This may be a stupid question, but I’ve been wondering about it for a while now, so I’m going to ask. Please save your pointing and laughing for the end of the thread.
Why are so many TV shows being shown in a letterbox fashion. I understand why letterboxing is used when showing movies on TV. The aspect ratio for a movie is different, and to fill up the top and bottom you’d need to chop off the sides.
But if you’re making something designed for TV, why not fill up the top and bottom anyway? Why not shoot in TV’s aspect ratio and design your shows along those lines? Is there some inherent benefit to shooting with the movie aspect ratio? Are the producers just trying to create a cinematic “feel” for their shows? Or is there some other reason I don’t understand?
At least one reason for it is that a number of TV shows are released overseas as movies. Especially big two-parters. This has been done for decades that I know of.
A lot of new shows are being shot with HD cameras for broadcast on HD channels, which have a 16:9 aspect ratio. SD channels use a 4:3 aspect ratio. The choices for displaying a 16:9 picture on a 4:3 screen are stretch vertically, which is hideously ugly, clip left and right, which is annoying if the director framed the picture so that interesting things happened in the clipped area, or letterbox.
The show “My Name is Earl” which was always shot in HD and used clipping for SD display used to put Easter Eggs in the clipped area - Randy holding up a sign saying “HD rocks”, a beer tap at the Clamshack that said “HD Ale”, etc.
I didn’t know that. But presumably TV’s aspect ratio was fine decades ago, yes?
Yes, butI was under the impression that thing like HD TV and such were introduced to accomodate TV shows which were bring broadcast in a letterbox ratio anyway. Or was it a more chicken and egg kinda thing.
16:9 is slowly but surely replacing 4:3 as the default television aspect ratio as more people upgrade to widescreen/HD sets. When widescreen televisions become standard, shows shot in 4:3 are going to seem awfully dated even though they may not actually be that old. Shows that prepared for the change by shooting in 16:9 will still fit right in.
Believe me, I understand why shows are doing this now. But why did we start down this path to begin with? When the first TV show was shown letterboxed, were the producers of that show able to predict that this would be the wave of the future? (And can I get these people to go with me to the racetrack?)
You could predict it because in general trends come from the wealthy, and the move for them has been to get 16:9. The move started at least almost a decade ago. When I was in college in Japan, I bought a 16:9 TV, which was in 2001.
The driving force was actually DVDs not HD TV. Once you could watch movies with decent quality, getting the full image became a bigger concern.
That things were going this way has been pretty clear for a long time, to anyone who would care about such things.
I don’t remember when I saw it first. But I specifically remember discussion surrounding the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episode “The Body” which was directed with TV’s aspect ratio in mind and some viewers were wondering why it was done that way when the other option was available. That episode was broadcase in Feb. of 2001 (according to IMDB). THis may have all centered around the DVD release, but even still, people were aware that shooting in 16:9 ratio was an option for seven years at least. Was HD being broadcast that far back?
I can believe that. It makes me thing that 16:9 TVs and, subsequently, HD TV was developed for people who didn’t want to see the “black bars” in letterboxing.
Nobody really knows when it’ll happen — five years, ten — but eventually widescreen will be the majority format. The bulk of TV revenue is based on syndication, as very few programs are profitable in their first airings. This is gradually shifting to the home video market (buying the season on DVD). Either way, though, the important point is that the real money in TV is made by milking the product for years after the initial run.
This has been coming for years and years, and the forward-thinking prodcos have been planning for it. They want their material to continue to be profitable for as long as possible. Therefore, they have been generating product that works okay when letterboxed, but that will perfectly fit the next generation of screens. This will increase the long-term earnings potential of the material.
Something being shot today, in standard 4x3 ratio, will look as old as MASH* or Hogan’s Heroes on the new screens. And dated stuff doesn’t sell as well as stuff that feels fresh.
Yup. We oldsters are just fine watching classic TV & movies in the “old” format–even in Black & White!
But when* I finally invest in one of those newfangled TV’s, I’ll want my new shows to fill up that screen! (And I even enjoy letterbox on my moderate-size screen. Pan & scan movies drive me nuts.)
When I realize that my life would be much improved by watching even more TV…
The standard, including 16:9 aspect ratio, was originally selected in the early 90’s by the ITU, in recommendation BT-709. So it wasn’t voodoo for producers to figure out that 16:9 would be the future - it had already been published by the major standards body. As is normal in such things, adoption was slow, so it’s not like the shows were being filmed in 16:9 long before anyone even had the idea of broadcasting in 16:9. According to this wiki article, CBS started HD broadcasting in NYC on a test basis in 1997.
I don’t know why this hasn’t clearly been said yet - these shows are letterboxed because they were filmed/taped in HD, which uses a 16:9 ratio. This causes typically one of three ways to handle the non-HD broadcast:
Letterbox it. Give non-HD viewers the same aspect ratio it was filmed in, just without all of the resolution. This, in my opinion, is the way EVERYTHING should be handled. Those who can’t deal with the black bars need to enter the 21st century.
Film in HD, but focus on the middle square only, and then crop the sides for the non-HD broadcast. This often happens with live HD broadcasts (sports and news, and up until recently, talk shows like Letterman), and defeats the whole purpose of widescreen, since the area outside the middle square is purposely wasted…thats why you never see the score of a football game in the corner, but about 300 pixels to the left of the corner, and why during news programs, there’s a huge gap between the anchors and the edge of the screen.
Film in HD and then pan and scan for the non-HD broadcast, just like they do for TV and VHS releases of movies. Lost does this. It makes the show absolutely unwatchable (even moreso than the third season was on its own). So does CSI. Most other shows use option 1 by this point.
Wow, I had no idea pan-and-scan was being used for TV broadcasts. Yet another reason to thank Og for my HDTV. Pan-and-scan is the root of all broadcasting evil, IMHO. I can’t image having to deal with Lost in that format…
What this thread may be overlooking is the history of film before DVDs. In an attempt to capitalize on the theater experience of putting the viewer “in” the action and also to attract patrons to movie theaters instead of TVs at home, schemes were tried such as Cinemascope, Vistavision, Panavision, Cinemiracle, Cinerama and the many derivatives. All of these used a wide screen (wider than 4:3). If you sit close enough to the screen, most of your vision is supplied by the media and you feel part of the show.
TV is a different animal and doesn’t lend itself well to changing width/height ratios. You can’t just roll back the curtain to make the tube wider. Where film made a screen wider, TV is forced to reduce the height if it wants to keep the ratio the same.
Since the source for much of TV is (or was) film, this dictated standards. The HD TV standard of 16:9 is an attempt to bring TV up to the standards of the movie theater.
Let me see if I understand this article correctly. The 16:9 ratio format was decided upon in an effort to standardize international HDTV standards. A decision which was made before it was practical to broadcast in HDTV.
So it was international standardization which was driving this bus, all of which was done while trying to keep things like DVDs and future HDTV broadcasts in mind.
Since we’re on the subject. Why do some shows, and commercials, that are filmed in 16x9, get shown in 4x3? I’ve noticed this with Stargate on Fox. They show it in 16x9 format, but it only fills a 4x3 screen, it looks really strange, and small, on my HDTV. I’ve seen commercials do this as well and I know they are 16x9 since I’ve seen them before.