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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?"
This site has some samples of movies in widescreen format and the result that one will get in the full screen format. widescreen.org.
The full screen version of LoTR is really bad because of its original screen ratio.
While I think releasing DVDs in widescreen is the way to go, I've noticed that more and more programs on my TV are being letterboxed, probably becuase programs are increasingly being distributed and broadcast in HD.
Meanwhile the effective size of my TV screen is being erroded beacuse of this letterboxing. Damned progress.
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Considering that the cost of front projection DLP is falling fast, I'd skip the widescreen tv route entirely. You get whatever aspect ratio you need.
Even if you do go rear rear projection or tubes, I think I'd still go with a bigger 4:3 (as long as it supported 16x9 compression, like the Sony's or JVCs)
I find, generally, that when you say 'aspect ratio' to your average layperson they say 'gesundheit'.
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
Call me a snob, a bigot, whatever. But I cannot fathom how people stomach non-widescreen. I mean, it's cutting off sizeable chunks of what the director intended you to see. With competent editing it is a disaster. With incompetent editing it's unwatchable.
How the hell are you supposed to watch Kubrick or Kurosawa, for that matter, on a format other than they shot it in and not walk away with (almost literally) half the picture?
My
Limekiller
The widescreen version is better because it is the full frame as the cinematographer and director intended. Anything 'pan and scan' cuts out about a third of the frame. But we all know that.
;-).
I bought a widescreen HDTV a few months ago and I must say there is no going back to standard 4:3. Even if you do not watch/get HD feeds, I highly recommend the new widescreen HDTVs for DVD watching. Even without my HD receiver, I'd still have purchased the TV just for the DVD experience. Now, of course, I'm an anamorphic snob
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I rented the Bourne Identity last week, and imagine my surprise when I got it home and realized it was the Pan&Scan version. Now, there's a reason why I have a widescreen TV -- I like widescreen. I don't want to spend $4.50 on a movie rental and then lose half of the image. This wouldn't be so bad if the DVD display case said in prominent lettering "Fullscreen Version" or "NOT Widescreen", but it said nothing. Since it didn't explicitly say it was the fullscreen version, I just naively assumed that DVD == Widescreen unless otherwise specified. I won't be fooled again. I guess I'll stick with Netflix from now on.
Actually, I've been seeing several broadcast TV shows being shown in letterbox lately...couldn't tell you which ones because I don't watch TV that much, but I think one of them was like Law and Order or some program similar to that.
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Here in the UK quite a lot of the digital channels are broadcast in widescreen, and all the free-to-air digital channels are.
Seems like almost all the TVs in the shops are widescreen now, as well.
A lot of the BBC output in the UK, and some of 5's esp films, is now broadcast in widescreen. I can't comment on ITV or Ch4, my freeview arial can't pick them up :)
Since I got Freeview a few months ago I have been converted totally to widescreen. I have a normal TV, so it's letterbox only, but even that is so much better. I would not have believed it until I'd got used to it.
Flame all you want, but after the first month, approximately 100% of people who watch any movie will be watching it on a T.V., so why the hell wouldn't you design the movie to be seen on that medium?
A few directors do that, Stanley Kubrick shot most of his films in something closer to a TV ratio (the top and bottom would be cropped off in theatres) and I read an interview with Cronenberg where he stated that he tried to frame his films with the expectation they will be shown in a television ratio.
If only widescreen TVs would become more commonly available in the USA - last time I was back in Britain visiting family I found you were hard pressed even to find a 4:3 TV in stores. The little 10" TV/VCR combo units were about the only ones left, everything else was 16:9. This is because the upcoming DTV standard for Europe is 16:9.
That said, Panasonic sell a nice 30" and 34" 16:9 HDTV tube TV in this country. Movies and videogames look phenomenal those sets and they're a lot cheaper than plasma displays.
Graham
The underlying suggestion being that movies should all be shot to the same aspect ratio? What on earth do you think we're halfway to? One binding aspect ratio for all visual media? Nonsense.
Considering the back-catalog of film and television production and the range of screen dimensions they cover ... well, let's just say I still don't see a "halfway" to *anything* in this.
The saddest thing I've seen lately is a letter-boxed widescreen movie played on a widescreen TV in a store display. The letterbox effect printed on the DVD shrunk the image vertically to accommodate the aspect ratio of most TVs. The widescreen TV, for some unfathomable reason, stretched the image it was given to fit the wider aspect ratio of the widescreen TV. The result was a short, elongated version of the original movie, and I don't think the implementation could have been further from the intent of its designers (the film makers). There's no way I was going to even consider buying that TV. Unfortunately, most of the "widescreen" TVs I look at (casual inspection only) seem to be pulling the same "stretch it a little and no one will notice" trick, so unless I hear that the industry is making an effort to coordinate solutions I'm not putting my hard-earned $thousands into the new technology.
Two possible solutions:
(1) sell widescreen format movies that look weird on normal sets because they'd be squished horizontally.
(2) make the TV able to recognize the letterbox format and adjust intelligently.
My vote is on option 2 - better backwards compatibility. I just hope that the industry picks soon and sticks with the decision.
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Widescreen is better because that's how you see life. Try looking straight ahead, can you see more up and down or left and right?
Wherever you go, there you are!
I am curios as to if Widescreen is really a better format for things beside movies? I am curious if there is any advantage to widescreen for standard made for tv/video releases? I know widescreen is good for the movies and therefore it is best to watch the movies in their original form but quite frankly, I don't see the problem with standard 4:3 for everything else?
This method won't work until DVDs store info about the area of focus, and can pan&scan on-the-fly, to any ratio your player wants to put it in.
Which they've actually always been able to do. That's why your DVD player's setup menu has a preference field for the selection of 'full screen' or 'widescreen'. Widescreen DVDs that offer P&S-on-the-fly support will play back in fullscreen mode if you set up your player that way.
However, very few discs have taken advantage of the P&S-on-the-fly feature. I'm not sure why; it may be because the telecine P&S process has more options available than the automatic feature provides, like zooming.
The original pressing of the Last Temptation of Christ DVD actually enabled this feature by mistake. Viewers with the fullscreen option turned on were rewarded with a corrupted P&S picture (well, more corrupted than usual). I imagine they've fixed this by now.
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approximately 100% of people who watch any movie will be watching it on a T.V., so why the hell wouldn't you design the movie to be seen on that medium?
well, here in the UK, they *are* designing their movie to be viewed on tv. we've mostly converted to widescreen here... and in much of the rest of europe. you have to go out of your way to find 4:3 stuff, both hardware and software. a friend of mine is looking for the second harry potter film on dvd in 4:3 and it's not available yet. you've been able to get the widescreen one for a while now but the 4:3 one is not even out.
dave
If at all possible, I don't watch anything in 4:3. Any widescreen movies converted to 4:3 are absolutely butchered.
But an interesting thing I noticed recently was a movie that had different versions on both sides (The Truth about Charlie). But, rather than the 4:3 or native aspect ratio choice that many movies give; it had choices of 16:9 or native 2.35:1.
I find that the "butchering" is much less severe when going from 2.35:1 down to 16:9 / 1.78:1. But, I chose the 2.35:1 side, to see the movie in it's full glory.
BTW - The movie was less than stellar, except for the presence of Thandie Newton.. She is gorgeous.. which helps improve any action movie (she was the hot spy chick in Mission Impossible 2)
they neglected something on this one....
blockbuster still continues the practice of stocking only widescreen formats. My local BB here in CNY had like 40 some copies of harry potter 2 on dvd. the entire group was widescreen only. I've noticed this for several other titles.
not that I'm saying widescreen isn't better, but it seems in my head wouldn't that impair a studies nbrs a bit if some big new releases aren't even sotcked with an option ?!?
Fear Breeds Knowledge
There's no inherent reason why a wider aspect ratio is any better in the first place.
:)
I disagree... I think we're used to seeing the world in a pretty wide aspect ratio... compare how your peripheral vision compares left to right as up and down. I can see ~40-60 degrees more left to right (just a quick approximation).
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
Doug
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Actually, most movies today are shot in 1.85:1 aspect ratio, NOT 2.35:1 aspect ratio. This is because the 1.85:1 aspect ratio is the hard-matted default aspect ratio of the large movie cameras from Panavision and Arriflex.
It's only blockbuster movies that are shot in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, mostly to give a bigger sense of epic sweep. For example, the three Lord of the Rings movies are shot this way because we are talking three movies that we can easily call epics.
The reason why every HDTV system around the world chose 16:9 (1.78:1) aspect ratio is that it's very close to the 1.85:1 aspect ratio used by movie cameras.
Disclaimer: I prefer widescreen.
Anti-disclaimer: But I can see why not everyone would.
For low-resolution formats such as VHS, full-screen may still be preferrable, since you've only got so many pixels[*] to play with, and using up a third of the picture with black bars further lowers the effective vertical resolution of the actual picture.
Of course I realise that strictly it's not 'adding black bars' but zooming out to see the full picture, but the result is the same.
The big advantage with widescreen is being able to see the 'whole' scene, not just the centre of attention. There are some movies where what's happening at the periphery of the screen just isn't important (mainly chick flicks, I guess), but you want to see as much detail as possible in the foreground (auch as characters faces, or writing on surfaces). In these circumstances full-screen may be preferrable to widescreen.
Another case is when you're a poor student and only have a 14" telly. Suddenly screen real-estate becomes paramount, and wide-screen just isn't an option unless you want to park your chair 1 metre from the set.
[*] I realise that in the video industry the term 'pixels' is discouraged since measurements are done in 'lines'. Video signals are stored and transmitted in pixels nonetheless.
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I do not like wide screen at all. I do not know why people are calling wide screen some kind of movie gimmic. It seems obvious to anyone with geometry 101 that a theater full of people is better suited by a rectangle than a square. But when you are close to the screen, a square seems more natural. So at home the TV has a more ergonomic shape, and the rectangle is more ergonomic for the theater.
I do not like wide screen TVs at home. I don't really see the point besides not losing something from the widescreen movies.
I don't want to have to give another economics lecture, so I'll keep this brief. Supply slopes up (price on the Y axis, units on the X, as price increases more units can be produced). Demand slopes down (as price drops, more units are demanded). I was referring to plasma TVs which certainly are not in short supply. However, the price is high and so there is little demand. If plasma TVs were more compelling, the demand would increase and the suppliers could lower the price to sell more units. I would say plasma TVs are demand-limited. Not enough people want them to make it economical to drop the price for those who do buy. You referred to items that were clearly supply-limited. More people wanted them than there was supply to meet, and so those who were really interested were willing to pay more. Sometimes much more. They're different concepts, different models for different scenarios.
And just in case you wanted to bring up the fact that prices drop when people don't want something anymore (closeout sales, bargain bins), you need to realize that usually happens at the end of a product's life, not the beginning. You'll also notice that unless the product is complete crap (and sometimes not even then), reducing the price increases the demand for the product (ie, you sell of your remaining stock faster than if you had left the price high), once again showing that price falls as demand increases.
Finally, I'm ignoring factors such as cost of production. I said "help explain", which means this is only part of the price. Maybe plasma TVs can't feasibly drop below $5000 (guesstimate) because they cost too much to produce at the moment. However, even that is affected somewhat by supply and demand -- higher demand means more units can be sold, which means more units can be supplied, which usually translates into better economies of scale and cheaper production. As well, extra profits can be channeled into research and development, creating newer and cheaper ways of producing the technology, thus further reducing the costs of manufacturing and allowing the prices to drop even more, thus stimulating even more demand, and the cycle repeats. But all of this will not happen until and unless the demand for the product increases.
The first rule of filming Fight Club is: You do not use a low f-stop.
The second rule of filming Fight Club is: You do not use a low f-stop.
I work at a newly opened blockbuster, and we only carry widescreen format dvd's. Personally, I like them better than fullscreen, but if you have a tiny tv, it makes viewing kind of rough. The majority of our customers ask for fullscreen however, but that could be due to the fact that it's out in the boonies....
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There is a measurable psychological effect of the aspect ratio of a picture or film. Widescreen gives a more expansive, free, exciting effect, while narrow aspect ratios cause the viewer to feel more confined and pressured and trapped.
You can get the same effects with your composition. Vertical lines increase the drama in a scene. People arguing in a hallway, a conversation through jail bars, the cowboy showdown with the buildings looming on both sides of the characters.
Horizontal lines have the opposite effect. The angle and perspective you set your shot at will affect the audiences emotions.
The aspect ratio of the television is a hardware issue. Forcing an aspect ratio on a movie because of your TV screen is like diluting the gasoline in your car because you don't want to adjust the carburator when it's burning too rich. Or how about deliberately writing crappy code because you just can't handle the fact that the CPU isn't running at 100% when it's executing your software?
Ignore the black bars. You should be watching the movie, not the TV the movie is playing on.
Moekandu
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So why on EARTH didn't you buy a Widescreen TV ?
> Flame all you want, but after the first month, approximately 100% of people who watch any movie will be watching it on a T.V., so why the hell wouldn't you design the movie to be seen on that medium?
Precisely. Seeing as about 90% of the TVs sold here in the UK are Widescreen, then it makes sense that movies are shot in Widescreen ! The USA will catch up soon, and if you'd bought a Widescreen TV when you had the chance, you'd be ready.