Someone might correct me on this but I gather that there's no 16:9 anamorphic SD broadcast in the USA.
We recently bought a couple of HDV to SDI converters and the only options it gave for SD downconvert were centre cutout or letterboxed, i.e. no 16:9 SD option. In all fairness to them they fixed this pronto but we were sure left with the impression that for the USA that would be an unusual requirement.

Europe I hear is quite the other way around, viewers will jam switchboards if the broadcaster crops anything off the frame. In the USA they howl if the frame on THEIR TV isn't filled with image, kind of like the broadcaster is stealing part of their TV that they paid good money for, go figure.

Bob.

You really should cut your own 4:3 version. Pan & Scan it to minimize artistic crappiness.

I have seen several commercially released movies that had the same problem and worse especially remakes of old movies. Rent "Guys and Dolls" in widescreen and see how awful it looks. Their heads are cut off in some scenes.

Personally I dislike 16:9 intensely so from an artistic standpoint much of it is really ugly to my eyes as are the widescreen televisions and their squatty appearance. Talk to people in stores like Tower Records and ask them what a lot of people think about widescreen versions of movies. I don't know whose idea it was to push that format, but I am sorry they did.

John

I've done a few projects that would have benefitted from a 9:16 format. :)

I think we should go back to circular screens.

Movies that were shot for theatrical release do not bother me if they are widescreen or 16 x9. But I always thought it was just stupid to use 16 x 9 for the normal TV broadcast (at least until there are more 16 x 9 TVs). You are just wasting screen space when you letterbox a picture on a TV.

I do like seeing the widescreen of a theatrical release and have gotten used to the black at top and bottom. But on my 20" TV screen, the details get pretty small.

Dave T2

>>>...but I gather that there's no 16:9 anamorphic SD broadcast in the USA<<<

It was not the norm but it did happen. Right now most of the 16:9 stuff is HD, that much is true, however you will still see many SD movies that are pan and scan on the SD channels and more and more channels such as IFC and Sundance are airing letterboxed versions of films. Because of HD and the more accepted widescreen format more and more films and TV shows are being aired in 16:9 / Letterbox in SD.

As a "for example" - several years ago AMC would show films in letterbox format. One time they aired both the Todd AO and Cinemascope versions of Oklahoma in "their orginal format", which meant they were both letterboxed to protect the orginal aspect. Obviously the point to that was that both version were slighty different and if they had doen some horrid pan and scan it would have killed the whole reason for airing both versions.

For the last few years the TV show "The West Wing" has been aired in letterbox format, they may have been doing it in HD but it was only fairly recent it was broadcast as such. I also notice many commercials are now being aired in "letterbox" even though they also have information that falls in the "black bar" area.

Part of the reason for creating shows and commercials in letterbox was to give the illusion of theatrical quality.

I know I have edited many commercials and added the letterbox look just because the client thought it added to the "quality" of the spot.

Now a lot of programs use the black area for network bugs and promotion.

Dave T2

chienworks,

i've done quite a few projects that would have benefitted from playing on a radio ;-}

i think we should go back to german tv at the beginning of wwll - circular, and in green (as in old radar screens)

leslie

dave t2,

does that mean we might all go back to 4:3 whilst they sell 16:9 cause they can get more ad space?

hey, has anyone talked to fox about this?

leslie

Having recently watched a little TV in the USA I've got to say some of it is pretty ugly stuff, too many things on the screen at once for the brain to digest. Still nowhere near as bad as Taiwanese TV. I was there during the last election and they had a 4 way split with a centre screen overlayed over that, two lines of tickertape along the bottom and one down each side of the frame, not a word of it made any sense to me thankfully.

But I really don't understand why anyone doesn't prefer 16:9 or even wider formats, our eyes naturally see much wider than higher so to me it's well, more natural. Given the choice I'd go for 360 deg projection, yes, I've seen several such systems although you either have to lie down or stand up to really watch it.

Speaking about odd aspect ratios, anyone know how the vision for the Fremont Street canopy in Vegas is edited etc?

Bob.

its interesitng all this tak about 16:9 and 4;3... i rcently recieved a dvd whih was 4:3 with the artifical letterboxing. On my projector i ran it as 4:3... yep, poxy lil box... looked good though.. then as i switched aspects, obviously 16:9 was a little stretched..
Now my prjector has an aspect of 14:9 as well.. now ths my friends blew me away.. not only did the frame "feel " right in size (were talking 8 metre walled screen...) but it didnt mess to much with the image.. in fact it looked BETTER at 14:9 than it did at 4:3 AND 16:9...
THEN , i ran the projector at "justify.. " and this recognises "dead" space and kills it off.. (and no it isnt a zoom function..

now this was also a surprise as the 4:3 footage was strecthed to fill the 16:9 frame, BUT did not change the aspect so eveythign loooked proportional....

Now im thnkng.. i wonder if these variable aspect could work in vegas??? ost 16:9 tvs dont have 14:9, but if we could deliver 4:3 AS 14:9, and then play on 16:9, the majority of teh vertical bars on teh left and right would be outside the safe zone anyway and virtually be invisible..

any thoughts?? or am i dreaming??

But I really don't understand why anyone doesn't prefer 16:9 or even wider formats, our eyes naturally see much wider than higher so to me it's well, more natural.
===============
I know a few people are having fun poking jokes at my comments about the format implying that because I don't particularly like widescreen that I must be some sort of reactionary. There are a lot of people who don't. From a practical standpoint as televisions started becoming larger I really began enjoying it more. Bought a 36 inch 4:3 that took up a bit of room but was worth it. Even built a home theater setup.

What is the equivalent size widescreen television?......60" !!

How is that natural to watch in a relatively small space? Your eyes travel too far left and right unless you have a deep room to view it in. Moreover, you don't even have the luxury of viewing the newer televisions off axis very much because the image starts disappearing. That doesn't happen with a CRT.

I liked "Cinemascope" when I was younger, but I was watching it in a LARGE movie theater so I could stare straight ahead. And even in the tiny movie theaters today the widescreen is far enough forward (from where I choose to sit) not to be fatiguing to my eyes. Try sitting in the front few rows and you'll get the idea of what I am driving at.

Mostly what is being sold are relatively smaller widescreen televisions for space saving purposes that look squatty to me.

Blockbuster carries virtually all 16:9 versions, but go to Walmart and ask them which they sell more of, widescreen or full screen. All those people buying them must all be reactionaries I guess.

John

The mind also boggles at the need to watch Oprah in widescreen.

I think the average Wal*Mart customer buying full screen format falls into one of two groups: those who think that the black bars across the screen mean they're missing part of the picture (honest! i know a lot of people who think this), and those who not only don't have a clue what the difference is, but don't even notice the difference. Most people buying movies at Wal*Mart buy what's on the shelf. Those like me who will sift through the stack to find the one wide screen copy are very few and far between. Why does Wal*Mart stock more full screen than wide screen? Probably not by customer preference. I'm sure it's a marketing decision based on the fear that more customers would complain about the movie not filling their screen. Look at their television sales and you'll see far more 4:3 CRTs going out the door than widescreen models.

Hey, why waste the screen space when you can advertise!!! ;)

From what I remember about my TV history, 4 x 3 was not an arbitrary aspect decision. It is a very natural feeling aspect to the eyes/mind. 35mm film is also close to this aspect and has always felt natural, but a widescreen, at least to me, has never felt natural.

Dave T2

(to clarify after Farrs posted his next message, I am referring to 35mm film as used in STILL photography, not movie making)

There's several flavours to 35mm and aspect ratios and please don't expect me to remember them but at least one of them from memory means the frame is masked and a wider lens used for projection i.e. the res gets knocked around, not that you'd really notice I guess. I also think though it's acquired anamorphically, wierd what happens with those sprockets guys, some of their viewfinders have some many safe area markers you have to wonder how they see anything.

But I think this discussion really skirts around an interesting issue, just what is TV today and what's it trying to become. Seems to me it's having a bit of an identity crisis. We've got the traditional news and current affairs stuff and a few dramas etc clearly made just fro broadcast and then on the other hand (at least down here) they're trying to also compete with the home cinema onslaught which is probably why most of our SD DVB is 16:9. The standard though for commercials is supposed to be 14:9 but a few sneak through as 16:9.

What you might find a bit of a surprise is almost all US originated content is also shot 16:9 and that's how we get to see it down here so it was pretty wierd when I was in the USA watching the same programs in 4:3 and I have to agree it makes it look cheap compared to how it looks down here in 16:9.

Maybe I'm the real odd man out, for me 16:9 is nowhere near wide enough and I really don't like 24fps either. I don't like the 'detachment', rather I want to be right in another world, not feel like I'm simply watching another world.

One thing I saw at NAB was the Sony 4K projector, most of the content was pretty horrid but the last few minutes was some footage from Baraka, transfered at 4K from the 65mm neg I was told. The first scene was from the Haj at Mecca and I really felt I could have walked through the screen straight into Mecca. Convinced me of one thing, film as an acquisition medium should be around for a long time to come, the video content looked sad by comparison, 4K projection really highlights the difference.

Bob.

Back in the late 1980's we were promoting an NTSC-compatible HDTV delivery mechanism called "HD-NTSC." Because of the very nature of our signal processing and our insistence on backwards-compatibility we used letterbox, since our proposal was for 14:9 (later revised to 15:9). We insisted on the black bars top and bottom because (1) widescreen was one of the key identifying features of HD material, and (2) we desperately needed that black real estate on the screen for delivering our digital audio, using a technique similar to teletext but which would be invisible on a properly-adjusted TV set.

You won't believe how much flack we got from the senior technology people in the USA standards committees. No matter how much I patiently pointed out that Europe had shown movies that way for years, and that directors wanted their films shown in the original format, these older "gentlemen" insisted that it would never be accepted in America, no way no how. We all know how people cling to established ideas and this was heresy to these guys.

A few years later our project died, in part because of this. Let me assure everyone that there is a tremendous "politics" factor involved in the standards-making process--it's not at all "may the best ideas win." My wife keeps telling me I should write a book based on my experiences with the HDTV committees.

Anyway, as to aspect ratio:

There have been lots of shapes over the years. We based our project on an excellent NHK paper from the early 1980's which showed viewer preference. For a given display angle (i.e. watching a big screen at home), respondents showed a moderate response to 12:9 (4:3), better for 13:9, very strong for 14:9 and 15:9, and then a rapid tapering off for 16:9 and wider. This was a survey of a fairly large population of Japanese viewers.

Based on that data, we chose 14:9, which perhaps coincidentally is close to the "Golden Mean" of Parthenon fame. Yves Faroudja copied our idea a year later with his "SuperNTSC" proposal, which also later died in committee.

At this time the NHK front-runner HDTV proposal was based on 15:9 (5:3). Dr. Kerns Powers of Sarnoff Labs (and a good friend) then proposed 16:9. He used a pseudo-scientific argument showing that it was a reasonable compromise between 4:3 and the wider film formats. The committees adopted 16:9, mostly in an effort to slow down the Japanese TV industry, which by now had already tooled for 5:3 displays.

It must be our wide open spaces, but here I give farss my absolute support -- wider is better. Of course, with this goes "bigger is better". If your display is a TV (of usual dimensions) then of course the image is too small for visual impact and understandably many people object to losing any of it to black bars. I find butchered compositions far more objectionable. In Australia I would have said that widescreen TV was the normal format, although there are still many old displays waiting to be replaced (we've got one ourselves). Current affairs is shown in 14:9 and 16:9, let alone movies.
Surveys of preferences are most unreliable because generally people prefer what they're used to. Near square is a common format for paintings, so that probably implies that is good for composition. Film formats were tailored by available stocks, costs, competition, projection facilities and artistic considerations (the latter placed last for good reasons). Video is even more rigidly tied by technology. I assert that anyone concerned with viewing involvement will have a projector, view from closer than 2 screen widths and view in a dark environment; objections expected.

Edit: a couple of years ago a lot of PAL DVDs were produced in 4:3 pan & scan (taught me to look very carefully at the small print on the back) but here these days original format appears to be the norm. Amazon (region 1) DVDs give prominence to orginal format although often P&S versions are available. Learnt also to be wary of non-anamorphic widescreen formats; reduced resolution.

I think the average Wal*Mart customer buying full screen format falls into one of two groups: those who think that the black bars across the screen mean they're missing part of the picture (honest! i know a lot of people who think this), and those who not only don't have a clue what the difference is, but don't even notice the difference Most people buying movies at Wal*Mart buy what's on the shelf. Those like me who will sift through the stack to find the one wide screen copy are very few and far between.
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So tell us Kelly. Since you admitted you shop there.
Which of those two groups do you fall into?

Regards,
John

*snork* I'm not average. ;)

"Near square is a common format for paintings, so that probably implies that is good for composition. "

Since painters were not tied to:
"available stocks, costs, competition, projection facilities and artistic considerations (the latter placed last for good reasons). "

I would say that the 4 x 3 aspect is common because it is a natural geometry to the mind and the eye.

But I do agree with you, that most of the time, it is what you are used to. And since technology designers are insisting that we want the 16 x 9 aspect, then I guess eventually we will all get used to it.

Dave T2

"But I do agree with you, that most of the time, it is what you are used to. And since technology designers are insisting that we want the 16 x 9 aspect, then I guess eventually we will all get used to it."

yeah its called Conditioning...
Much like Pavlovs dogs, we hear the bell and we go running... whether its by choice... now thats another subject altogether..

The history of debate about screen formats is interesting and artistic considerations were prominent in these. In the beginning (where before have I heard that phrase?) people did argue for a square format for reasons of painterly composition. Composing for a head shot, for example, is difficult in widescreen and frequently the unwanted portions of the screen are made dark or "removed" by other ploys. But when it comes to action and vistas, then widescreen naturally suits good composition (just look at paintings of subjects that stretch across the horizon but are small vertically; battles, open country (eg. "Lawrence of Arabia" in 70mm)). Abel Gance made "Napoleon" (1927) in a cinerama type of format (3 films, 3 projectors) although he used variable format depending on the scene (CU on centre screen, side screens showing context).
So we have to agree that there isn't any ideal format and we use that we're commercially given. Cinemascope (and Vista Vision and Cinerama, etc) and colour became commercial in films to compete for audiences with B&W TV. Widescreen became identified with quality movies and TV, which wanted to keep audiences at home, went colour but CROs limited competing on widescreen (except by letterboxing). However with non-CRO technolgies TV screens can be bigger and wider in aspect to compete with theatres. DVDs and projectors and surround sound are enabling people to get the theatre experience at home, so both TV and theatres are losing audiences to "home theatres". So TV is trying to engage audiences with "reality" junk and Hollywood is trying to make the theatre experience difficult to match (noise, special effects and blood & guts). Fortunately there are still other people making films that do engage the mind.