Cropping the edges would mean that a part of the image is lost (albeit a small part of the image). The filmmaker is not going to like that (nor will some viewers), which is why that is not the default for the DVD. As you don’t care, you can adjust the display settings for a particular movie.
They already provide versions cropped for 4x3 TVs along with uncropped versions. Since we’re all moving to 16x9, they should be providing movies cropped to 16x9 instead of 4x3.
When I think about how fast both High Definition and flat, wide screen television displays came about and how immensely better they are than 4:3 tubes I have an overwhelming desire to say:
There’s no pleasing some people! 
The reason that film makers still have such a wide choice of formats is because they’re all ultimately going to get projected onto a reflective screen. IOW the simple, reflective movie theater screen is still the *primary *distribution medium for them and its passive nature offers no restriction to the aspect ratio of a picture you project onto it.
The *primary *thing TVs are designed for are, well, TV shows! And TV movies. Theatrical films are still secondary. And near as I can tell 100% of programs now made for television *are *shot in a standardized format, namely HD and 16:9 (and even when shown on an SD channel the newer stuff is now kept 16:9 and letterboxed).
So to answer the question as to why: Because even today theatrical films and television shows are two different things.
But as I said earlier, considering the *extreme *limitations that 4:3 and low resolution were to movies shown on a TV screen, what we have now (not to mention also having nearly ubiquitous 5.1 Dolby Surround Sound) is pretty fucking fantastic!
The idea that there are people who prefer to lose parts of the image over having empty space is baffling.
Talk about throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
I know this wasn’t the original question, but as to why in general there is still letterboxing with HDTV: There would be two problems making HDTV wide enough to fit 2.35:1 movies in without letterboxing. The first is that as noted, not all movies are in fact 2.35:1 (or something similar). I pulled the first 10 blu-rays off my shelf, and found only four are 2.35:1. Five of them are roughly 1.85:1 and one is 1.33:1. Watching the latter two you would still get black bars, just on the side of the screen instead of the top and bottom. Secondly, 2.35:1 TV programming might be problematic. It would fit sports just fine but a talking head on the local news would have a lot of empty space on either side.
If black bars really bother people, what about a front projection setup?
Yeah, because the most important parts of movie images are stuck off to the sides.
Good point, but why can’t the “talking head” TV shows be shot in a widescreen format? I guess I don’t know the technical aspect, but does it require a complete replacement of all of the camera’s and software etc…? Would it be non-cost effective to do local news in widescreen format?
Why not buy a 21:9 ultra-wide screen tv? At only 1459 mm wide you can enjoy (many) cinema movies without black bars at the top and bottom*. Plus it’ll give the room a real ‘cinema’ quality with no where to stand or put furniture.
*although many will appear at the sides
Overall composition is one of the most important parts of movie imagery. If you crop off the edges, you lose information which conveys scale, action, and mood.
Hell, sometimes even all of the concrete compositional elements are at the very edges. Ever see a cropped version of Boogie Nights? Early scenes where Burt Reynolds’ character is pitching to Mark Walburg’s are set up with them casually at extreme opposites, with a huge gulf of space between them. This gives the scene a feeling of emotional detachment which is not there when edited into a series of close cropped alternating shots to “fill up” a narrower aspect ratio.
An extreme example, but every shot in every movie is composed fir its native format. Force it into something else and you will have an awkward composition.
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TCM regularly shows as fillers little programs pointing out what you really do lose if they were to crop off the edges of movies. Since they’re not scheduled programs, I don’t know how to direct you to one.
But watching one of those should convince any reasonable person that you really need to see the whole film as the makers intended. Entire scenes wouldn’t make sense if cropped. In some scenes the two people talking can’t be fitted into a cropped shot. So either one person goes missing or you get that horrible pan and scan which doesn’t really work with dialogue.
Film makers do use the edges. It’s not just junk.
Now that I’m at my desk, here’s a random illustration of that:
The same frame from a transfer cropped for 16:9.
See the difference? The shot is originally composed in such a way that you have a sense of the car’s position in space, and the environment around it. Not a lot of area is cropped off to fit it into 16:9, but it’s enough to break the overall sense of motion in the scene, turning a well-framed shot into something that looks a bit amateur.
*Yes, sir, that’s exactly what Jesus said, sir. *
The problem is finding a single format that fits everything; there isn’t. 16:9 is a good compromise. Actually, you find that a lot of newer media is specifically designed, on disc, to fit perfectly on the new TV’s. It’s hard to change history, however, and some directors like the older aspect ratios.
That brings up another issue. The media - DVD’s and now BluRay are designed to outpt either the 4:3 or 16:9 ratio. So the problem is not always your screen, it may be the player. At least, newer players and TVs have the smarts to talk to each other or analyze the signal; used to be the player was fire-and-forget and the TV just had to be adjusted. If the adjustment was deep in the menus and was needed every time you changed a program… what a pain! Some TVs have the smarts to take 4:3 and stretch-and-crop that so the result did not make CNN look like a bunch talking pumpkins. (Oh, wait…)
I tried downloading a few movies once to see what all the buzz was about, and generally I ended up with annoyingly squashed movies that still managed to play with sidebars on my big TV with a DIVX DVD player.
They *are *now shot in 16:9, or 1.77:1, wide screen. Just not in true cinema 2.35:1 wide screen.
That thing’s pretty cool. I didn’t look at the price but I’m sure you’ll pay a hefty premium for it (for no other reason than it’s a niche product). But it also illustrates an important point. Look at the size of that thing! Take your average 42" 16:9 flat screen, now imagine it having to be nearly a foot longer on each end! And besides being annoyingly ungainly, it would be ill-suited to television programs. Sure, sometimes you want to pull the curtains, crank up the Surround Sound, and watch Lawrence of Arabia or the 3-day long director’s cut of Lord of the Rings. But usually you just want to watch Law & Order, or Leno, or The Simpsons. 16:9 is the best of both worlds.
That is indeed where I get that line from!
The problem there is the picture is too zoomed in. Notice how the top of the head is cropped off?
Really, whatever you and ftg like is fine. It’s clearly an issue for you to have the uncropped version, and I don’t begrudge you that choice. But I stand by my preference.
Yeah, our TV is 4:3 and one of those super heavy pre-flat panel ones. It’s only 27" but it’s heavy as hell. It’s not even HD. I’ve noticed that my TV tends to cut off the left and right of things shot at wider resolution, rather than letterboxing them. It really pisses me off. Frequently there will be text that goes off the screen, for example. Very annoying. (An example of something that is frequently cut off: Watching the Daily Show, when they put a graphic up in the left corner, that graphic is usually cropped on my TV. Frequently those graphics include text, which is sometimes also cut off. Also, the news ticker at the bottom of the screen when watching the news.)
When we move next time we’ve already pledged that we aren’t moving this TV. We’ll get a used flat panel in whatever city we end up in.
Side topic: I’ve seen other people’s TVs that have a setting for what color to make the letterbox bars. What I’ve seen is an option between black and a medium gray. What I want to know is… who out there is picking the gray? It looks like it would be really distracting. Black seems like it would be so much easier to ignore.
There is nothing cropped off the top or bottom - check it out side-by-side. The problem is that forcing a well-composed shot into a different aspect-ratio is necessarily going to look wrong.
The thing is, you can really only have that preference by looking at something abstract -the “bars” which are really just negative space. If you actually look at the movie - and look critically at how the actual movie looks when presented in its original aspect ratio vs. being chopped up to fit arbitrary dimensions, it’s very difficult to say that the movie actually looks better (or even nearly as good) when cropped.
Happily, (now that displays with a decent amount of screen real estate are regarded less and less as luxury items than the VHS days when a signficant amount of movies were being watched on 19" screens, distributors are less inclined to favour the wishes of people who are annoyed by necessary letterboxing over people who are annoyed by movies being bollocksed up. Their Bluray players have a zoom mode that will automatically crop the movie for you, if you don’t mind losing the edges.
But the amount of unused vertical screen space when you’re looking at an anamorphic aspect ratio movie on a 16:9 display is pretty trivial. Do you really think it’s worth while to produce “pan-and-scan” versions of films to eliminate it? Or that we should stop making movies in the best possible format for what you’re trying to achieve?
There’s no technical reason why talking heads couldn’t be shot in 2.35:1. It just seems it would just look odd having a person in the middle and lots of empty space on either side.
More to the original question, I think the reason for lack of standardization in movies in directors like to have a choice. Some movies are still even 1.33:1 (Fish Tank comes to mind). The original reason was more technical. To get 1.85:1 you just don’t use the top and bottom of a 35mm frame, but 35mm didn’t (doesn’t?) have enough resolution to go wider by simply masking off more of the top and bottom, so you needed to use Panavision equipment or 70mm film or something more expensive.
And they do have to redo the studio and the cameras. I remember what a big deal two of the local stations here made when it happened. The other two just did it later and with less of a fuss.
Edit—though one of those two uses the same studio as one of the other two
Yeah, subject matters, for sure.
Good aspect ratio for the subject. (My Dinner With Andre)
Also a good aspect ratio for the subject. (Lawrence of Arabia)
I wouldn’t want to try to fit one into the other, though.