How Widescreen Won
from the about-time dept
theodp writes "When Laserdisc makers adopted widescreen in the 80s, letters poured in from customers who thought there was something wrong with their discs. Just a few years ago, Blockbuster discouraged widescreen DVDs on the grounds that customers confused by the letterbox format thought they were defective. But now, even Blockbuster concedes that widescreen is superior to pan-and-scan. What happened? According to Slate, the DVD format, big-screen TVs, and the continuing education of filmgoers all played a part in changing the way we watch movies at home. " Hurray for small victories.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Widescreen sucks
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Widescreen sucks
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Widescreen sucks
Once manufactures understand,that the biggest sellers are still 10:1,4x3 aspect ratios..things will finally get back to normal!
Widescreen totally sucks,and I will not give in,whatsoever!
4x3....RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Widescreen sucks
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
anyone who was ever involved
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Feh to wide screen!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Feh to wide screen!
Nice troll.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Feh to wide screen!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
it's all about you, isn't it?!??
The ubiquitous 16:9 "letterbox" format is the choice of filmmakers because the aspect ratio allows more interesting framing: for instance, a director can "weight" a frame by placing the subject far right or left in frame to create a narrative image. You can't do that with the TV "sqare."
I sympathize with those who don't have big-screen's to playback movies in their original aspect ratio because you miss the intent of the director and the experience of the film, and i understand the concept of wasting available display space.
I do feel, however, the vision of the director and cinematographer take *great* precedence over the preferences of viewers.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: it's all about you, isn't it?!??
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: it's all about you, isn't it?!??
widescreen format sucks.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: it's all about you, isn't it?!??
Let's not forget who buys their movies though. If the customer is not happy, I'd say the customers "vision" takes precedence over what the director and cinematographer think.
That's like putting BBQ sauce on a big mac and telling customers they can no longer get the burger they're used to because the chef thought it would be better.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Widescreen displays suck.
Really, who uses their TV/monitor strictly for watching movies? I don't, for one.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Widescreen displays suck.
wide as 'starndard' for modern large screen tvs.
screw widescreen tvs!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
widescreen tvs
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
http://www.dvdcreation.com/2001/01_jan/features/widescreen_scam.htm
what is the most annoying is people who insist on watching non widescreen tv broadcasts, stretched to be widescreen so that everything is all distorted, thats so annoying
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Confusion about standards
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
4x3 set gives you everything wide does, and more. There is NOTHING wrong with that more. it gives you bigger 4x3 image etc.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
I think its dumb
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
of why thats better and a petition or people to join
so that someone might notice
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
4:3 sets in the future? Where's a petition I can sign?
4:3 is best for all around TV and besides you lose nothing by making a 4:3 set. With wide sets you lose the top part they cut off.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
rofl
Where did they dredge you people up? Most of you can't even spell, much less appreciate what 16x9 is all about, and it would be an effort in futility to try to educate...
I quote: "Who really gives a crap what's going on to the FAR left and the FAR right of the picture?" or "Widescreen sucks" or even "Widescreen totally sucks,and I will not give in,whatsoever! 4x3....RULES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" and "cannot stand the site of widescreen tv's!"
Thank god for folks such as Stekker
Get a clue or go adjust your rabbit ears or something.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: rofl
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The saddest part about widescreen is the fact that it doesn't even fit widescreen TVs. Widescreen, even viewed on a 50" plasma TV STILL has the black bars which look horrible. The only way to get rid of that is to stretch the picture, which makes it look even worse. Characters in widescreen do not look natural, they look squished and disproportionate.
What I don't exactly understand, is why widescreen doesn't show the top and bottom portions, why replace it with a black bar when it could be just as easily show what is higher and what is lower in the shot? It seems ridiculous... as I said, widescreen is like standing out at the ocean and only being able to see what is between 3 and 6 feet high... not be able to see the sunset or the sand on the beach.. life isn't like that... gaze out at a sunset and you can see the sand, the water and the sun.. not with widescreen you can't
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
Unfortunately the world doesn't exist in widescreen. Life is more 4:3.... life in 16:9 would be like wearing some sort of device that blocks your vision from everything higher than head/eye level and everything lower than waist level. who the hell wants that?
The saddest part about widescreen is the fact that it doesn't even fit widescreen TVs. Widescreen, even viewed on a 50" plasma TV STILL has the black bars which look horrible. The only way to get rid of that is to stretch the picture, which makes it look even worse. Characters in widescreen do not look natural, they look squished and disproportionate.
What I don't exactly understand, is why widescreen doesn't show the top and bottom portions, why replace it with a black bar when it could be just as easily show what is higher and what is lower in the shot? It seems ridiculous... as I said, widescreen is like standing out at the ocean and only being able to see what is between 3 and 6 feet high... not be able to see the sunset or the sand on the beach.. life isn't like that... gaze out at a sunset and you can see the sand, the water and the sun.. not with widescreen you can't
The only widescreen that doesn't fit widescreen tvs is 2.35:1. And the "bars" (not really bars, by the way) are way smaller than on a 4:3 set. There are no black bars. What the "bars" are are just unused portions of the tv, areas where there is no picture shown.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re:
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: widescreen sucks etc
letterbox is a terrible way to watch a movie on a TV screen. Most of the
supporters are apparent "Movie People" and detractors seem to be mostly
TV watchers. My opinion is that the sole purpose of TV is not movie watching.
If I want to comment on art form I will go to an Art Movie Theater. At home
I like my viewing to be full screen TV.
For some reason the HDTV WS format shown on a "regular" screen does not
seem as objectionable even though the whole screen is not used.
The bottom line is choice. The DVD makers should allow choice of full screen
or letterbox. There was a time when movies were formatted on both sides of
a DVD---one side full screen and the other letterbox. Lets go back to that.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
widescreen BLOWS
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
no it doesn't, but whatever
On a side note, though, I watched King Kong on my buddy's HDTV with his HDDVD player, and I thought it looked horribly fake. Everything looked animated, way too crisp to be real. However, if you're a gamer, video games look SO good on an HDTV.
Just my opinion.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Don't get it!!!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Fullscreen (4x3) seems dead
Black bars above and below the screen (letterbox) hardly bothers me for the few hours I spend watching movies.
My sports and news and live programming has been sacrificed to hollywood, whether I want it, or not. I'm sick of looking at people who look short and fat during interviews.
Woe to the non-homogenous consumer. :(
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The circle of discernible visual details is approximately 1:1 in ratio, if it were looked at as a circumscribed square. It is NOT 16:9 or any other "wide" form; your ability to see what's going on is pretty much square, and 4:3 screens are also pretty much square.
So what do you see on a widescreen display that you don't on a standard one? Peripheral vision and miscellaneous distractions that may appear on the sides of the screen. Important? I sure as hell don't think so.
Now, conversely, what do you lose with wide formats that you have with standard 4:3 format video? The top and bottom. With a square-ish screen, you can sit X distance away and make out almost all of the details of the video you're watching. You can fill your circle of "good vision" with the entire screen, thus you can make out every detail of a movie. With a widescreen, you go through what is essentially a human form of "pan and scan" where your eye moves around the screen if it is interested by something off to a side. This means that you can actually be distracted to one side and miss details on the other. If you back away to where you can make out all of the details of the widescreen format in a similar fashion to the 4:3, a good chunk of your detailed vision is focusing on your black entertainment center instead of a movie, and that ruins your experience, because the TV seems so small.
4:3 is better because you were made to see in that approximate aspect ratio naturally. 16:9 forces your eyes to work a lot to take in what they're seeing, and leaves ugly letterboxing on a proper 4:3 display.
If nothing else, 4:3 has been the de facto standard for all televisions and computer monitors for well over three decades. Websites are designed around 800x600 or 1024x768, not 1280x768 or 1440x900 or 1680x1050. Ever render a site that's not MY site on a widescreen? Notice how 1/3 of the screen is C|Net while there's a huge 1/3 empty margin on each side? That's because the world isn't designed for widescreen. The only reason wide is catching on is because all the digital movie formats are being forced to widescreen: the standard res for a DVD is 720x480 and HD images can be 1280x720 or 1920x1080, but dread the thought of HD being 1600x1200 instead, despite the fact that tons of CRT or LCD monitor max out there!
I subscribe to the conspiracy theories that various industries are "scratching each others' backs" to support trends like this. LCD/TV makers need to sell more TVs, so DTV and especially HDTV are important to them; likewise, Hollywood wants to (A) stop "rampant movie piracy" and (B) simultaneously sell movies to people to watch in their homes, so they both conspire to make this digital widescreen shift trend to make people feel like they need to buy TVs AND to make HD movies look like total crap on a standard 4:3 monitor (which is still the majority of CRTs, LCDs, and laptop screens) which discourages using the computer (the piracy tool of choice) as a digital media center. In the same fashion, I believe that XP and especially Vista are the result of collaboration between Microsoft and prominent hardware manufacturers behind closed doors to create artificial obsolescence of hardware through core software upgrades that requires better hardware to run, and hardware that does not work without the newest core software on top of it: thus, downgrading a Vista laptop to XP is a very painful experience, and putting Vista on a machine with 128MB of RAM will never work, not because they can't make it work, but because they need it to not work.
If XP is essentially a much improved version of Windows 2000, and the only big memory consuming aspect that has been added (and can't be turned off by a novice user) is the prefetch mechanism, why does XP run so lousy in 128MB of RAM where its predecessor, 2000, was sittin' pretty in that same 128MB of RAM? Likewise, why does XP consume 2GB when the base install is finished while 2000 consumes about 600MB?
It's all a conspiracy, not because it's easy to say that, but because there's not really any other obvious explanation for these trends.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Widescreen really does suck
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Widescreen really does suck
I totally agree.
If you use a regular monitor and draw a perfect circle then display it on a widescreen you will have an oval.
If you use a widescreen and draw a perfect circle then display it on a regular monitor you will get an oval.
This example illustrates the illusion of widescreen, if you don't believe me, test it out for yourself.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It doesn't matter what kind of screen you have.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
It doesn't make since.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Great example of Rip Off!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Great example of Rip Off!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
The Bitter End!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Silly puzzles for geometry challenged
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
WS=BS
Virtually everything that has ever been filmed, in the entire history of film itself, was put on 4:3 fullscreen film. Charlie Chaplin movies, Casablanca, Gone with the Wind, the Wizard of Oz, everything that Walt Disney made during his lifetime... it was all in fullscreen. Even after movies started being shown in widescreen, they were filmed on the same old 4:3 film and cropped for theaters.
Anything made for TV was, needless to say, made in 4:3 as well. That includes everybody's favorite classic console games - like Sonic, Mario, and of course, teh Halo.
The principle even extends to computers. Start up any game with Doom, Duke, Quake, Unreal, whatever in the title, and go mess with the resolutions. 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768, 1280x960, 1600x1200... have you noticed that they all have one thing in common? THEY'RE ALL FULLSCREEN TOO!
Widescreen does absolutely nothing for anyone, except put money in the pockets of the companies who are orchestrating the change in format.
WS=BS. It's historical reality.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
widescreen
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
widescreen sucks!
I've watched the exact same movie in both formats and I enjoyed watching the full screen version better.
widesceen format blows!
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
widescreen
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
widescreen
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
I don't like the HD formats
I don’t mind widescreen displays as much as I dislike widescreen video cameras. There isn’t even an option of 4:3 HD movies. If I want to shoot 4:3, I’m stuck with 640×480. Why do I dislike widescreen capture? Because I’m losing information above and below! Why not a native widescreen sensor then? Because virtually all video cameras don’t really have that wide of a wide angle. Widescreen just makes it worse! I can no longer fit the scene into the frame. If I can’t move farther back, I’m stuck! I hope someday they’ll add back 4:3 video capture.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
widescreen
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
[ link to this | view in chronology ]