Slate - "How Widescreen Won"

[James Fee]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://slate.msn.com/id/2101354/fr/rss/' target='_blank'>http://slate.msn.com/id/2101354/fr/rss/</a><br /><br /></div>"Last year, something remarkable happened in the world of cinema. Blockbuster Video, the country's dominant rental chain, announced that from that point on it officially preferred widescreen DVDs to pan-and-scan (also known as "full screen"). For those movie buffs who had been eagerly watching this battle, the news came as a shock. In the fight for the hearts and minds of viewers, widescreen and its film-geek adherents had won an unexpected and glorious victory. Just a few years earlier, Blockbuster had discouraged widescreen DVDs, on the grounds that customers confused by the letterbox format thought they were defective. Now, the chain was conceding what cinephiles had argued for years: that widescreen was the superior way to watch a movie at home, even if it left black bars at the top and bottom of your television screen."<br /><br />Even when I didn't have a HDTV, I would only buy Widescreen versions of DVDs and LaserDiscs. There is just something about watching a movie they way it is supposed to be seen. Reel Classics has an <a href="http://www.reelclassics.com/Techtalk/panscan-article.htm">excellent article</a> from over 6 years ago about how much you actually miss on movies that are not letterbox. It wouldn't be Memorial Day without "war movies" and I ended up watching <a href="http://www.whereeaglesdare.com/">Where Eagles Dare</a> on <a href="http://www.turnerclassicmovies.com/">Turner Classic Movies</a>. Surprisingly, it wasn't in letterbox format and many scenes lost their punch over the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B00009N80R/qid=1086105921/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/002-4111357-4408048?v=glance&s=dvd&n=507846">DVD version</a> that I had just purchased a couple months ago. A couple scenes were cut off and you actually miss some of the great panoramas of Richard Burton on top of the cable car. As the Slate article shows, the pendulum has swung back into the letterbox camp and many of these great old movies shot using <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinemascope">CinemaScope</a> can now been seen how the director planned it to be.

[Doug Johnson]

I love the closing line of the article: "Daddy, why is half of the picture missing?"

Shouldn't the real question be, "Daddy, why ISN'T half of the picture missing?"

[Jason Dunn]

Great article! Indeed, several years ago people would look at me funny when I insisted that wide screen was the only "true" movie format, but now everyone I know seems to prefer it. TV size is really the factor that turned the tide though, and people who have smaller TVs usually still get pan and scan formats. A friend of mine recently went from a 19" TV up to a 27" and he said "Now it actually makes sense to get widescreen movies" (the TV is in a small room about five feet away from the couch, so it's a "big" TV for that room).

[fgarcia10]

Hi,

Could someone help me understand why some of my wide screen movies fill my widescreen tv and others not?

I'm a little confuse, I though when I bought my tv that I would not see the black bars on top or bottom :?:

[James Fee]

Hi,

Could someone help me understand why some of my wide screen movies fill my widescreen tv and others not?

I'm a little confuse, I though when I bought my tv that I would not see the black bars on top or bottom :?:
Simple answer is that your HDTV doesn't have the same aspect ratio as movies do. Movies can be either 2.35:1 (common) or 2.55:1 (not so common). Your 16x9 HDTV isn't wide enough to handle either format. You may find 1.85:1 anamorphic movies that fill the whole screen.

When you watch a movie converted to HDTV and there are no black bars, know that it was converted and is not in its actual format.

[Jason Dunn]

Could someone help me understand why some of my wide screen movies fill my widescreen tv and others not? I'm a little confuse, I though when I bought my tv that I would not see the black bars on top or bottom :?:

It's all about the aspect ratios - there are more than just 4:3 (normal TV) and 16:9 (most DVDs). It honestly confuses me a little myself, so if someone wants to chime in and educate us, go right ahead. :-)

[Doug Johnson]

I had this wonderful long explanation typed up but due to some buggy ATI display drivers my computer decided to reset and I lost it all... nevertheless, here's the jist of it...

4x3 TV's have a 1.33:1 aspect ratio ( width/height=1.33 )
16x9 TV's have a 1.78:1 aspect ratio ( width/height=1.78 )

If you are watching programming that has a different aspect ratio than your TV, you will either end up with black bars on top &amp; bottom (TV ratio &lt; program ratio) or left &amp; right (TV ratio > program ratio) or some of the picture is discarded to maximize used display area.

Most movies these days are 1.85:1 or wider. Anything shot at 1.85:1 will probably appear without any black bars on 16x9 TVs (1.85 is pretty close to 1.78:1). If a movie is shot in 2.35:1, you will still get black bars on your 16x9 TV, though those black bars will be significantly smaller than what you would see on a 4x3 TV. On a 4x3 TV, a 2.35:1 program fills just 56% of the available picture area. On a 16x9 TV 2.35:1 fills 75%.

Common aspect ratio for today's movies include 1.85:1, 2.35:1. Other aspect ratios that have been used include 1.33:1, 1.66:1, 1.96:1, 2.20:1, 2.76:1, 3.0:1. If you have a 16x9 TV and watch anything wider than 1.85:1 you will probably see black bars. If you have a 4x3 TV and watch anything wider than 1.33:1 you will see black bars.

Ok, with that out of the way...

DVD players have three aspect ratio display modes: 16x9, 4x3 letterbox, and 4x3 pan &amp; scan. These modes are ONLY used with anamorphic widescreen DVDs, and are ignored with non-anamorphic discs. An anamorphic DVD contains a picture that would appear squished horizontally if viewed unmodified on a 4x3 TV (everything would look tall). These DVDs are intended to be viewed on a widescreen (16x9) TV, and when played back in 16x9 mode are stretched horizontally by the TV to restore the intended picture width.

If you watch these DVDs in one of the 4x3 modes of your player, one of three things happens: (1) every 4th horizontal line of the picture is thrown away (leaving just 75% of the original picture), (2) 4 lines of the picture are shrunk to fill 3 lines, or (3) in pan &amp; scan mode, the left and/or right portions of the picture are discarded to fill more of the screen. In all three cases you lose significant picture information, resulting in much less sharpness, and often causing jumpiness during vertical motion.

So, watching an anamorphic DVD on a 16x9 TV with your DVD player set to 16x9 mode will give you the best picture, because no picture information has to be thrown away to fill the screen.

That said, however, some newer and fancier 4x3 TVs (especially HDTV monitors) know how to recognize the 16x9 flag in the video signal and adjust themselves to show all picture information in a physically shorter area. They do this without throwing out any information as the DVD player does when it is set to 4x3 mode, so you end up with a much sharper picture. To take advantage of this mode, set the TV's aspect ratio to "Auto" or "16x9", the DVD player's aspect mode to 16x9, and use an S-Video or Component video cable to connect the two. The resulting picture is MUCH sharper, less jumpy, and far easier on the eyes than what you would get with both devices set to 4x3. You can very clearly see the difference in the scrolling end credits of any anamorphic DVD. If your TV has this mode, use it! You'll be glad you did.

To make the comparison, set your DVD player to each of the 3 display modes and watch an anamorphic widescreen disc's scrolling end credits. When set to one of the 4x3 modes, the text will be much less crisp, be much more jumpy, and be hard to read. In 16x9 mode, the text is very crisp, moves smoothly, and be easy to read.

As if all of this isn't confusing enough, some movies are actually shot in 1.33:1 and are cropped in the theater to give the wide aspect ratio. This may sound appealing for 4x3 TV owners, but the fact is that the director never intended for the upper and lower portions of the picture to be seen, so you might end up seeing things like boom mics, cables, power lines, etc. in your picture. So the general rule of thumb is to watch the movie in the aspect ratio in which it was intended to be seen.

One exception to this.... several of the Disney Pixar movies ("standard" versions) are actually adjusted for display on a 4x3 television and include MORE picture than their 16x9 counterparts. If you have a 4x3 TV and watch these movies, select the "standard" version instead of the widescreen. If you have a 16x9 TV, use the widescreen version.

[fgarcia10]

Thanks James and DJ for the short and sweet version :wink:

Now it is my turn to try to explain to my wife.

Thanks guys!

[Jonathon Watkins]

Indeed, cheers for that. Very usefull. 8)