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Hi, the local Circuit City had Star Wars Episode I
on a 42" Hitachi 16:9 widescreen flat panel display.
The film was being shown in widescreen format, and
it did not look cropped at all on the top or
bottom, but it also did not fill the whole screen-there was definitely a letterbox effect on the
top and bottom of the screen, despite it being a
16:9 screen.Can someone explain this? Wouldn't this be bad for
the display over time? The only time I've seen
16:9 widescreens filled, the picture looks vertically
stretched.
Follow Ups:
I suspect going to a "high-end" store like Circuit City might be part of the problem, but several months ago, I saw a store displaying a 16-9 TV with letter boxing. I discovered the remote was set for “wide screen” (not sure why the manufacturer would even have the option, especially Sony), but the result was the TV displayed letter boxing inside a 16-9 format.Maybe Sony wants you to have the capability to watch POP (Picture Outside a Picture) inside of the conventional Picture Inside a Picture (PIP). Who knows, but that could have been what you saw.
But it's not the only theatrical film ratio. If the director wants to go for an epic feel or very wide shots, he/she will opt for 2.35:1, which is wider (and thus narrower) than 16:9. (See my post below.) You were watching a 16:9 OAR film on a 16:9 display.Original aspect ratios (OARs) are not standard in the filmm industry. Our old TV sets were 4:3 because most films until the early 1950s were released in that aspect ratio. With the advent of free TV boadcasting, studios hit upon widecsreen films as a method of giving the consumer "more" thus luring tham back to movie theaters. So we had all variety of widescreen formats - cinerama, cinemascope, etc.
Most theatrical films today are released in either 1.85:1 or 2.35:1 (not 70mm, that's too expensive, films like LOTR and Star Wars are shot in 35mm or Super 35. AOTC was shot on HD video. If you want to have the rare 70mm experience, go see the re-release of Lawrence of Arabia.) 2:35 is skinnier (wider) than 16:9. That's why you see narrow bars top and bottom on a 16:9 display. You'd see very large bars top and bottom on a 4:3 set.
As long as we're on the subject ...
would that be > 2:1 ?
Damn bifocals. I meant to say when looking ay Star Wars you were watching a 2.35:1 movie on a 16:9 display.Sorry!
Oh, now I get it, so LOTR and AOTC/PMenace are wider than
16:9. BTW, when I divide 16 by 9 I get 1.777, not 1.85,
so does that mean that even normal films will still have
a little letter boxing effect?
On a 4:3 unit one feels as though the film is being viewed through the visor of a knight's helmet.As for 70mm, Very few theatres posses the projection equipment any more. What is typically seen is a 35mm print (they were always done as well because 70mm was for high end theatres). 70mm prints are amazing, when one can find a theatre that can show them.
Around the World in Eghty Days? How the West Was Won? Seeing them now, they're almost too hard to watch, for me anyway. Ben Hur blew my mind when I was seven years old. Ah, the days of road show movies.I've been lucky enough to see Lawrence of Arabia a few times in 70mm - gorgeous!
Yes, I remember Cinerama. They used 3 cameras /projectors to film /project the image. It was quite an experience, especially for its time (early 60's). I saw 'The wonderful world of the brothers Grimm', 'How the west was won', '7 wonders of the world', 'Its a Mad,Mad,Mad World' and my favorite 'Grand Prix' in Cinerama. The extremely wide screen gave you peripheral vision, and was the first film to give you the feeling (at least visually) of being there. IMax does a similar thing today, although they use a single camera and projector.
...there is a theater there that has a Cinerama set-up and shows the films in original format. The guy had a tough time locating 3 projectors - parts aren't easy to come by either.
A 16:9 screen is totally filled when properly displaying a film that was done in 1.85:1 aspect ratio (typical 35mm film, I think). There are a handfull of different aspect ratios being used. Star Wars was shot in 70mm I believe, which is 2.35:1, so even on a 16:9 screen, you should still see black bars at the top and bottom, if the image is being displayed properly.
Actually I wanted to buy a 16:9 screen since most of what I watch is DVD content. But even with that most of my DVDs are 2.35:1 not 1.85:1. So i'd still have letter boxing, as you observed even with a 16:9 set. So ideally I'dd really need a set capabile of at least 2.35:1 native. So I just settled on a big 4:3 set (36inch) rather than a more expensive 16:9 set (16:9). The image size in comparable on either.Also I think some movies are shot in even 2.76:1 (or is that 2.8something?) like Superman II and Ben Hur. That would yield some extreme letterboxing.
So yeah, I think even a 16:9 set isn't really enough.
Unless you have a front projector.16:9 is the agreed upon industry standard ratio, you will likely never see a consumer TV set wider than that. ("Native" refers to resolution, the vertical and horizontal scan lines, not aspect ratio. You know, 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i.) It's a compromise between the various film OARs and the HD broadcast format. HD is 16:9 - 16:9 TVs are what we got.
1.85:1 isn't too bad on a 36" 4:3, but the he HUGE black bars with 2.35:1 on the 36" sets pushed me to a 34" WS. I like my WS a lot, and the very narrow bars displayed on 2.35 material don't bother me a bit.
when I do that I never notice the big black bars. But I did think long and hard about the 34inch 16:9 set. I hope you enjoy yours. :-)
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