[opendtv] Re: Popular screen aspect ratios

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Mon, 20 Dec 2010 08:47:33 -0500

At 5:32 PM -0600 12/19/10, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:

Craig Birkmaier wrote:


 Around and around. Because it does.


 To you.
No, Craig. It's just that you refuse to listen or to observe, if what everyone around you is saying doesn't agree with some political position you seem compelled to hold. You would not see virtually every wide screen TV habitually distorting images if people didn't care about black bars. Get over it. 

The vast majority of stuff I see on public display on widescreen TVs is...

Widescreen video, mostly 16:9.

There are two reasons for this.
1. Most public displays are in restaurants, and sports bars. And most sport content is now widescreen.
2. Must stores selling TVs have continuous widescreen program loops running on these displays.
3. Many of the newer HD channels, especially news networks, use sophisticated stretching algorithms to fill the wide screen when playing 4:3 content; usually the same source stretched out and blurred to fill the pillar boxes.
Still, there are times I get 4:3 programming, even on HD channels. When this happens I watch the original source, not a distorted version. And letter boxed movies do not bother me at all. 




 As for the TV problem, it is a reality that the world is dealing with.
Yes, Craig. The reality is that 16:9 is becoming the norm for both TV and PC monitors, if maybe not for small hand-held devices. Also something you seem compelled not to accept.
Widescreen has been the norm for most of the past decade. 16:9 is the most popular widescreen format for displays, but not the only format. Widescreen content creation has taken longer, especially for many local TV stations, but is happening rapidly now that HD production gear is no more expensive than SD gear.
Some transitions take longer than others. CBS still requires that HD sports feeds be submitted on tape, even though most of this stuff is recorded to SSD today.
The point you continue to miss is, the actual purpose of the vast majority of those historical formats, leaving aside the ultra wide two, was engineering, not art. It was a way of using the biggest possible film area for the image. The ratios themselves were not much different, or any different, from the common ones of today. VistaVision being the perfect example. 

Rubbish.

It has all been about differentiating the viewing experience .
1.85:1 is 1.85:1, no matter how you get there. But using VistaVision, you get less grain. Similarly, 2.21:1 is hard to tell apart from 2.35:1. But with 70mm, you got to use a much bigger negative, which is especially important in the old, large theaters. And the 70mm 2.21:1 didn't need anamorphic squeeze. 

Simply mechanics. Easy to do when you can use different film stocks and masks.
So your broad brush "Hollywood still uses a large number of formats" is just not true. Get down to specifics, Craig. Hollywood uses 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 these days, for regular theaters. 

And many others... These are creative decisions .




 You never did buy into the notion that there should be as much freedom
 with video as there is for every other form or imaging.
I never bought into the notion that this should translate to "no monitor standards (or guidelines) for TV." There's a huge difference.
The marketplace (for hardware) will typically gravitate to a few things to take advantage of economies of scale. Fortunately, thanks to the move to digital acquisition, processing, emission and display techniques, it is not quite easy to have complete freedom with respect to the content that is created. This is OBVIOUS when one looks at the LACK OF FORMATS used on the web; they are just numbers; all variable. 

Regards
Craig


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