Funniest thing I’ve read all day! 
Good to know you like them long and thin, mhendo!
Sam
Funny (kinda story):
I had a friend who would come over to watchmovies and he would complain at first about widescreen. But eventually over time I convinced him that it was right and proper and pan-n-scan sucked ass.
So I get a call from him and he is excited, he finally got himself a DVD player. But he is complaining, too. One of the first movies he bought was Casablanca and it was “pan-n-scan” and he was furious because there was nothing on the box indicating it was so. He calmed down after I explained to him that older movies had different aspect ratios.
A badly done pan-and-scan can completely ruin a film as well.
The first time I saw Tombstone was P&S and I just hated the movie, the story was hard to follow & the camera seemed to be making lots of unnecessary cuts and moves. The same film in widescreen is a completely different experience.
Touche
Or maybe you just decided to not read the text you quoted. Please refer back to the last clause of that sentence.
Get a good TV and you won’t loose a single line of vertical resolution with widescreen. I’ve got a Sony XBR Wega (Xtra Bucks Required!) and it senses widescreen and cuts the vertical scan to just the appropriate hight of the image - the “black bars” are entirely unscanned and completely black, and the effective vertical resulution is more or less doubled. Very cool feature.
BTW - the correct term is pan and SCAM. You’re not getting all of the movie as created - why do you still have to pay full price?
Does anybody know why when widescreen TVs started being produced, they weren’t built to the ratios more accurately reflecting cinema screens?
As mentioned in Gangster Octopus’s posts, older movies had a basically 4:3 aspect ratio, the same as a 35mm film frame. I imagine television followed that rationale.
Because as earlier mentioned, there is no “one, standard” cinema aspect-ratio. 16:9 is a setup that fits well with a great amount of available programming. Or maybe they just thought it would be clever to take 4:3 and square both numbers, I wouldn’t put it past them.
And yes, on some smallish TV sets a widescreen looks small and you feel like you want to squint… but that’s neither here nor there. After all, you can also get a bad viewing experience at the moviehouse if you wind up in the first row, having to twist your neck to see the picture – BTW, before we get a little bit too high and mighty scoffing down at the phillistines, let’s remember that those of us watching widescreen on our TV (or from the chiropractic row in the theater) are NOT really quite exactly watching “as the creator intended” either.
Pan & Scan is not as “bad” a thing as it once was. Most movies made these days the director as two frames bracketed in the viewfinder and will make sure the bulk of whatever it is that’s being filmed fits in the TV bracket. Of course some movies are more cinematic than others so getting the full panorama of, say, Lord of the Rings will be more important than getting widescreen on Meet the Fockers.
Some old movies, before they were thinking about TV when making them, really suffer from Pan & Scan however. In a college film class we watched samples of Casablanca in widescreen and Pan & Scan. With the Pan & Scan there was one scene I remember where Bogart and Bergman were talking and the Pan & Scan had to do hard cuts from face to face while the widescreen you saw both faces at the same time. Getting the immediate reactions from each actor as they responded to each other was LIGHT YEARS better than the Pan & Scan. VERY noticeable.
I stick with widescreen these days just to be sure.
Wasn’t Casablanca shot in 1.33:1 aspect ratio?
I’ll concede there are two sides on the widescreen vs fullscreen issue. But one of them is wrong. Widescreen all the way.
But there is one issue I take exception to. That’s television producers (and worse yet television commercial producers) who shoot their work in any aspect other than 4:3. Listen people, you knew what the aspect ratio was when you chose to work in television - deal with it. Anyone who intentionally misfits their product into the primary medium it will be shown on is just being stupid. It’s like writing a haiku and deciding to put an extra syllable in the last line.
TBH I do not know and after writing that I wondered if it was indeed Casablanca. It’s been 20 years since that class so the memory is foggy. What HAS stuck with me was some classic movie doing as I described and the difference was strikingly apparent.
Bottom line is it really depends on the movie (how it was originally shot as well has the effort put into the conversion to TV). Some Pan & Scan you wouldn’t notice the difference. I doubt you lose much watching Dude, Where’s My Car in Pan & Scan but movies like Saving Private Ryan I think you will (if only for losing some of that cinematic feel).
FWIW I have a widescreen TV and many movies (as previously noted) display with a black bar top and bottom. My TV can adjust the image to fill the screen but you either get some distortion or some cropping of the image. I go with the black bars most times (although some naturally fill the whoel screen which is nice).
Yeah, funny how people can be tricked by memory.
A quick search says “The Robe” (1953) was the first widescreen movie in general release. CinemaScope, 2.55:1.
Hmm. Perhaps my communications skills are lacking. I’ll try again.
No matter what buttons I push on either the TV or DVD player remotes, I still have black bars to a greater or lesser degree.
I do remember reading that “widescreen” doesn’t necessarily mean exactly 16:9…
Clearer?
Well, you’ve answered your own question (is there a question?): unless the movie you’re watching was shot in precisely a 1.78:1 ratio (which no movies are shot in), you will see some sort of black bars.
You’ll see smaller black bars for movies that were shot in 1.85:1, and the larger black bars for movies that were shot in 2.35:1 (the two most common aspect ratios for modern movies).
Mr. Roboto’s neighbor will have this problem, too—a widescreen TV makes the problem better, but it doesn’t eliminate it completely.
We had this whole discussion in two different threads last April or so. In this one I posted my rabid opinion that only a goof-ball would watch and widescreen film in full-screen. But later I backed down after having a discussion with a well-known film director about this topic.
But I still personally feel you’re missing something when you watch full-screen rather than widescreen.
Originally posted my I Love Me, Vol. I (me) on April 24, 2004
But,… but, how will they prove they’re artistes with a cinematic vision and full mastery of the medium and idiom, if they play by the rules? “I am a film auteur, not a beer salesman!”
Of course, there are a couple of legit reasons for filming a commercial widescreen:
- Because you’re also making a theatrical version. American audiences may be spoiled about this but in much of the world, the trailers before the feature include actual ads.
- Because you want to take maximum advantage of widescreen-capable HDTV, if your ad is ever on such a broadcast.
My television is a 27" Samsung model, and I only watch movies in widescreen (if available). As a true appreciator of cinema, I want to see the film properly – ie, in whichever format the director and cinematographer chose.
You all keep saying this, but you seem totally oblivious that you are missing detail by shrinking the picture.
Yeah, I like watching widescreen too. I believe it’s superior, but if someone wants to watch a picture because they enjoy seeing textures and colors no black box more than the entire frame, it doesn’t make them wrong.
:rolleyes:
Well, now that more and more TVs are going 16:9, I think you can expect more of this. I know that HBO shows Sopranos in widescreen, and “Lost” has a widescreen broadcast, too. Within a few years, I hope that it’s the dominant format for TV and that broadcasting reflects it.
For now, if you have wide-screen you can clearly tell that a baseball game (or whatever) is still framed for a 4:3. Hopefully they’ll start changing that when widescreen (if widescreen) becomes the dominant format.