# Why are all new DVD and BD Movies in letterbox form???



## Sasqui (Nov 8, 2011)

It seems all of the new releases on DVD and Blu Ray are in letterbox form, using approximately <60% of available HD screen area.  Black bars on top and bottom of the screen.

Does this annoy others as much as me, and what the h*ll is the reason?  Is it to "preserve" the original film format and waste a whole bunch of screen area at the same time?


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## erocker (Nov 8, 2011)

Well, if they fit it for an HDTV television they would just cut the sides off. Try using one of the zoom settings on your TV, it works the same.


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## qubit (Nov 8, 2011)

You are seeing the full video frame, as it was created, which is the correct way to view it.

Whenever there's a clash of aspect ratios, you're going to see unused areas of the screen on the sides or top and bottom. Trying to fill them inevitably causes problems of one kind or another and makes things worse.

I especially dislike it when they show footage made in 4:3 format zoomed to fit into a 16:9 aspect ratio. The picture is blurry and you lose a lot off the top and bottom of the picture. Doing this is just retarded. :shadedshu


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## Sasqui (Nov 8, 2011)

qubit said:


> You are seeing the full video frame, as it was created, which is the correct way to view it.



Correct way to view it?  I get all excited when a movie fills up the screen I paid dearly for!  It's the correct way to view it on a 2.35:1 theater screen, but not a 1.33:1 screen... IMO

Try watching a letterbox on an old CRT, it's unwatchable.



erocker said:


> Well, if they fit it for an HDTV television they would just cut the sides off. Try using one of the zoom settings on your TV, it works the same.



At one time, on old CRT screens, they would deliberately edit a movie to FIT the screen, so you could enjoy the details.  Zooming isn't particularly a fun way to try enjoying a movie.


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## DannibusX (Nov 8, 2011)

Look in your menu options for pan n scan zoom.


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## H82LUZ73 (Nov 8, 2011)

Sasqui said:


> It seems all of the new releases on DVD and Blu Ray are in letterbox form, using approximately <60% of available HD screen area.  Black bars on top and bottom of the screen.
> 
> Does this annoy others as much as me, and what the h*ll is the reason?  Is it to "preserve" the original film format and waste a whole bunch of screen area at the same time?



Yeah pretty much ,letterbox 16.9 16.10 is what most of them film in,Like rocker said try the 16.9 zoom or stretch on the TV.


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## qubit (Nov 8, 2011)

Sasqui said:


> Correct way to view it?  I get all excited when a movie fills up the screen I paid dearly for!  It's the correct way to view it on a 2.35:1 theater screen, but not a 1.33:1 screen... IMO
> 
> *Try watching a letterbox on an old CRT, it's unwatchable.*



Yes, I've seen it and there's an aweful lot of wasted space and not especially pleasant to view, although it's my preferred way. There's no perfect answer to this problem and while the way I described is the technically "correct" way to view it, because you see the whole frame, personal preference is more important. In other words, your player should have controls to allow you to adjust the picture the way you like it. It really isn't hard with modern technology, so it's a bit lame that these picture controls aren't included on everything as standard.

IMHO, film and video should have been standardized on the Golden Ratio since day one, which if you're not aware, is the 16:10 ratio of a 1920x1200 monitor.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 8, 2011)

Sasqui said:


> At one time, on old CRT screens, they would deliberately edit a movie to FIT the screen, so you could enjoy the details. Zooming isn't particularly a fun way to try enjoying a movie.



If you think most of them did anything more than chop off the left and right side, you are mistaken.


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## Sasqui (Nov 9, 2011)

newtekie1 said:


> If you think most of them did anything more than chop off the left and right side, you are mistaken.



Wrong and right.  It's all about editing quality and budget.  Given time and $, they will spend a lot of time making sure the frame is centered on the right subject and overal composition of a given scene.  In low budget cases no doubt you are correct.


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## CJCerny (Nov 9, 2011)

Most movies continue to be filmed in either 2.35:1 or 1.85:1, which is different from the 1.78:1 aspect ratio of a HDTV. As HDTV's take over the world, filmmakers might start to film everything in 1.78:1, but there aren't any guarantees. The entire reason that movies are in a different aspect ratio to begin with is because people stopped going to the movies in the 1950's when TV's came out, so moviemakers did something to distinguish themselves from TV and to make themselves more spectacular. What they did was adopt much wider aspect ratios than the 1.33:1 aspect ratio that TV's offered at the time. For the most part, movie directors and cinematographers do not focus on what their movie will look like on a TV of any size or shape when they are making it. They focus on what it will look like in the aspect ratio that they have chosen to film it in. To do it any other way would be tantamount to telling a painter that he needed to think about what his painting would look like if it got moved to a different canvas. They don't really care. Careful panning and scanning of a movie eliminates most of the issues with watching it on a TV, but not all of them. There will always be stuff at the edges that you don't see if you are watching a movie on a TV in anything else other than its original format.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 9, 2011)

Sasqui said:


> Wrong and right.  It's all about editing quality and budget.  Given time and $, they will spend a lot of time making sure the frame is centered on the right subject and overal composition of a given scene.  In low budget cases no doubt you are correct.



That is why I said most.  At this point the Movie industry doesn't want to spend any more money on editing a movie down to 4:3 than they have to(most don't even want to do it in the first place).  The process likely consists of just chopping the left and right edge of the screen off, then scanning through the result to make sure the scenes are watchable, and making adjustments on the few scenes that aren't.

But I think the solution really is to just buy a widescreen display...


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## Batou1986 (Nov 9, 2011)

I agree with this notion the letter boxing pisses me off to no end they push the 1080 standard like crazy yet 90% of movies only use 2/3 of the screen, rant over at least most anime is fullscreen.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 9, 2011)

Batou1986 said:


> I agree with this notion the letter boxing pisses me off to no end they push the 1080 standard like crazy yet 90% of movies only use 2/3 of the screen, rant over at least most anime is fullscreen.



That is true, but on a 1080 screen, zooming in to cut of the left and right isn't so bad, next to nothing is cut off.  He is talking about a 4:3 screen though, which is just way outdated...


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## Sasqui (Nov 9, 2011)

Batou1986 said:


> I agree with this notion the letter boxing pisses me off to no end they push the 1080 standard like crazy yet 90% of movies only use 2/3 of the screen, rant over at least most anime is fullscreen.



Geez, I'm glad I'm not the only one.

I'd rather have quality in production panning and zooming to see a full screen like this @1.33:1:







Than wasting 1/2 of the screen to see this:








newtekie1 said:


> That is true, but on a 1080 screen, zooming in to cut of the left and right isn't so bad, next to nothing is cut off.  He is talking about a 4:3 screen though, which is just way outdated...



No, only using that as an example of what they've done to fit theater films on old TV's in the past...


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## claylomax (Nov 9, 2011)

CJCerny said:


> Most movies continue to be filmed in either 2.35:1 or 1.85:1, which is different from the 1.78:1 aspect ratio of a HDTV. As HDTV's take over the world, filmmakers might start to film everything in 1.78:1, but there aren't any guarantees. The entire reason that movies are in a different aspect ratio to begin with is because people stopped going to the movies in the 1950's when TV's came out, so moviemakers did something to distinguish themselves from TV and to make themselves more spectacular. What they did was adopt much wider aspect ratios than the 1.33:1 aspect ratio that TV's offered at the time. For the most part, movie directors and cinematographers do not focus on what their movie will look like on a TV of any size or shape when they are making it. They focus on what it will look like in the aspect ratio that they have chosen to film it in. To do it any other way would be tantamount to telling a painter that he needed to think about what his painting would look like if it got moved to a different canvas. They don't really care. Careful panning and scanning of a movie eliminates most of the issues with watching it on a TV, but not all of them. There will always be stuff at the edges that you don't see if you are watching a movie on a TV in anything else other than its original format.



Try watching Ben-Hur then  : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Hur_(1959_film)#Aspect_ratio


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## newtekie1 (Nov 9, 2011)

Sasqui said:


> No, only using that as an example of what they've done to fit theater films on old TV's in the past...



Yes, but even in your picture examples for how terrible they are wasting space, you are reference a 4:3 screen(check the aspect ratios of the images).  You are showing how a 16:9 image looks on a 4:3 screen.  If you were look at the second image on a 16:9 screen, there is no wasted space and you get the entire image, not a cropped piece of crap like the first image.  Now in a scenic view like your example, that might not be bad, but that isn't always the case, here is a perfect example:

Here is the original 16:9 framegrab(letterbox):





Here is the framegrab shrink to 4:3(non-letterbox):





Here is what the 4:3 image would look like on a 16:9 TV:





Some things to notice here.  First, notice how there is pretty much no way to get that scene to fit into a 4:3 aspect ratio.  No amount of panning and scanning will get everything in that scene into a 4:3 frame, it just isn't happening.

Also, notice how the non-letterbox version wastes half the 16:9 screen?  Every TV sold today is 16:9, so people buying new TVs don't want half their screen wasted because the movie is 4:3.  Now you can make the argument that people with 16:9 TVs can just stretch the image, and that is true.  But what is better, including the entire image and stretching it to fix, or chopping the image up removing part of it and then stretching it to fit?  The better choice is always leaving the original image and stretching that.

So the answer to your question as to why they release movies in letterbox form is so that there is no wasted space on a 16:9 screen and they preserve the original movie as it was filmed.  *So again I go back to buy a 16:9 TV/Monitor.*  And even the movies that are filmed beyond 16:9, that do have black bars at the top and bottom even on a 16:9 TV, you can stretch those and will get a far better experience with little loss of the image compared to a 4:3 screen(regardless of if the movie study cuts the image down or you do buy zooming in with your player/TV).


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## CJCerny (Nov 9, 2011)

claylomax said:


> Try watching Ben-Hur then  : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Hur_(1959_film)#Aspect_ratio



I'm familiar with Ben Hur. What's your point? 

This entire argument is fairly pointless. The masses have already voted with their dollars here. Since I'm ancient (44), I'll remind you all of the early days of DVD (1997 to 2000 or so). At that time, just about every offering came in both widescreen (original format) and full frame (cropped to 1.33:1) in a seperate box with a seperate UPC. Many people bought the full frame, but even more went for the widescreen--and thus the die was cast. A majority of people just like to see the entire frame vs. having it fill their screen while losing the edges. Those that prefer the full frame look are just going to need to get proficient with the zoom button on their disc players or tv's--that's the bottom line.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 9, 2011)

CJCerny said:


> I'm familiar with Ben Hur. What's your point?
> 
> This entire argument is fairly pointless. The masses have already voted with their dollars here. Since I'm ancient (44), I'll remind you all of the early days of DVD (1997 to 2000 or so). At that time, just about every offering came in both widescreen (original format) and full frame (cropped to 1.33:1) in a seperate box with a seperate UPC. *Many people bought the full frame*, but even more went for the widescreen--and thus the die was cast. A majority of people just like to see the entire frame vs. having it fill their screen while losing the edges. Those that prefer the full frame look are just going to need to get proficient with the zoom button on their disc players or tv's--that's the bottom line.



Yep, and if you are like my Uncle, he bought nothing but fullframe, because he had a bigscreen 4:3 tv at the time, and he hated how "the screen was cut off to make widescreen movies".  Now he has replaced the ancient 4:3 screen with a 16:9 and his DVD collection is useless to him...


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## MilkyWay (Nov 9, 2011)

Widescreen is superior because it is a wider angle so you see more on the screen, only if filmed in proper aspect ratios to be displayed in 16:9.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_(image)#Movie_camera_systems


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## Sasqui (Nov 9, 2011)

newtekie1 said:


> Yes, but even in your picture examples for how terrible they are wasting space, you are reference a 4:3 screen(check the aspect ratios of the images).  You are showing how a 16:9 image looks on a 4:3 screen.  If you were look at the second image on a 16:9 screen, there is no wasted space and you get the entire image, not a cropped piece of crap like the first image.  Now in a scenic view like your example, that might not be bad, but that isn't always the case, here is a perfect example:
> 
> Here is the original 16:9 framegrab(letterbox):
> http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/newtekie1/169example.jpg
> ...



Huh?  why are you still talking about 4:3?


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## newtekie1 (Nov 25, 2011)

Sasqui said:


> Huh?  why are you still talking about 4:3?



Because you are, you used a 4:3 resolution as your example to show why letterbox creates wasted screen space.  If you stop using 4:3, letter box isn't as bad, as I showed in my example.


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## Frederik S (Nov 25, 2011)

It is all about the composition of the image. 21:9 or 16:9 is closer to the way we perceive the world and that is perhaps why many prefer letterbox. The horizontal field of view of your eyes is much greater than that of the vertical.


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