C'mon, who hasn't had an inexperienced movie goer over that politely asks why black bars still show up on a
widescreen HDTV? Have you ever wondered if a set would be produced to harmonize with those films shot and presented in 2.35:1?
Sound & Vision sat down with a number of industry experts and asked them that very question, and while many believe that the same technology that has become commonplace in custom projector installs is feasible for TVs, it's not apt to happen anytime soon. Essentially, there's just not a large enough market for
ultra widescreen displays; the hardcore among us that would spring for one are in the minority. Richard F. Doherty, research director of The Envisioneering Group on Long Island, was one fellow who seemed to have more faith than anyone else, even going so far as to suggest that we may see at least a prototype of one such set at CES 2009. Mark our words, we'll be keeping an eye out -- after all, it shouldn't be too hard to spot in the sea of 16:9 units.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
scott @ Jul 25th 2008 8:29AM
first- I had trouble reading your first sentence. I understand what you are saying but there seems to be a cluster f**k of words there.
Anyway... I think we should rewind some years back and instead of going 16x9 from the start of HD, gone right to 2.35:1. Why was this not done? Sure, we would have black bars taking up half the screen on SD 4:3 stuff, but heck, you could almost fit two news 4:3 news channels side by side on a display like that. 16x9 would have side black bars, but so what. Action packed 2.35:1 movies would look awesome!
Mr. E @ Jul 25th 2008 12:29PM
There was a coalition of movie people, including as I recall Francis Ford Coppola, who appealed for a wider-than 16x9 aspect ratio standard for HDTV. I believe they were pushing for something like 2:1. Unfortunately, they came in waaaaay too late in the ATSC standards development process to be taken seriously.
I still have a dream of having a front projector with anamorphic lens, for 2.35:1 constant image height, but I really don't see the need for it in rear projection and flat panel. You'd just shift the question about "why do I have black bars above and below the screen" to "why do I have black bars at the side of the screen?" Or worse yet, the stretch mode that some people seem to like in 16x9 would become ridiculously stretched into 2.35:1.
shawnmos @ Jul 25th 2008 8:40AM
what's the point? you'll then have bars on pretty much everything.
Wes @ Jul 27th 2008 1:12AM
The Matrix Trilogy =)
Hehe
minimalist @ Jul 25th 2008 9:16AM
Don;t forget that a large poportion of movies are still released in 1.85:1 which is closest to 16:9. 2.35:1 results from more expensive film stock and is therefore reserved for big blockbuster movies and epics.
I'd be willing to bet if you took a look at all the available content out there (2.85:1 on down to 4:3) you'd find that 16:9 is as close to happy medium as was possible. 2.35:1 sets would be a niche product if they appeared at all.
why not the LS2LS7? @ Jul 25th 2008 4:07PM
I rent almost only BluRays. Over 95% of them are 2.35:1.
And I'm tired of it. There are very few theaters in this country where a 2.35:1 movie gets more screen space than a 1.85:1 screen. Most of them just move the curtain matte in on top and bottom to make a smaller picture.
And of course, no TVs that do it.
So Hollywood, stop robbing us of picture space at home and the theater, make your films 1.85:1 or 16:9.
David Susilo @ Jul 25th 2008 10:02AM
good for people like me. For very strange reasons, more than 80% of my movie collection (more than 2,500 titles) are in 2.35:1 ratio.
This way I can maintain Constant Image Height without going the front-projector route.
scott @ Jul 25th 2008 2:51PM
David Susilo -
wow....I thought my collection of 500 plus titles was sizable. You have five times as many DVD/Bluray, and presumably some HD-DVD titles as I have. Way to go!
I believe you outright called me an idiot in another post, but I don't hold a grudge.
I'm must wondering how you know off the top of your head that 80% of your titles are 2.35:1? You didn't sit there and go through them all looking at the aspect ratio just to add to this post. You must keep a spreadsheet of your movies or use one of those inventory software systems.
Question- do you have a good DVD jukebox? My DVDs sure take up a lot of space. I wouldn't mind a good jukebox or two to hold my DVDs. I have a Sony CD changer for my CD collection and it is very useful. Any thoughts?
David Susilo @ Jul 25th 2008 3:37PM
Hi Scott,
I don't have a DVD jukebox. I put every title in their original boxes and put them alphabetically in 4 different catagories: Movies, Music Videos, Demonstration Discs, Disney Animation. For HD DVD and Blu-ray I just group them based on their respecitve formats since I only have a couple hundreds of titles for each format.
I use an idiot-database-system on my palm pilot so I can group it based on "alphabetical", "aspect ratio" and "sound" (mono, stereo, multi-channel). From there I can see that for the types of movies I buy, more than 80% of them are wider than 1.85:1 ratio.. I call it "idiot-database-system" because now that palmOS is dead, I can't transfer the database anywhere else :( A dumbass move I made in 1997 when I started collecting DVD.
riverside_guy @ Jul 25th 2008 10:18AM
Not only that, but some 2.35:1 movies are released as 1.85:1, my guess to completely fill widescreen displays which are all 16:9. Min is right, 16:9 is the best compromise.
Ken @ Jul 25th 2008 10:35AM
I asked this question a few months ago, and got made fun of!
As someone who sells this stuff, 9/10 times, the constraint on the TV is width, so making it wider would not be the best idea.
With more and more HD content showing up every day on DirecTV, the TV is seeing more 16:9 content.
Nipsey Russell @ Jul 25th 2008 12:42PM
oh great, now when i go to some moron's house they'll have something 4-3 stretched out twice as far and it will be completely unwatchable while they try to tell me how great it looks!
rcme @ Jul 25th 2008 1:26PM
Here is an interesting article about where the 16:9 format actually came from, esp. since it does not match any common movie format...
http://www.kenrockwell.com/hdtv/aspect-ratio.htm
Nipsey Russell @ Jul 25th 2008 5:11PM
ken rockwell's post about seeing content with borders on ALL four sides was right on....but then he drops the ball complaining that tvs and stations dont automatically S-T-R-E-T-C-H out a 4.3 picture to a 16:9 screen.ouch. He goes further: he would rather watch an SD signal than HD ("Forget HD for cable, off-air and satellite. Watch standard-definition channels, and use a stretching mode on your wide TV to fill the screen. ") HUH???
squiggleslash @ Jul 26th 2008 11:31PM
@Nipsey: Rockwell's not talking about stretchovision. He's talking about the equivalent of "zoom" on your HDTV remote, where the picture is magnified such that the full width of the screen is used but the top and bottom are removed.
While it has its disadvantages, it's not a terrible thing. Discovery Channel and others do exactly this, and the only downside is that frequently the SD content is actually stored at something close to SD, and thus the resolution isn't that great. On the other hand, if it were done with content that's already letterboxed, there'd be no resolution loss.
Me, I'd rather 4:3 content be shown as 4:3 (with bars on the sides), but I don't think his position is particularly unreasonable.
gamedude420 @ Jul 25th 2008 2:12PM
i think it would be best to have a projector and just curtain off the screen for 2:35 movies
J.Goodwin @ Jul 25th 2008 2:01PM
As a gamer, I would not be happy with a 2:1 or 2.35:1 screen.
There are a lot of kinds of games that just aren't well suited for a screen that wide, and in the current environment, there's a lot of going back and playing or reviving classic games that on occasion are already hurt by 16:9 screens (vertically oriented coin-ops in particular).
blauck44 @ Jul 25th 2008 3:55PM
I have a front projector that has the option for ultra widescreen projection, and it works great for 2.35;1. but for other movies I adjust it back to the 16;9 setting and move the anamorphic lens out of the way
Mr. E @ Jul 25th 2008 11:12PM
Awesome dude. I hope to be there eventually! A top-notch Blu-ray title front projected projected to a 40-degree angle of view must be just jaw-dropping.
Garst @ Jul 25th 2008 6:49PM
I hate the 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Wasn't the 1.85:1 chosen by the ATSC because human eyes have a 16:9 viewing area?
David Susilo @ Jul 25th 2008 10:58PM
16:9 is chosen NOT because of anything but a compromise between 4:3 and 2.35:1 contents.
seb @ Jul 26th 2008 12:43AM
the best solution is to film ALL movies in soft matte and give the home viewer the option to view it open matte or with black bars via disc settings. I vote for this.
Iridium @ Jul 28th 2008 12:08AM
Format all home releases to 16:9 and be done with it. Home viewing is always going to result in compromise unless you fit into the upper 5% income category.
The vast majority of people would vote overwhelmingly to give up a bit of the outside frame in order to fill up the screen with no distortion.
Besides you can't have a 1080p resolution movie with 15% of the lines taken up by black bars. The difference in picture quality between a 16:9 formatted HD movie and a 2.35:1 is huge with a smaller TV. You can see far more detail in the 16:9 format because the resulting picture is much larger.
Nipsey Russell @ Jul 28th 2008 10:51AM
@ squiggleslash - if you wander through ken's site he address zoom and stretch and the various ways to address it. and we are discussiing both provider and consumer side... dont have time to look back through it all right now, but he definitely advocates stretching (yes, and zooming) and has this bizarre idea that there should never be "bars" on the screen...ever! he is right that the situation where you sometimes have bars on all four sides that you cant remove is ridiculous, but if you have a wide screen tv its silly to think there wont be bars when watching 4:3 tv and vice versa. i think people need to rethink their perspective: when watching 4.3 on a 16.9 TV, there are not "bars" on the side, there is simply no picture there - just like if you have a 4.3 tv there would be no picture there - its just that on the wide tv there is empty screen, whereas if you had the square tv you would see your wall instead!
Dan Davis @ Jul 28th 2008 11:22AM
Does it REALLY matter? I barely notice when there are black bars at the top/bottom anyhow.
Change the standard to 2.35:1 and the studios will start making movies in a narrower format... Pretty soon our TV's will be 10 inches tall and 52 inches wide.
Is "narrower" a word? :)
David Winograd @ Jul 31st 2008 2:33PM
The podcast had it wrong.
I have a Runco with the wide screen options and it just doesn't do more masking, instead it blows up the picture to the 2:35 aspect ratio making the picture just as high as it was before, but wider. So you are using every pixel and not masking off anything. This is great for DVD variants but it also work for things like AMC's Mad Men that shows a 16:9 box in a 4:3 window. Kick in the cinewide option and you get a full 16:9 picture
David