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General => Movies and TV => Topic started by: PetFish on August 14, 2011, 01:03:19 AM
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Everything is 16:9 so why do I pay a premium for HD channels only to have them show 4:3 content? Why is my on-screen guide 4:3? I'm sick of seeing scoreboards and network logos in the middle of my screen instead of in the corners where they should be but aren't cuz they have to make sure the 4:3 people aren't neglected.
Nobody sells 4:3 anymore so the market penetration is only going go go up so why are broadcasters still acting like it's 1988?
Is there even a timeline for change? Why can't they just 16:9 everything and make the 4:3 people see letterbox content? It's definitely overdue.
What really kills me is watching AMC HD and they show a movie from 1994 in 16:9 HD but then the next night show a movie from 2008 in 4:3. I pay good money for HD and then get force-fed SD garbage.
:facepalm:
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Um, I rarely ever use my television, cause I can watch practically anything for free on my compy.
I don't even know my television's resolution!
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Everything is 16:9 so why do I pay a premium for HD channels only to have them show 4:3 content? Why is my on-screen guide 4:3? I'm sick of seeing scoreboards and network logos in the middle of my screen instead of in the corners where they should be but aren't cuz they have to make sure the 4:3 people aren't neglected.
Nobody sells 4:3 anymore so the market penetration is only going go go up so why are broadcasters still acting like it's 1988?
Is there even a timeline for change? Why can't they just 16:9 everything and make the 4:3 people see letterbox content? It's definitely overdue.
What really kills me is watching AMC HD and they show a movie from 1994 in 16:9 HD but then the next night show a movie from 2008 in 4:3. I pay good money for HD and then get force-fed SD garbage.
:facepalm:
Yep. Agree 100 percent. It's bullshit.
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Everything is 16:9 so why do I pay a premium for HD channels only to have them show 4:3 content? Why is my on-screen guide 4:3? I'm sick of seeing scoreboards and network logos in the middle of my screen instead of in the corners where they should be but aren't cuz they have to make sure the 4:3 people aren't neglected.
Nobody sells 4:3 anymore so the market penetration is only going go go up so why are broadcasters still acting like it's 1988?
Is there even a timeline for change? Why can't they just 16:9 everything and make the 4:3 people see letterbox content? It's definitely overdue.
What really kills me is watching AMC HD and they show a movie from 1994 in 16:9 HD but then the next night show a movie from 2008 in 4:3. I pay good money for HD and then get force-fed SD garbage.
:facepalm:
Yep. Agree 100 percent. It's bullshit.
This. I was thinking about this just a few minutes ago actually
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The number of people with 4:3 sets is still well high enough to warrant it. No point making TV useless for existing viewers. It's just bad business for networks. That would just be stupid.
Now, showing recent content such as a movie in a wrong format is silly, so I'll agree on that one, but "force-fed SD garbage"? Grow up. It's a different aspect ratio, not last week's discard mayonnaise. (was the strangest thing I could think of to be force fed on such short notice).
And you've been watching all of your TV in widescreen since 1988? Good for you. :tup
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Because widescreen is a con to give us less screen for more of our money?
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Why does it matter? If a show was shot in 4:3 or standard definition, are you saying that they should just never air it again?
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I still use a 4:3 dinosaur and I even watch music in 3/4 on it. Some of us just don't feel like getting current with our TV equipment since we have other more necessity-oriented things to buy. Believe it or not, we all don't have $500 laying aroung to go get a new set.
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I'm a dinosaur.
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Because widescreen is a con to give us less screen for more of our money?
:facepalm: widescreen is the original aspect ratio as intended anything else is an altered version.
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Because widescreen is a con to give us less screen for more of our money?
:facepalm: widescreen is the original aspect ratio as intended anything else is an altered version.
Original aspect ratio of what? Television was always 4:3 from the start, as were movies. Movies only began to standardize widescreen once television became popular in the 1950s to give something new.
When you watch any television show up to around 2000, 4:3 is the intended version, and anything else is altered.
When you watch a movie on a television, it's going to be altered regardless, as the vast majority of movies are wider than 16:9 (generally more like 2.35:1), so you're seeing them cropped or letterboxed even on a widescreen TV, just much less so than on a 4:3 set.
16:9 widescreen is a new television standard, and modern shows are going to obviously look best at 16:9. But it's only the "original" unaltered aspect ratio for about a decade of television, compared to 50 years of television and a century of cinema for which it is not. I look at widescreen as more of a good middle ground to bridge the two uses. But for most movies and television, it's going to be letterboxed or pillarboxed to display the unaltered video.
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Movies have been widescreen for a long time now and now television is as well. In order to properly display them you need to have a widescreen tv and if you do have one you can still watch 4:3. I agree with the op on this one.
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You said that widescreen is the original aspect ratio as intended, and anything else is altered.
But not a lot of movies (if any) have an original aspect ratio of native 16:9. Even on a widescreen TV, you're getting the sides cropped off, or you're seeing it slightly letterboxed. I don't know what they do over there, but over here we generally get the sides lopped off to fit 16:9, so you're still losing picture. You're losing less image than at 4:3 cropped, but you're still seeing it altered and not original. The point is that 16:9 television widescreen =/= cinema widescreen, so it is not the original aspect ratio. You look at "widescreen" as being one thing, but it's a general term for "anything wider than 4:3", just as high definition is just a loose term for "anything higher than standard definition".
Same goes for television. The original aspect ratio of television is 4:3. 16:9 is a recent standard. Some notable shows were shooting widescreen in the mid 1990s, but for the most part it's been phased in over the past decade, with some shows only finally switching over in the past couple of years.
So your statement is only true for about a decade of television, which has mostly been a response to the push towards 16:9 widescreen televisions.
I'm not saying this as a point against widescreen television. If all new shows are 16:9, you should get a TV to see new content as intended, and it's a decent compromise between the television standard up until now, and the cinema standard of the past 50 years. But for the majority of existing content, it is not the original aspect ratio, including cinema. It's just closer than it was.
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I'm a dinosaur.
Same here. My CRT TV still works, and I have no plans on buying a new one.
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I just realized that I haven't opened my TV in two months or so.
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If a 16:9 show is on a 4:3 screen and letterboxed then they still see the entire image. If a 16:9 show is cropped to 4:3 to appease the dinosaurs then the 16:9 screen is missing a good chunk of the image on both sides.
Old TV shows, like Seinfeld, are 4:3 and there's nothing we can do but stretch it to fit or live with the pillar boxes. But when I watch a movie from 2008 (ie. The Forbidden Kingdom) on Showcase HD (last night) and it's shown 4:3 then that's just a punch in the face.
But it's the live sports that really bug me cuz instead of pushing the info boxes out to the corners they're basically in the middle of the screen. Network logos are the worst, though, especially the ones that have little 'popup' info messages that move even further up into the middle of the screen for 30 seconds saying "all new Family Guy on blah blah blah".
I tried to Google "16:9 market penetration" to try and find out what % of people have these TV's but I couldn't find anything but the numbers can only go up since nobody sells 4:3 anymore and the same goes for PC monitors, they are mostly widescreen now anyway, and with more and more people viewing on their PC it only makes sense to get rid of 4:3 content and do it right.
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I dislike HD channels airing SD content. Oh well.
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If a 16:9 show is on a 4:3 screen and letterboxed then they still see the entire image. If a 16:9 show is cropped to 4:3 to appease the dinosaurs then the 16:9 screen is missing a good chunk of the image on both sides.
Old TV shows, like Seinfeld, are 4:3 and there's nothing we can do but stretch it to fit or live with the pillar boxes. But when I watch a movie from 2008 (ie. The Forbidden Kingdom) on Showcase HD (last night) and it's shown 4:3 then that's just a punch in the face.
But it's the live sports that really bug me cuz instead of pushing the info boxes out to the corners they're basically in the middle of the screen. Network logos are the worst, though, especially the ones that have little 'popup' info messages that move even further up into the middle of the screen for 30 seconds saying "all new Family Guy on blah blah blah".
I tried to Google "16:9 market penetration" to try and find out what % of people have these TV's but I couldn't find anything but the numbers can only go up since nobody sells 4:3 anymore and the same goes for PC monitors, they are mostly widescreen now anyway, and with more and more people viewing on their PC it only makes sense to get rid of 4:3 content and do it right.
Actually, Seinfeld is now shown in widescreen because they decided to bastardize it and crop it to widescreen, so now 4:3 shows are suffering because of widescreen (although as far as I'm aware, not a lot of shows have warranted the effort). Even though widescreen has been the standard for years now, remember that a lot of people aren't going to buy a new TV just for the sake of technology. A lot of people are only going to buy a new set once their current one dies, and TVs can last a decade easily.
And it's hard to take you seriously at all when you insist on using ridiculous terms as "appease the dinosaurs". I don't know what the market penetration is, but obviously there are still well enough 4:3 sets to force you to have your sports scores slightly closer to the middle. Poor thing. I feel for your suffering....... :\
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Well like, i don't see what's the big deal. i mean i still have an old tv, but i don't even watch tv anymore anyways. on the subject of seinfeld, though, it looks horrible all smooth and zoomed in looking while the top and bottom of the film is cropped off to fit in a 16:9. lcd tvs look nice and all but i don't see how it makes it any better in terms of sitting down as a family and enjoying a show in front of your old 51 or 68cm screen like the good old days. where has the simple enjoyment gone? i don't need a big as fuck tv to watch many shows all zoomed/stretched to widescreen format. it's all a crock of shit because the picture quality is reduced in favor of screen size. i've seen many many bad looking plasma and lcds and shit.
yeah.
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but I couldn't find anything but the numbers can only go up since nobody sells 4:3 anymore and the same goes for PC monitors, they are mostly widescreen now anyway, and with more and more people viewing on their PC it only makes sense to get rid of 4:3 content and do it right.
I absolutely HATE widescreen computer monitors with a passion.
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^ lolwut
You'd have to pay me to go back to using a 4:3 monitor.
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I don't know what any of this means. This is about TV, right? I don't even watch that shit much anymore. I couldn't tell you which number thingy applies to my TV, but I'm going to assume I'm a dinosaur....because my TV has a built-in VCR. :lol
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Nothing drives me more insane than having the black bars run vertically on both sides of the screen. Actually, I take that back... espn runs their logos up both sides of the screen
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I don't know what any of this means. This is about TV, right? I don't even watch that shit much anymore. I couldn't tell you which number thingy applies to my TV, but I'm going to assume I'm a dinosaur....because my TV has a built-in VCR. :lol
I listen to Blackwater Park on a gramophone :metal
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About a third of my desk is taken up by a 4:3 CRT tv. The remaining two thirds are taken up by a desktop computer and empty soda cans. My monitor is also 4:3. Feels good.
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There is a third option for conforming HD or "widescreen" material into a 4:3 box. You can use anamorphic aspect to make the picture look a bit squished when in 4:3 and then it stretches out when it's able to be played on a 16:9 monitor. This way the 16:9 is native and the 4:3 image is the one that is affected by the downconvert.
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There is a third option for conforming HD or "widescreen" material into a 4:3 box. You can use anamorphic aspect to make the picture look a bit squished when in 4:3 and then it stretches out when it's able to be played on a 16:9 monitor. This way the 16:9 is native and the 4:3 image is the one that is affected by the downconvert.
This.
Quit whining people. Some people choose to pay their rent and keep themselves clothed and fed over getting a shiny new toy. Older people don't want to be bothered with new things out of fear they won't understand them. And yet other people have different priorities in life than you. I have 2 HDTV's but I know plenty of "dinosaurs" who don't want to updgrade.
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but I couldn't find anything but the numbers can only go up since nobody sells 4:3 anymore and the same goes for PC monitors, they are mostly widescreen now anyway, and with more and more people viewing on their PC it only makes sense to get rid of 4:3 content and do it right.
I absolutely HATE widescreen computer monitors with a passion.
May I ask why?
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Because you can see everything that 4:3 can see on 16:9, but not the other way around.
/common sense
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But why even care about the other way around? If you have a 16:9 monitor, you can watch movies in widescreen and they look awesome, you get more columns in Excel and more screen real estate in general in any app, and if the content is 4:3, so what? Does it really bother you that much that people who have 4:3 screens can't watch 16:9 content? What difference does it make?
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Seeing more in programs like excel are one of my favorite things about widescreen monitors.
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Seeing more in a program generally has more to do with resolution than aspect ratio.
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And widescreen monitors generally offer a higher maximum resolution than 4:3.
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And widescreen monitors generally offer a higher maximum resolution than 4:3.
It depends. Upwards of 23" when you've got full HD, yes, you're gaining a lot of width and a bit of height. But anything below 23"/1080, such as laptops which I know a lot of people use, and you're most likely losing height.
The laptop in my house is 1280x720, which is losing height. Smaller desktop monitors are mostly resolutions like 1366x768, which is gaining a bit of width and losing more in height.
It doesn't cost much these days to get a full HD widescreen monitor, but there are still a lot of monitors around that are losing height compared to my decade old 17" CRT.
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Working on editing/mixing on 4:3 monitors is a nightmare to working on 16:9 monitors. 16:9 feels a lot nicer. Plus its much more suitable to watching movies.
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Thanks for the discussion everyone!
I've also noticed a lot of old 4:3 shows being artificially zoomed to fill the screen thereby cutting off the top/bottom of the picture which is beyond lame.
But, yeah, 4:3 isn't dead yet and I have to learn to live with it, but I really have to draw the line at specialty HD channels (ie. Movietime) showing 4:3 SD movies (ie Blade last night). I've tried contacting them as to why they do this and haven't heard back yet.
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Never have I seen a 16:9 monitor that is high enough. Width is not the only thing one looks for in a monitor.
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Height isn't one of the only things people look for either lol. Resolution is what is important. It does't matter what your aspect is if your resolution is shit. You can't argue that a 640x480 resolution is better than a 1920x1080 monitor.
One of the reasons that a company may show a movie in 4x3 might be because no one took the master and redid it in HD at 16x9 or some other widescreen format yet. It's possible that its just not cost effective enough for the film to be remastered at a different resolution. It's also up to the broadcasters a lot of the time. They are ultimately the ones who choose what they want to screen. I have no idea why they decide to show 4:3 stuff if they have the choice not to, but whatever.
Also, I don't mind watching 4:3 stuff if it was originally shot 4:3. I'm always a supporter in watching stuff in its native aspect ratio. What I hate is pan and scanning of widesreen movies that chop off the sides according to what is most important in each frame. That shit drives me nuts. I would much rather see it letterboxed and lose some resolution than lose information.
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Um, are there any basic guides to resolution and how one can be better than another?
Whenever I see a screen, all I see is a screen with some images displayed on it.
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Well basically, the higher the numbers, the more pixels there are, meaning the bigger the resolution is. It's just the native size of an image. An image shot at standard HD is 1920x1080 pixels. A 4k image is a little more than double that at 4096 × 2304 pixels. The 4k image is bigger and will have more detail than the HD one.
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Also, I don't mind watching 4:3 stuff if it was originally shot 4:3. I'm always a supporter in watching stuff in its native aspect ratio.
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Also, I don't mind watching 4:3 stuff if it was originally shot 4:3. I'm always a supporter in watching stuff in its native aspect ratio.
This. I fucking hate 4:3 shows stretched to fit a 16:9 screen. It drives me nuts when my mom watches shows: "I don't like the black bars on the side."
:facepalm:
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I've never understood the problem people have with "black bars". They're areas of your screen that aren't being used because the shape of the picture isn't the same as the shape of your screen. A widescreen picture on a 4:3 screen will have unused areas at the top and bottom ("letterboxing") because the picture is wide. An SD picture on an HD TV will have unused areas at the sides because the picture isn't widescreen and the TV is. Are people really that dumb, or would they rather have the picture stretched or cropped just so the whole screen is used, regardless of what the original picture is supposed to be?
Here is an excellent essay on the history of aspect ratios, and what it means to viewers today:
Why Don't the Black Bars Go Away? (https://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/764)
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sadly the link doesnt wanna work
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The High Def Digest website is being wonky right now. I tested the link this morning when I posted it, and it worked, but I can't get to it now, nor the HDD forums. I recommend trying it again in a while, because it's a good read.
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I've never understood the problem people have with "black bars".
I found it very distracting when I first encountered letterboxing. I quickly got used to it, though. Particularly once tv shows started broadcasting in widescreen.
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but I couldn't find anything but the numbers can only go up since nobody sells 4:3 anymore and the same goes for PC monitors, they are mostly widescreen now anyway, and with more and more people viewing on their PC it only makes sense to get rid of 4:3 content and do it right.
I absolutely HATE widescreen computer monitors with a passion.
They are a godsend for programmers. Seriously, I can honestly not think of any other computer improvement that had such an impact on programming as widescreen monitors. My company is even intending to equip every programmer with 2 widescreen monitors, side by side.
rumborak
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Remember this argument https://www.dreamtheaterforums.org/boards/index.php?topic=19817.0 ? :lol
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but I couldn't find anything but the numbers can only go up since nobody sells 4:3 anymore and the same goes for PC monitors, they are mostly widescreen now anyway, and with more and more people viewing on their PC it only makes sense to get rid of 4:3 content and do it right.
I absolutely HATE widescreen computer monitors with a passion.
They are a godsend for programmers. Seriously, I can honestly not think of any other computer improvement that had such an impact on programming as widescreen monitors. My company is even intending to equip every programmer with 2 widescreen monitors, side by side.
rumborak
I use two widescreen monitors at work and I felt so naked with one when I temporarily only had one. Its so useful to have the space to work on multiple applications.
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Dual monitors is so awesome. It makes doing any kind of work better.
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Because they're dinosaurs, and you don't mess with those fuckers. Ever seen Jurassic Park? Not even Sam Jackson could survive that shit.
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Dual monitors is so awesome. It makes doing any kind of work better.
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"People often ask my why computer has 6 monitors. There is a very good reason for this: my desk isn't large enough to fit 8 monitors." - Terry Pratchett