Monday, April 19, 2010
What do you mean you don't notice a difference?
A small pet peeve of mine, not that I lose sleep over it or anything, is incorrect aspect ratio on a widescreen television.
I don't blame someone for buying a brand new widescreen HDTV and wondering why only a handful of channels seem to fill the entire rectangular shape the tv came in, while the rest have these black bars at the sides of the screen looking like part of the image was lost in the transmission. Is something broken? Is my dish all screwed up?
But people who "correct" the problem by picking up the accompanying remote control and press the zoom button, thereby stretching the image so that the vertical black bars are no longer visible, and then declare it looks "much better", well, I draw the line there.
I can spot a stretched image a mile away. Some HDTV channels are still guilty of this: they would broadcast a program on a channel labelled as HD, but it isn't true high definition. They would simply take a standard signal and broadcast it to fit the new widescreen television by stretching the image, thus increasing the weight of any TV character by about 50 pounds. The colour would also appear fuzzy. The image as a whole would just appear, well, distorted. There was no improved resolution in any way, shape or form.
But so many people don't even notice this and furthermore, find the black bars a huge nuisance. They think that the picture is all screwed up being shown in its proper aspect ratio. Don't they realize the old TV was shaped like a square? Don't they know a standard definition signal....
Ah forget it!
# posted by SBP : 11:19 PM
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AGREED. The difference created by using the incorrect aspect ratio is very rarely slight.
Obviously, a lot of today's television and film is presented in the widescreen (16:9) format. However, some TV shows (usually older/rerun) and movies (those shot in the "classic" Hollywood period, prior to the early Fifties) are shot in 4:3 and cannot be converted without distortion. Same goes for those modern films shot in 2.35:1. They will always be letterboxed, even on widescreen displays (I think).
So what if your image is pillarboxed (black bars to the left and right of the image)? Most people aren't watching these 4:3 shots on small widescreen sets. It's not like you're peering at a 13-inch. Some broadcasters will add graphics to the sides of the screen, instead of leaving them black, when airing 4:3 programs. This might actually be more distracting than those "pesky" black bars.
(Sorry for the long comment. This is a pet peeve of mine, too!)
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Obviously, a lot of today's television and film is presented in the widescreen (16:9) format. However, some TV shows (usually older/rerun) and movies (those shot in the "classic" Hollywood period, prior to the early Fifties) are shot in 4:3 and cannot be converted without distortion. Same goes for those modern films shot in 2.35:1. They will always be letterboxed, even on widescreen displays (I think).
So what if your image is pillarboxed (black bars to the left and right of the image)? Most people aren't watching these 4:3 shots on small widescreen sets. It's not like you're peering at a 13-inch. Some broadcasters will add graphics to the sides of the screen, instead of leaving them black, when airing 4:3 programs. This might actually be more distracting than those "pesky" black bars.
(Sorry for the long comment. This is a pet peeve of mine, too!)
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