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Widescreen (Finally) Winning
Yort writes "There's a little blurb over at the IMDB about customers at Blockbuster now generally preferring the widescreen, or letterbox, format over full-screen. This after Blockbuster tried to only stock full screen versions of movies a few years ago. I guess now the wife will have to let me buy that new widescreen TV, right?"
Sony 4:3 televisions have a feature that will compress the scan lines into a 16:9 format. You lose surface area, but you don't lose any of the pixels. Great way to get quality 16:9 movie playback on the cheap (less than a thousand bucks).
Jonathan Pearce jonathan@pearce.name
3EAAFB2A http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/
Easy solution...
The DVD player was set to 4:3 instead of 16:9. They all (most) have a setting to tell them what kind of TV you have. There is no way for them to tell automatically.
In fact, a while ago a large number of DVD players defaulted to 16:9. That resulted in many returns by customers because they thought the DVD player was broken. So, now they default to 4:3. I guess they figure if you can afford a new 16:9 TV, you might be bright enough to read the manual.
-Dubya
That may suck if you paid $10,000 for your TV, but when you can get good widescreen RPTVs for under $2000, it's not so bad. Modern TVs have ways of combatting the burn-in you'll see from the 4:3 sidebars (mine has grey sidebars, to at least get even burn of the phosphors since the problem with black bars is underburn rather than overburn of the phosphors, and it shifts the position of the 4:3 box to try to minimize burn-in from the bar edges). As well, you can change your format to fullscreen and learn to live with slightly fatter/shorter people and objects, or some TVs even come with a second stretch mode that stretches the edges more than the center. It can make for a fisheye view on some shows, but it's not too bad on most shows. Since most shows have all of the action in the center of the screen, that's the least-distorted part of the picture.
So, other than burn-in, what issues do you have with not using the full width of your TV? Plasma screens are very prone to burn-in, though, so aside from movie or strictly 16x9 HDTV viewing, they're pretty worthless (which would also help explain why the price is still so high -- their utility is limited, so demand is low and price stays high).
The reason DVD imagery tends to look awful on widescreen TVs in shops is typically because they have the same signal running to multiple TVs, at least some of which are 4:3. For some odd reason, they tend to configure this shared display for the lowest-common (or perhaps better selling) denominator.
The fact that each TV is showing an image that has been been split multiple times also tends to result in image quality quite inferior to what the TV is capable of producing with a single connection.
This is why I don't judge a TV based on whatever it's displaying in a shop. I use the internet to find in-depth reviews carried out under more controlled conditions. I mean, if it's on the internet, it must be reliable, right? :)
Too bad widescreen films didn't appear until 1953, after 4:3 TV format was established.
Films went widescreen in response to TV:
"Oh, crap. People can watch moving pictures in thier home now. What are we gonna do?"
"We'll make the show really wide so to differentiate ourselves, and continue to make money"
Just about every new TV set larger than 27" sold in the US has a 16x9 squeeze mode. A scarce few of them autodetect the anamorphic flag and autoswitch, but not all DVD players send that flag either.
Most projectors can adjust aspect ratios to fit the available panel.
Even so, I think my next projector will be a 1366 x 768 widescreen so it will take 720p HDTV without down scaling. I haven't decided if it will be DLP or LCD, LCDs are cheaper, still get a decent contrast ratio (some at 900:1) and don't have DLP rainbows.
DLPs do have better contrast ratio, sometimes up to 2000:1 but I think I might be bothered by rainbowing.
US TV is broadcasted in widescreen:
* Alias (widescreen high def)
* Smart Travels (widescreen high def)
* My Wife and Kids (widescreen high def)
* George Lopez (widescreen high def)
* Star Trek Enterprise (letterboxed standard def)
* Law and Order (widescreen high def)
* Jay Leno (widescreen high def)
* Crime Scene Investigation (widescreen high def)
* Manor House (widescreen standard def)
* Animals Behaving Badly (widescreen standard def)
* E.T. (ABC commercial presentation, widescreen high def)
* Dragnet (widescreen high def)
You want more examples? There's a lot more!
Except that Halo is a 4:3 game, not 16:9. Sure, you can display it in fullscreen mode on a wide TV, but that's just stretching things horizontally. The XBox supports 480p (4:3 and 16:9), 720p, and 1080i (only 16:9 for both of those, IIRC), but only if the developers choose to support them in their game. 480p 4:3 generally comes for free. 480p 16:9 may have some effect on your textures or HUD. 720p and 1080i generally need you to rethink your engine design.
That said, Halo2 is supposed to support 480p 16:9 and 720p, so you will eventually be able to experience a Halo game in widescreen glory. Just not now.
There are a few widescreen games out there, though. Hitman2 (480i 16:9, not 480p), Sega GT 2002, Tony Hawk 4 (and possibly 3? 720p, 480p 16:9), Amped, and more. Check out this thread for an ongoing list.
IIRC he saw one of his early films on tv at one point and was appalled at how it had been mangled. In order to be certain that this would not continue to happen from then on he set up his shots such that 4:3 would contain the full shot, but that nothing significant would be lost when it was matted for 16:9 to be projected in theaters. Thus the majority of Kubrick films are correctly in 4:3 on DVD and video, but actually slightly off in the theater. While not a "Kubrick film" Spartacus is a notable exception having a rather wide ratio, 2.2:1 (70mm) going by the back of the box for the Criterion DVD release. 1.85:1 (academy flat) and 2.35:1 (anamorphic scope aka Panavision/Cinemascope) tend to be the standard two widescreen ratios.
Likewise films before the 1950s were largely filmed in 4:3 (academy standard). This is the main reason why televisions are also 4:3. When the NTSC chose an aspect ratio standard they went with academy standard. Films later went widescreen to offer something above and beyond television.
The idea behind widescreen is that it approximates the human field of view better than the standard mostly square picture on a 4:3 TV. I think it translates well to TV programming in ways that may take some time for TV producers to understand and take advantage of. For instance on 4:3, in a close up shot, notice it's often difficult to squeeze more then two faces into a single shot because of the aspect ratio, but on widescreen this is now problem. Some of the better TV commercials will even throw in letterboxing just to get the proper effect.
I disagree... I think we're used to seeing the world in a pretty wide aspect ratio..
:)
I looked it up once, and came up with the conclusion that 5:3 was our "natural" aspect ratio. Clearly wider than 4:3, but a little narrower than 16:9 (since 5:3 would be 15:9.)
I think the wider view is more immersive... not necessarily as good as having an IMAX type screen where you can't see the whole screen unless you turn your head, but we can't all afford that
How about using a projector like a Dell 2100MP? $1300 list, 800x600 res, make your movie room dark and you can make as big an image as you have a wall for (pref. with a screen on it, of course.) You can even adjust the zoom for best fit of widescreen vs. 4:3, perhaps with black drapes and the like to properly frame the image.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
Well there is also the issue that we see more horizontally than verticly, about twice as much. Also films have no one standard for widescreen. 1.85:1, 2:1 and 2.35:1 are some common anamorphic lense formats, but they aren't the only ones. Also some films are shot with spherical glass and then hard matted to the desired ratio (Fight Club for example).
I'm also not sure when the concept of anamorphic lenses came about, which is how widescreen is generally done. In case you don't know, anamorphic lense are squashed, so the image on the film is also squashed. You then hook the same kind of lense to the projector which unsquashes the image. Gets better resolution than doing the same shot with aspherical lens and cropping it since you use more of the film, but has trouble with some aspects of focus. Look at lights in teh distance in Fight Club and contrast them to other movies and you'll see the difference.
It may be that the move to widescreen was partially motivated by TV aspect ratio but I think it was more due to the natural percetion of humans and also perhaps the invention or refinement of anamorphic lenses.
Hi
This is simply wrong. When you watch an anamorphic widescreen DVD, your player is still outputting 480 (or 576 for PAL) lines of resolution, and your TV squashes the picture vertically. You get an even sharper and more detailed image. You most certainly *do not* lose resolution.
The exception to this is if your TV cannot do 16:9 compress, and/or you have your DVD player set to letterbox mode rather than 16:9 mode.
I was amused that I had to beg the BBC a couple of years ago to air "Film [insert year here] with Jonathan Ross" in widescreen, because they amazingly shot Ross's studio reviews in 4:3 and then had letterboxed movie clips. The series that followed finally switched to widescreen - amazing that the most obvious BBC show to get widescreen (a movie review show) was one of the last to get it !
One weak point in the UK widescreen TV market, though, is the virtual non-existence of widescreen TV's below the 24" mark. Now, I don't know about you, but I have a small bedroom with limited space to put my VCR, satellite decoder and TV (in fact, the three are stacked on top of each other).
There's no way I can fit a 24" widescreen set in the space available, so how come it's impossible to buy a portable widescreen set in the UK now ? Luckily, I got myself a Sony 16" widescreen set before they got discontinued and I love it to death, but when that needs replacing, I'll have to knock the wall through to the next room to fit a widescreen set in :-)