Amigabill Projects

What's the deal with widescreen?

After having my widescreen TV for a few months now, I don't get why they chose to go widescreen with the displays. I still get the black bars at the top and bottom of most widescreen DVDs, and that annoys me. So does watching a square 4:3 TV show or "fullscreen" DVD which puts the black bars on the sides. I was really hoping to completely get away from the black bars, as I'd like to get a nice projector someday with black screen framing, but this black bar stuff means nothing will ever line up with any screen frame set to the size of the display capabilities, or else live with fat-stretched people on TV and tall/skinny-stretched people in letterbox movies and probably still chop off the ends of the picture, so why bother with it all?

Why didn't the TV makers go with something that matches the letterbox widescreen media "content"? If the widescreen DVDs are coming out at 2.35:1 aspect, why the heck did they make "widescreen" TVs only at 16:9 or 1.78:1 aspect? And why are some computer monitors another different standard at 1.6:1 aspect?

Will we see another version of "fullscreen" pan&scan made to exactly fit 16:9 displays? Will we ever see a 2538:1080 pixel display to put a letterboxHD DVD onto? Why did the entertainment industry put us into this situation?

Labels: hdtv, letterbox, widescreen

posted by Bill Toner @ 1:56 PM