I’ve been seeing more and more television sets going on sale which have definate rectangular screens, almost a ratio like one sees at the movies. Now I suppose the idea is that movies watched in widescreen format will fill the screen better, but what about ordinary television watching?
TV shows are still filmed for the traditional square-like ratio, right? Well, I never see black bars on the sides of tv programs at the store, so I must wonder if these rectangular screens stretch out the picture?
Mind you, however they do it, I must admit that the distortion, if any, doesn’t seem very noticable, but then maybe that’s just me. Were I to buy this type of TV, would I be distracted by David Letterman, and all talking head shots for that matter, being stretched out like Ernie on Sesame Street.
And one other thing. If I were to watch a movie in Letterbox format, wouldn’t I still have the bars on top and bottom? I guess the newest DVDs can adjust to the ratio of the screen, perhaps?
I believe those wide screen TVs you are seeing are the new HDTV sets. They show regular NTSC images just as you’d expect, with black bars on either side. TV is currently being filmed and broadcast in both formats in some places.
We have a Toshiba “TheaterWide” rear projection set with a 56" screen. The screen’s aspect ratio is the same as a movie theater’s (16:9).
When watching a regular television show or “pan and scan” movie (4:3 aspect ratio), vertical bars can be placed on both sides of the picture. This allows the aspect ratio to remain true. Alternatively, the picture can be horizontally “stretched” to fill up the screen, though this makes everyone look fat.
When watching a letterbox movie, the picture naturally fills up the entire screen.
My understanding is that the bars placed beside the standard NTSC picture on a widescreen TV are grey, not black. This helps prevent “burn-in”; you don’t want a noticeably-different square in the center of your favorite movies, which might happen if you watch lots of regular, non-HDTV stuff.
Also, many widescreen TVs have provisions for “picture-beside-picture” or “picture-outside-picture”, a variation of the old “picture-in-picture” method of viewing more than one program at once. Since there’s extra screen real estate, the standard TV pictures are placed side-by-side. I have no idea how the sound works in such a situation.
The funniest thing about this constant wrangling over picture size is the history of motion picture aspect ratios.
Movies originally filmed at about the same ratio as a
TV does nowadays. Upon the advent of tv, movie producers needed (wanted) to stand out, so they made their screens panoramic. Now we’re trying to make tv’s the same size.
Damn you movie studios and your distortion lenses! Long live tv!!!
I have one of those wide-screen TVs. They are great for watching rented videos (and probably DVDs though I don’t have that) because many of those are recorded with blank spaces on top and bottom. The image fits perfectly in the wide-screen TV, as intended.
For watching regular TVs, mine has three settings: (1) Just display it in the middle, leaving blank spaces on the left and right, (2) Stretch the image to fill the screen, or (3) Show just the middle part - the top and bottom are not shown. None of these are ideal. If you stretch it, it is very noticeable especially with human faces. Option 3 feels most natural, unless there are subtitles and other info that get cut off.
Some newer TVs have the option of stretching it non-linearly, so that the middle part looks correct and only the right and left edges are stretched. When the subject stays in the middle (e.g. news programs) it works great, but when things move right across the screen it looks weird.
I think it depends on the set, but you are definitely correct in our case: the bars on our Toshiba TheaterWide are gray. And they’re pretty bright bars, at that.
I don’t particularly like the (bright) gray bars, so we watch regular TV in “stretched” mode. The only drawback is that everyone looks fat, but you get used to it after a while. If a guest comes over to watch a football game or something, I will put it in “normal” mode (which inserts the bright gray bars on each side). I will then place strips of black velvet on each side of the screen to hide the bars. (Yep, those bars are that annoying! But the wide screen definitely pays off when you’re watching a letterbox LD or DVD.)