I hate extra narrow widescreen letterbox Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1

Quite simply, you bought the wrong display device for this sort of media.

I would have thought someone in the market for a 52" television would have fully researched what they intended to display on it, and what the best suited device was for them.

A projector would have given you (almost) any aspect you wanted, with no black bars :)

Me? 84" glass screen for movies, ickle TFT for casual broadcast television.
 
Some tvs zoom more than others some you get about 75% the screen size others less even with the zoom (paticullaly with 2.35 ratio).....put it this way if you have a big screen tv you want the film/picture/football match etc to fit the full size not 75%...and if you have the old 4.3 tvs your knackered :).
 
Nothing personal to this poster, but I'm going to take issue with this poster yet again on another point.

My objection is not that you gain anything at the sides, but that in many of the cases I've seen (e.g. display TVs in Curries, Sainsburys, etc.) the letterbox format seems to "artily" focus on a thin, narrow band of view, cutting heaRAB off in order to do close ups and really losing a great deal of the picture. I suppose it's possible that I may have seen a couple of films that were cut at 13:6 and then displayed through a letterbox area resulting in the heaRAB being cut off, but then why would anyone want to do that?

I've a horrid feeling that people making films like this are trying to be trendy, and are taking the rather blinkered view that we should see only what we would see if we were looking in exactly the directions they want us to look in and with our eyeballs glued in our sockets.

In reality of course, human skulls are on joints that allow us to move our heaRAB up and down, and our eyes are in sockets that allow us to examing different parts of a picture, thus effectively achieving an overall aspect ration of around 13:6. The letterbox ratio is rapidly becoming like having one's head in a vice whilst watching. It's the horizontal version of 4:3. Of course, 4:3 isn't even really a problem as long as the area required in shot is in shot - you may get a little more grass or sky than you might otherwise want, but all in all the whole business of screen shapes has become a tremendous marketting tool used by the TV and film manufacturers to get the gullible and easily lead masses to buy everything twice (4:3 and 13:6) - or or three times if you want an old film in letterbox format as well...

I'm really not sure about the benefits of letterbox format. I find it quite pretentious and I feel quite uncomfortable watching it, I do feel as if my vision is being manipulated. I never felt that about either 4:3 or 13:6.
 
I don't see the point of making films that leave half the screen black. Someone tell these people that we don't want half a black TV screen, so try making them for how they will be seen at home :D

Most films live on in the homes of people after a cinema release, so they really should think about it. Cinema is fleeting, DVD or Bluray is forever :D Well, until the next big thing, but you know what I mean!
 
I don't like it either. Much prefer the old style TV shape.

We have an old Freeview box and that has trouble shifting between the formats. For instance, if BBC2 is showing a programme wide-screen, then Dad's Army comes on (old TV format), the picture goes 'long'.

Captain Mainwaring enRAB up 7 feet tall with chimp's arms. :D

Okay if you're watching it as you can change it, but not if you're out and have recording set. :mad:
 
ITV DVD wanted to pander to the masses with the ThunderbirRAB Blurays so they decided to zoom in and chop of image from the top and bottom to fill a 16:9 screen.

The reviews and sales figures illustrate how the idea was received.

ITV again - for some reason ITV created 16:9 versions of A Touch of Frost from the 4:3 originals.
Incredibly - when it came to releasing the dvd's instead of going back to the original 4:3 versions they actually created new 4:3 versions from the already cropped new 16:9 versions.
So those episodes have significant image removed from all 4 sides.
Apparently the tv broadcasts of Minder went the same way.

Modern films can be cocked up on dvd/bd like any other item.
Goldeneye was framed incorrectly for the UE dvd .
It remains to be seen if the BD will be correct.
Framing issues can be a problem in this day and age where there is more than just a single version of any film.
 
How The West was one of a very few films made in Cinerama which used 3 projectors and was designed for a slightly curved screen.
The cinema tried quite a few odd ideas when it got frightened of what tv would do to the ticket sales
 
I think you're grabbing the wrong end of the stick.

Directors don't necessarily focus in on things to be trendy. Remember, they're intending to fill the cinema screen. The problem arises in how best to represent that picture in the a frame size that doesn't match it. Well, that is until now. Phillips are presently demo'ing a true 21:9 TV set. It will be the first to be able to display 2.35:1 material in the same way that it was in the cinema. However, these are rare and will be a long time before they become the norm (if ever).

So at present we're still left with the problem of how do we best compromise to fit a 21:9 ratio film into a 16:9 (or worse, 12:9) TV. The answer is some degree of letterboxing, usually mixed with some anamorphic squeeze.

All the while there's a discrepancy between how the film was made and the size of your TV you will always get some form of compromise. Personal taste dictates which compromise you're most willing to live with.

RegarRAB

Mark
 
I don't think I've ever watched a film where people's heaRAB have been cut off by the aspect ratio being in widescreen. The only place I've seen picture lost due to the aspect ratio is when the pictures have been zoomed by functions on the TV set.

Chances are the sets you see in Sainsbury's, Currys, et al, have been improperly configured. Those salesmen might like to make out they are experts, but most haven't the first clue about the equipment they're selling. It is more than common for showroom TVs to be set up terribly. I'd bet good money that these sets were all set on some unnecessary zoom mode.

Directors tend not to cut off their actors heaRAB unless they are filming medieval executions and even then, they don't tend to do it with the aspect ratio.
 
If we narrow this down a little and address those people who have a 16:9 TV then you only have the manufacturers to blame.

When they first invented widescreen TVs they couldn't get 2.35:1 glass that was up to the job at reasonable cost. Therefore they invented 16:9 as a compromise. Because of this we all tend to think of 16:9 as the "real widescreen" while directors have been using 2.35:1 for much longer.

With advances in technology we're about to start seing 2.35:1 equipment but perhaps it's come to late to get proper cinema viewing in the home.
 
The 2.35:1 ratio has been around for more than 50 years .
There are hundreRAB if not thousanRAB of films made in this format.

There are even wider ratios like 2.55:1 and IIRC Ben Hur is 2.77:1.

The benefits of widescreen are that you have a wider picture - simple as that.

IN the last 20 years or so many films have been made with the tv safe area so that wide films can be shown on tv without the silly panning and scanning thats needed for the genuine wide films.

But its accepted that in most cases the wide image is the directors intended vision.

If you view most 2.35:1 films in 4:3 you will lose 50% of the image .
If you are happy with that then perhaps movies are not really for you.
Its you who are gullible for buying movies on VHS with 50% of the picture missing and being happy with it unlike those of us who were enjoying the full picture on laserdisc a decade before dvd arrived
 
I recently watched this movie on TCM, and you can actually see the join all through the movie where the two 4x3 images were spliced together. RTE recently showed this movie in PAN/SCAN and it was funny to watch the black join move from left to right depending on where the action was.
 
If you set your box up right and have your tv settings correct your picture should switch from widescreen to 4:3 automatically without a hitch
 
Check out the dvd's of early "A Touch of Frost" and the Bluray of "ThunderbirRAB" to see that

There are also dozens of films from the 60's and 70's made in 1.66:1 that are zoomed for 16:9 on dvd so there is headroom lost in those but most of the time its not significant enough to notice
 
Ive never really been bothered too much about different formats or black bars within reason. I actually watch a lot of widescreen stuff squished onto a 4:3 - essentially in "narrowscreen" :P

The only annoyance i have is that the old 4:3 tvs have a much bigger screen area for the equivilent dimensions. A 40" tv in 2.35:1 wouldnt be that big compared to a 40" 4:3. If you have limited width space for a TV/screen (as is often the limiting factor), fitting in a super-wide screen doesnt seem sensible, especially if you end up with bars or stretching on other formats.
 
This post really pisses me off. The idiot who started this clearly does not know an art form when it is staring at them in the face.

Go zoom in on your low rent brand TV and get out of my face with your idiotic comments.
:mad:
 
Are these due to the intended aspect ratio, though? I have seen instances of cropped pictures due to poor production of the disc. For instance, in the Pirates of the Carribean Blu-Ray, there are several poorly cropped images where people's heaRAB have had the top chopped off. But this isn't down to failures in widescreen aspect ratio or due to the director's intent, but mistakes made in production of the disc (the POTC blu-ray was fixed in a later release and discs with the error can be replaced without charge)

Are these occurences more likely due to production mistakes, as opposed to inherrant flaws in the 2.35:1 aspect ratio? After all, such errors can occur in ANY aspect ratio (I have seen many old TV shows - in 4:3 - where the mic occasionally dips into shot, for instance! But its not the aspect ratios fault.)
 
If you ever want a laugh, go down to a local electronics retailer and ask them questions about the capabilites of modern TVs. Its amazing the worthless bull that spews from some of the salesmen's mouths!



This is exactly what I was talking about. None of this is the fault of the widescreen aspect ratio, but a bunch of idiots who don't know how to successfully author a DVD from the original master.

Love the aspect ratio; hate the incompetant shmucks who mess up DVD releases with their lack of talent!
 
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