Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater DVD Movies and Widescreen formats...what gives???

So, old fashioned TV is a 4:3 aspect ratio. New "widescreen" displays are a 16:9 aspect ratio. Full screen movies are in a 4:3 aspect ratio - makes sense. Here's where it gets funky. The widescreen formats I've seen for movies are 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 - widescreen and anamorphic widescreen respectively. I guess I have two questions out of this - why is a 16:9 display an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 while the standard widescreen movie is 1.85:1. I'm assuming they just rounded to 16:9 because a 37:20 (1.85:1 in whole numbers) aspect ratio for a TV is just dumb. The second question - why 2.35:1? Why would I spend a few thousand bucks on a new TV so I can have black bars on the top and bottom? I don't get it. Are there some DVD players that do post-processing to get rid of these? Can anyone shed some light on this stuff? Thanks a ton. I appologize if this has been asked before. I haven't seen it in the past few months I've been hanging out here.

Pete

PS - I've been lurking for way too long without posting. This message board is awesome.

dude-

i am still having a hard enough time making sure my wife buys the 'widescreen' version of a movie, instead of the 'fullscreen'..

i havent gotten to the point of trying to figure out what it all means..at this point, i am just happy if she gets the right one!!

bigjohn

This might help. Might not.

Radspecv,

I hope your reasons for spending a few thousand bucks on a TV include more than just getting rid of black bars. You can do that with your current TV by making an appropriately sized cardboard cutout, painting it to look like a nice TV, and taping it in front of your existing 4:3 TV.

But seriously...

The fact is that the aspect ratio of TVs in peoples' homes is the LAST thing on a director's mind when choosing what size film to shoot his/her movie on. Widescreen/Anamorphic DVDs faithfully preserve the original vision of the director. Isn't that what most people want? I, for one, hate watching pan and scanned versions of theatrical releases.

Some widescreen TVs have a setting that will fill the screen with whatever signal they receive. If the original signal is 1.85:1, then it will expand it vertically to fit. In this aspect ratio, you won't notice too much vertical distortion, but it'll be there. If you do the same thing to a 2.35:1 aspect signal, however, the actors and scenes will definitely look vertically stretched.

Personally, my philosophy with video playback is that same as it is with music playback: I want to remain as true to the artist's original intent as I can. This is why I chose solid-state (vs. tube) amplification, and why I own the very neutral Axiom M22 speakers. I did have a widescreen TV, you can bet I'd watch standard TV shows in 4:3 (in the middle of the widescreen), and movies in whatever aspect ration they were filmed in. To my eyes, the black bars disappear as soon as I'm concentrating on the movie.

Radspecv -

This is way too in-depth to get into but I'll touvh on a few things:

When movies are shot on film, they are shot on 35mm film - basically the same thing you put into your 35mm camera. The director decides how he wants his film displayed and the film is shot to those specs...blah, blah, blah.

So - the film goes to theaters with black bars on it so the film displays the aspect ratio wanted by the director - there are many. You don't see the bars at the theater b/c it's not a tv.

With film you're gonna have the black bars on the 16x9 tv unless you set it to fill the screen.

With widescreen video, it'll fill your screen - that's 16:9 anamorphic.

The biggest thing is - don't confuse media produced on film with media produced on video tape...very different worlds.

I'm sure there is a place on the web that makes more sense of this than I have - but I hope it helps.

^billy

Damn, good question. I've been wondering the same thing. I think pmbuko said it best:

"The fact is that the aspect ratio of TVs in peoples' homes is the LAST thing on a director's mind when choosing what size film to shoot his/her movie on."

Either that, or it's marketing. They want us to stress over all the details. Pretty soon they'll start selling TV's at all different kinds of ratios. Damn them, damn them all. Juuust kidding.

Link to Interesting Explanation of aspect Ratio

Some 16.9 TVs do what they call "justification Mode" where they will take a 4.3 format and use an algorithm to translate to wide screen format. It works pretty well, for most of the picture, but it overly compensates on the sides and you notice the squeeze effect when character walk to the sides. I rarely even notice it anymore...you get used to it. You normally have the option of chooseing the zoom mode. This will fill the screen without distorting image, but you lose a % of the overall picture and vision that the director had for the scene.

The "black band" effect gets more annoying in the world of Front Projection projectors for some other reasons... but I'm rambling -- good question.

"I'm the dude -- man, this aggression will not stand"

I've been a fan of widescreen since LaserDiscs. It remains true the director's original vision. People get it backwards quite often thinking that the full screen version is the version with all the information and the widescreen just puts "black bars" at the top and bottom CUTTING OFF information that was in the full screen version. By now in this thread you should get the idea that this is completely backwards. Movies are first released in a movie theater. You don't see those screens in a 4:3 format do you? The change to the 16:9 tvs is brilliant in my mind. Now everything will have continuity from the big screen to the small screen.
I live in a smaller town, and besides getting out of town or ordering over the internet, Wal-Mart is about all the DVD shopping option I have. Their policy is, at least in my area when a movie is first released, to have it available in both formats (full screen and widescreen). After a certain amount they only provide full screen. Almost all their movies are in full screen and it drives me mad!
Here's the thing I tell people now. Sure, your full screen version fills the whole screen of your tv. None of those "nasty annoying black bars" (using their words, certainly not mine). BUT, 5 years from now when all you can buy is a 16:9 ratio tv...all those people who ONLY wanted full screen version will be the ones with the black bars. Only theirs will be on the sides of the screen. FINALLY...JUSTICE WILL BE SERVED!
Maybe then Wal-Mart will phase out the full screens and just leave the widescreens. I will cherish the day.

Thanks for the replies. I guess I was assuming that when movies are shot they're in a standard size (i.e. 1.85:1). If the director can shoot it in whatever widescreen format he wants it all makes sense now. I agree with preserving the directors intent with the original recording. All-in-all I prefer the black bars over the stretch and morph techniques to fill the entire screen. That stuff just isn't right.

Pete

PS - good links Jack & Bilbo

I have the same question, all DVD's I get are wide screen since i have a 16 x 9 display, I would say 25% of them fill up the entire screen while 75% have the black bars. Why do some of them show the black bars?

b/c the aspect is greater than 16x9...some films fall close-enough to 16x9 that you don't notice...many films do not. You notice this difference more with a 16x9 television than with a 4x3 television b/c with 4x3 you have no point of reference with regard to height - if you watch widescreen, you expect the bars and never notice that they're probably different each time. With 16x9, you have this point of reference and notice when the aspect ratio doesn't fit within 16x9 - which it never really does when it is shot on film. 16x9 is a widescreen format developed for video and enhanced for film. For the most part, only widescreen video will perfectly fill your 16x9 monitor. It's nor perfect, but it's MUCH better than it ever was and is getting better all the time. Personally, I do not want to see films limited to one aspect ratio. Those great films like a River Runs Through it benefits so much from a wide, wide format revealing the landscape and films like A Few Good Men do better with a less wide aspect to more emphasize the human element.

^billy