Regular" TV is 4:3.
Widescreen HDTV's (plasmas, LCD's) are usually 16:9.
Movies are often shot at anamorphic ratio (2.35-2.39:1)

So, watching movies on a 16:9 TV will still have black bars on the top and bottom of the screen, but they won't be as big as on a 4:3 TV.

The reason widescreen is "better" is because our eyes are beside each other, so our field of vision is naturally "wide." Movies are normally shot in widescreen. They almost always are (well, it's more complicated than that, but whatever). When movies go to DVD, they're released in either their unedited widescreen form or they're cropped to 4:3. If they're cropped, you LOSE information. The scene can change dramatically, actually (I can't find links right now). So, it's better to get the unedited widescreen and just deal with the black bars, unless black bars really bother you.
 
I just hate having a widescreen TV and still having those stupid black bars. All movies should be shot in 16:9 from now on.
 
<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: Shawn
I just hate having a widescreen TV and still having those stupid black bars. All movies should be shot in 16:9 from now on.</end quote></div>

When you realize that directors consider themselves artists (many of them rightfully so) and the film their medium, you will begin to understand how silly your statement sounds.

BTW, here is a good link with visuals for the OP.
Text
 
OP, when you "luck out" and get a movie in full screen, you are missing out on a huge chunk of the movie. As already mentioned, ALL movies are shot in widescreen, but at different ratios. In order to make the movies at the 4:3 ratio of normal TVs, the scenes have to be edited. If you look at the last scene of Star Wars: Episode IV, for example, the full screen version doesn't show everyone standing on the stage at the ceremony together, because it had to chop off that section of the scene. Other movies will switch back and forth between two different people during a conversation, when the movie was originally shot to show both people in the scene at the same time.

Full screen v. wide screen is largely personal preference, but with full screen you really aren't seeing the entire movie and aren't seeing it as it was originally filmed.
 
Originally posted by: kalrith
OP, when you "luck out" and get a movie in full screen, you are missing out on a huge chunk of the movie. As already mentioned, ALL movies are shot in widescreen, but at different ratios. In order to make the movies at the 4:3 ratio of normal TVs, the scenes have to be edited. If you look at the last scene of Star Wars: Episode IV, for example, the full screen version doesn't show everyone standing on the stage at the ceremony together, because it had to chop off that section of the scene. Other movies will switch back and forth between two different people during a conversation, when the movie was originally shot to show both people in the scene at the same time.

Full screen v. wide screen is largely personal preference, but with full screen you really aren't seeing the entire movie and aren't seeing it as it was originally filmed.
Click to expand...

This is not always true. Many older movies were shot using a 4:3 ratio.

I always recommend viewing movies in their Original Aspect Ratio (OAR), whether that be 4:3, 1.85:1, 2.35:1 or some other ratio.
 
Originally posted by: MrChad
I always recommend viewing movies in their Original Aspect Ratio (OAR), whether that be 4:3, 1.85:1, 2.35:1 or some other ratio.
Click to expand...

I agree completely! I'm one of those guys that is angry that Full Metal Jacket was converted to 16:9 for HD-DVD release, considering Kubrick intended it for a 4:3 aspect ratio. Then again, I'm also angry that it was run through BOB deinterlacing drastically reducing resolution of the image...
 
If you really want to, it is possible to get a widescreen DVD to fill up the entire screen of a normal 4:3 TV.

You will have to look at the controls for your DVD player, most will allow you to 'zoom in', for lack of a better term, and only show the middle of the widescreen image, so it will fill your screen. This is essentially what they do to make a 4:3 DVD anyhow.

With a large 40" TV I would just watch it in 16:9 format, but thats just my opinion. If you want it to fill your whole screen it is possible, just read your DVD players manual to learn how to do it with your particular model.


edit:
Its called "pan and scan" mode. Since not all of the image is on the screen, you can pan sideways back and forth. The defualt starting point will be the center of the image.
 
I read an interesting article a while back. It suggested, among other things, that the reason why 16:9 is a popular aspect ratio (math factoring reasons aside) is because the average aspect ratio of human vision is roughly 16:9. (Differs from person to person of course) Once I heard that I started noticing little things here and there, and frankly that sounds believable to me. At the very least, 16:9 is closer than 4:3.

Now, as for watching things with letterbox bars, what it comes down to is whether or not you're getting the whole picture. 4:3, 16:9, 2.35:1, doesn't make any difference to me. All I care about is getting the most picture; NOT the highest resolution, but the most stuff in frame. (Unless the filmmaker wants it to be at a certain AR, e.g. The Truman Show was intended to be shown 4:3, being that it's about TV) For example, a number of movies shot back in the late 70s and early 80s were filmed in standard 4:3, but then cropped for final big-screen presentation to 1.85:1. For those flicks the fullscreen DVDs actually give you more picture; there was even a lawsuit over it, as the widescreen editions of a number of those films specifically advertised that they offered a "wider, more complete picture", when the opposite was true.

Personally, I like to straddle the fence by watching most of my movies on my computer, which is equipped with two monitors: one running 1600x1200, (4:3) and one running 1680x1050. (16:10) Fullscreen stuff goes on the fullscreen monitor, widescreen stuff goes on the widescreen monitor. But that's me.
 
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