Sorry mods; I wasn’t sure where to put this. It’s totally pointless, but it’s about a TV show.
Yeah it’s stupid, but Google brings up nothing, so I turn here to satisfy my curiosity with a yes or no question.
I’m guessing that before going HD that the Office was 4x3 right? On the channel I watch it on old episodes are shown in 16x9 aspect ratio here’s a pic I took of my TV.
Is the station cropping or matting the image?
According to IMDb, the show was shot in 16x9; there’s even a trivia note stating it was presented in wide screen. The image on your TV looks to have been both letterboxed and pillarboxed, but I don’t know why. (It’s possible the recording they’re using for the syndication was hard-coded that way.)
Are you watching on an SD or HD channel?
My guess is that when the show first aired, the station aired it in SD, but letterboxed it. That version is what they have on file, and that’s what they aired. The problem is that that’s still a 4:3 image, so they had to pillarbox it to fit a 16:9 screen.
You’re likely watching it on an SD channel, which is showing the “letterboxed” version (black bars on the top and bottom of a 4x3 image) versus the “widescreen” version (16x9 HD image).
No, it’s the HD channel (Fox affiliate) and they show two Offices back to back. Now they’re both HD, but for a while one was HD and the other was definitely 16x9 SD, so I’m guessing Munch’s answer is probably what happened. Thanks.
