OT: Aspect Ratio madness

riredale wrote on 1/17/2008, 9:03 AM
One of my pet peeves has always been to walk into an upscale hotel or bar and see the widescreen TV on the wall showing a 4:3 video stretched out to the 16:9 shape of the display. Don't these people realize that everything on the screen is distorted? That all the anchor newspeople look like they weigh 300 pounds?

Three explanations spring to mind. Either the people controlling the sets are totally clueless about aspect ratio, or else they are totally clueless about adjusting aspect ratio, or else possibly they like the "new" appearance of all their favorite shows.

Now it's spread to the Internet. You can go here on CNN and see stretched-out 4:3 video in all its glory.

What is going on here? Over the past few months I've sent several emails to the CNN website people, with nary a response. They must LIKE the look.

Comments

rmack350 wrote on 1/17/2008, 10:02 AM
Some of our local news stations have taken to pointing a camera at their misadjusted widescreen TVs that they use for on air display. It drives me nuts when they take these stretched shots from their DTVs and then broadcast them in an SD broadcast.

You're right, it's insane. All I can think is that these people have decided that it's better to fill the screen than to leave pillars on either side.

If and when get a wide screen DTV I think I'll install curtains on the front of it like a theater screen and just draw them closed when things are pillarboxed.

Rob
JJKizak wrote on 1/17/2008, 10:07 AM
Like JJK says, " It took the human race about 6000 years and billions of dollars to get lens distortion and linearity below 1% and in about 10 seconds around 2003 it was all shot down the drain.
JJK
TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/17/2008, 11:30 AM
i've noticed that when I watch a SD image that's letterboxed & change the set to widescreen, I normally leave it there. Could be what's happening.
riredale wrote on 1/17/2008, 4:56 PM
What's especially galling to me is that if I gently raise the issue and suggest that they adjust their set, they look at me as though I'm a crazy man. Sigh...

Some sort of auto-adjust mechanism via data transmitted over the VBI should have been mandated by the feds years ago.

I see the same effect on many professionally-produced DVDs also. The trailers are shown in 4:3 while the feature presentation is 16:9. Seems to me that a real pro would have built a trailer in 16:9 with 4:3 material and pillars so the entire disk contents were 16:9.
FrigidNDEditing wrote on 1/17/2008, 6:08 PM
OK, if you wanna go there what REALLY gets my goat (wonder where that expression came from), its when they have cropped 16:9 pushed out in a 4:3 signal being "pillar boxed in a 4:3 display. (Usually only happens on web content, but just cheeses me off to no end)

Dave
riredale wrote on 1/18/2008, 9:16 AM
Regarding the "goat" thing, Google turned up this. Has to do with horse racing, or so the theory says.