I’m watching Twisters released in 2024 on a 2 year old Vizo smart tv.
I see…
Black bars top and bottom.
The classic rubber band look.
I thought that was why Tv screens changed 20 years ago? The old ratio was 4:3 for tv and films were converted to pan & scan or looked like rubber bands.
The rubber band is not as ridiculously thin now. But, I have the black bars top and bottom.
It’s not just Twisters. I see the rubber band on a lot of movies . It’s more disappointing that a movie released in 2024 still has that problem.
I believe the normal term for rubber band is “letterboxed”.
Basically, some films are shot at a greater ratio than even Hi-Def TVs use, thus letterboxing is required to show the full image.
I’ll append your title to reflect rubber band = letterbox.
ETA: It is not a problem, it is a feature, especially with 65" and 75" TVs now being pretty standard for new sets. Though it does stink at times on a small screen.
Why?
Because if you wanted to watch Lawrence of Arabia with no letterboxing, you would need a TV that looked like this:
(Even that might not be wide enough).
And you’ve had your answer: the aspect ratio of some modern movies is still wider (relative to height) than the aspect ratio of your modern TV. This is not the fault of the TV, blame the film’s producer and/or director and/or studio executives for their choice to use the wider aspect ratio. If you want TVs to have a wider aspect ratio, then you would end up with black bars on the sides of some movies, where the aspect ratio is not as wide as the TV.
Wider aspect ratio can be more effective for some kinds of films in some theaters. I guess the film makers value that more than the home viewing experience.
Many DVDs had options for with or without letterboxing, but DVDs are not the primary way to see movies for quite a while now. Streaming rarely has such options.
Wandavision used various amount of letterboxing or Pillarboxing to indicate what time period the show was more or less in. The “Real World” was letterboxed, the early 60s & 70s worlds went from Black & White Pillarbox to Color Pillarbox and then eventually Hi-Def 16:9.
I’m pretty sure most TV sets have a setting that will eliminate the black bars and give you a full screen image, but they do this by trimming the picture on the left and right sides. So it’s up to you whether you hate the black bars so much that you’re willing to lose part of the picture.
A few years ago, I was watching some old Simpsons reruns on FXX. These were episodes that were made in the old 4:3 aspect ratio. Rather than pillarboxing, FXX decided to cut off the top and bottom of the picture. There were many sight gags that were incomplete or totally lost.
One thing you sometimes see is what’s called “pan and scan”, where they cut off part of the picture, but which part varies. This is often used for conversations between two people, where they’ll show each person (cutting off the other) while that person is talking.
I imagine they did that by just making vertical black bars at the side be part of the image, for the vlogs etc. If that’s so, then a viewer watching on a 1.78:1 screen would see black margins on all four sides.
Disney+ is currently offering the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series in this format. It’s borderline unwatchable because losing the top and bottom turns what were previously ordinary medium-close shots of faces into uncomfortably claustrophobic extreme close-ups.
(I should say, the first season looks like this at least. I can’t say what they did with the later seasons because I got frustrated and quit watching. Clearly they think their viewers are morons who can’t handle pillarbox format. I don’t know, maybe they’re right. But I’m not a moron and I won’t watch something that sucks.)
They can definitely make the aspect ratio change without add bars on the side (unless it’s to an even squarer format like 4:3). It’s getting more and more common these days. One of my favorites
