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?"

Comments

It is a superior format

[revmoo]

Widescreen is undeniably a lot better way to watch a movie, and I'm sure that TV makers like it, because no one wants to watch a widescreen movie on a small TV

I think it will be really nice in a few years when widescreen TV's are the norm.

Re:It is a superior format

[gilesjuk]

Only because film makers shoot in widescreen, they haven't always. It was a gimmic to stop the decline of the cinema when TVs became popular.

Perhaps they will revert to a squarer image when all TVs are widescreen?

Widescreen is popular in the UK, go into an electrical store and you'll see rows of big widescreen TVs and only a handful of 4:3 tube sets.

Problem is the UK sets aren't HD yet and are unlikely to be for many years.

Re:It is a superior format

[mwolff]

I saw a short clip on letterbox vs. full on Turner Classic movies. I was shocked at how much was lost when it was converted from the original format to the full screen format. Entire characters would disappear sometimes. Since then I have only watched letterbox. It is the way the director intended you to view it.

Re:It is a superior format

[MiTEG]

Generally, much of the film the way the director intended for it to be seen is left on the cutting room floor to meet the magic 100 or 120 minute mark. This probably discards as much information as the conversion from 2.35:1 to 1:33:1 aspect ratio.

Re:It is a superior format

[kungfuBreaks]

I've got a pathetically tiny TV, but I still rent widescreen whenever possible. Why? Because it looks a million times better, that's why. I never understood how people can be bothered by two little black bars but not by the fact they're missing a third of the frame...Bizarre.

Re:It is a superior format

[aardvarkjoe]

Wait a second ... isn't the whole argument for widescreen that "you lose information when changing the ratio"? I don't see how it's any better to crop (automatically -- even worse than by hand) TV shows instead of movies. I only occasionally watch movies at home (granted, I don't watch a whole lot of TV in general, but when I do, it's usually not movies.) Therefore, it seems that 4:3 is a better choice for me. Someone who watches a lot of movies might want to make the opposite choice.

Of course, the real solution is to have a high-resolution, large screen, so that letterboxed video doesn't look terrible. As it is, I'm rather indifferent to letterboxed movies -- it has its strong points, but you do lose a lot of detail. Unfortunately, I'm far too poor at the moment to go out and buy anything to make that a reality.

Re:It is a superior format

[timeOday]

Then again, you lose something by additional shrinking to fit the "widescreen" format onto the tv. I put "widescreen" in quotes because obviously it doesn't make your TV screen wider, so it should be called "shortscreen."

Put another way, with pan and scan you use all 640x480 of your TV; with widescreen your TV becomes 640x350 or so (and the same holds fo HDTV screens, unless it's a real widescreen, or has resolution significantly in excess of the source).

Widescreen

[obotics]

The problem with widescreen at the moment is that TV is not broadcasted in widescreen. This means that quite a lot of your $10,000 TV is not being used when watching regular broadcast tv. Granted, I love widescreen for movies, but I also would like to see televion broadcasts switch over.

Still, I have to admit that those plasma TVs look darn nice!

Re:Widescreen

[MillionthMonkey]

The problem with widescreen at the moment is that TV is not broadcasted in widescreen.

Which only makes sense, given that widescreen owes its existence to the invention of television in the fifties. It was a typical fearful Hollywood reaction to advancing technology. They were scared green that people were going to stay home and watch TV instead of going out to the movies. By making the screen wider, they figured they had a selling point over television- you're getting "more movie" along the edges! Not to mention the fact that they could screw up the aspect ratio between the two formats this way. You have to choose between truncated edges, stretched faces, or black bars on your TV screen. That was quite intentional.

Of course, another way of looking at it is that they decreased the height, rather than increased the width. They made the movie screen shorter than the TV screen, not wider. That's why you get those black bars. There's no inherent reason why a wider aspect ratio is any better in the first place. It's like saying it's better to have a volume knob that goes up to 11.

This means that quite a lot of your $10,000 TV is not being used when watching regular broadcast tv. Granted, I love widescreen for movies, but I also would like to see televion broadcasts switch over.

If TV broadcasts switch to 2.35:1 to catch up, movies will start coming out with 4:1 and 5:1 aspect ratios. They'll film their stuff on a thin horizontal strip if that's what it takes to screw you over.

HD tv

[mjdth]

isn't HD tv's native format widescreen? wouldn't this help to get every type of TV media on the same page?

That depends...

[raehl]

SOME TV is not broadcast in wide screen. Some is. I'm pretty sure all of the late-night shows are filmed in wide screen now for example.

Now, whether the broadcaster in your area is broadcasting that wide-screen signal, or your cable provider is carrying it, is another matter entirely.

Ok, so we're half way there

[decarelbitter]

Because most modern movies are recorded in Cinemascope, which is not 16:9, but 2.35:1. So cool movies like LOTR still have a nice black bar on the top and bottom when viewed on a Shiny! 16:9 plasma screen.

Wide vs Full

[Masem]

I realize that to provide both a widescreen and a fullscreen version, with 5.1 sound and little encoding artifacts, would generally require a second disk for most feature films, I don't understand the trend currently for many newer movies to have separate boxes for Wide and Full, particularly when the version info is not easy to pick out (Now whenever I get a DVD, I doublecheck the back of the box to get all the formatting information to make sure it's what I expect). The old Warner DVD titles were flippies in that one side was full, the other wide, but this means you didn't have a picture on the DVD media itself (oh, boo hoo!). It would seem to me that providing both versions of the movie on a flippy disk in one box would be cheaper than making up two distribution runs, particularly when the number of full vs. wide is still rapidly changing.

Explanation is Simple

[tabdelgawad]

With decent (not great!) 27" TVs dipping below $200, the median size of TVs in US households must be significantly higher than it was a few years ago. This tends to resolve the tradeoff between letterbox and fullscreen in favor of letterbox.

Re:How?!

[farnsworth]

How the hell are you supposed to watch Kubrick

Kubrick typically prints the entire film negative, giving you a 4:3 aspect ratio, i.e., "not widescreen". Almost everyone else cuts off the top and bottom of the film to give you 16:9.

You make a good point, but keep in mind that "what the director intended you to see" does not always mean "widescreen."

Re:Good comparison site

[_|()|\|]

This site has some samples of movies in widescreen format and the result that one will get in the full screen format.

It would be more useful if the pictures were shown at the same width. Showing them at the same height is like comparing a 27" full-screen TV (~$500) to a 32" wide-screen TV (~$1,500).

Re:Do Not Underestimate Customers

[_|()|\|]

I remember buying American Beauty last year on VHS, as a gift for my sister. The clerk asked me 3 times whether I was sure I wanted widescreen.

You have to admit that wide-screen VHS is a small market. Wide-screen anamorphic DVD is popular because it displays at a high resolution on a decent TV. Wide-screen VHS looks bad on any TV.

Re:Upgrading

[darkov]

No, that's to cater to the sucker mentality that letterbox=elite (as is evidenced throughout this thread): When a show or commercial wants to seem classy or refined, here comes the letterbox!

To a degree, but It can be valid, if I were shooting in a HD aspect ratio I'd probably be pretty frustrated to find that my shots ended up looking crappy in the narrow aspect. Good composition would be very difficult (if not impossible) to achive for both aspects at the same time.

But then again, we are talking about TV, not high art.

Re:Somebody please tell my local Blockbuster

[Osty]

Here's a tip for ya: Don't go to Blockbuster. Renting movies at Blockbuster is like clothes shopping at Wal-Mart or eating at McDonald's.

Where, then, should I go when I need a quick movie fix? If I don't feel like waiting several days for the Netflix mailers to arrive, or even longer if the movie is popular, what do I do? There's Blockbuster, with a great assortment of movies, though I do have to comb pretty carefully now to be sure I'm getting what I want, and there's ... not much more. I used to love Hollywood Video, but there's not one conveniently close to me. I don't want to go miles out of the way just to rent a movie.

And what's wrong with clothes shopping at Wal-Mart? Does it really matter where you buy your underwear or socks? Sure, you probably won't buy anything more than a T-shirt or two otherwise, but underwear and socks are important too. And McDonald's is a great place to grab a quick bite when you're on the run. Is it good for you? Probably not. Are there better places? Most assuredly. But McD's is quick, and it's convenient, and so long as you don't eat there every single day it's not going to kill you.

But then, I guess we can't all be pretentious, can we?

Re:I tell fullscreen supporters...

[Anonymous Coward]

That's retarded... how would you manually crop a widescreen movie for SVCD transfer? It takes a pretty talented professional to make a widescreen movie watchable in pan/scan as it is, you think you can do better picking the middle of the frame?

This is the same Blockbuster that edits content

[gad_zuki!]

Great, now I can watched widescreen NC-17 and other films edited by the studio for "family-friendly" stores like Blockbuster and Walmart because these stores will refuse to carry content they find religiously/morally questionable. The studios don't want to lose money so there goes the penis scene from Bad Lieutenant. I can't remember any others from the top of my head, but the editing is quite real.

They need to widen their tolerance not their aspect ratios.

Re:This is the same Blockbuster that edits content

[maroon_dog]

Blockbuster doesn't edit. Walmart doesn't edit. The studios made the choice to edit. If you want NC-17 don't go to blockbuster or walmart. Otherwise its like complaing becaues your local Ford dealer doesn't sell Chevys.

Re:This is the same Blockbuster that edits content

[SuiteSisterMary]

No, WalMart, for example, doesn't edit.

But when they say 'Edit, or we don't carry it, and you lose over 30 percent of your gross for it, off the top,' they're certainly imposing their morality needlessly.

Superior?

[Becquerel]

It may well be better to see all of a movie widescreen on 4:3 screen so you don't loose anything...

but the point of movies at the cinema being in widescreen is that they fill your whole field of vision. Which is significantly biased to the horizontal ~220deg horiz and ~80deg vertical (presumably because cavemen did'nt worry about being attacked from the sky). But as far as i can tell there is little bias to the horizontal in field of view (the small area that is properly in focus ~30deg).So if i'm watching tv which usually only fills your field of view (unless you sit eye strainingly close to the screen)then i would rather have it fill that whole field rather than just a stip across the middle of it. The obvious example is the monitor that you are staring at, do you think it would be better in widescreen? i don't. It fills my field of view nicely

This is especially the case in the UK were you can buy the same amount of widescreen area on a 4:3 screen for less than the equivalent widescreen(which then plays 4:3 pictures in a tiny area).