Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> But my question would have to be... what the hell is so great about
> >> "widescreen" anyway?? Why is it that today everything must be
> >> widescreen? (Except for 99% of all the video you might want to
> >> watch...) Even my friggin' *laptop* is widescreen. WTF?
> >
> > Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the
> > movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.
>
> Really? I hadn't noticed that one.

I'll let you off if you claim you only ever watched movies on TV, where they've
been cropped for decades (until fairly recently) ;-)

> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?

The view around you is rarely interesting when looking up and down, but much
more so on the horizontal, especially with a wide field of view. Also, when
people are conversing, moving, fighting etc, they're separated on the
horizontal, not the vertical, so a wide screen lets you show more of the scene
at once... It really all comes down to the fact that we've evolved to live on a
flat 2d surface, our eyes are placed to pan on the horizontal, etc etc.

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On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 22:10:02 +0100, Orchid XP v8 wrote:

>>> But my question would have to be... what the hell is so great about
>>> "widescreen" anyway?? Why is it that today everything must be
>>> widescreen? (Except for 99% of all the video you might want to
>>> watch...) Even my friggin' *laptop* is widescreen. WTF?
>>>
>>>
>> Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the
>> movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.
> 
> Really? I hadn't noticed that one.

It was my understanding that most TVs in the UK these days are widescreen 
anyways; if that's the case, it's not surprising you wouldn't notice the 
difference. :-)

> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?

http://www.widescreen.org/aspect_ratios.shtml seems to have some relevant 
information.

Jim

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Warp wrote:

>   Disadvantages of CRT:
> 
> - Energy consumption and heat production.

I work in a local store, and when walking past the large screen 
televisions, which are all LCD or plasma displays, I can feel the heat 
rolling off of these things.  Even the smaller ones suck down a great 
deal of power.

Regards,
John

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:

>   A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
> the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
> I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.
>

And me.  But I gave up on trying to point this out to friends. They seem
blissfully happy. I've even seen some folks watching widescreen movies that are
'extra'-stretched. I don't even know how that's possible, but they figured out a
way...

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On Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:56:31 -0400, Kenneth wrote:

> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> 
>>   A stretched image bothers me a lot. I just *can't* watch anything if
>> the image is stretched. It just looks wrong and annoying. It seems that
>> I'm the only person in the world with this problem, though.
>>
>>
> And me.  But I gave up on trying to point this out to friends. They seem
> blissfully happy. I've even seen some folks watching widescreen movies
> that are 'extra'-stretched. I don't even know how that's possible, but
> they figured out a way...

You take a film shot in 16:9 and project it on a 16:9 screen using a 
setup for cinemascope - that'd do it.  Black bars at the top and bottom 
and a compressed image in the middle. :-)

I managed that one by mistake once in our home theater.

Jim

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>>> Movies. Movies have been widescreen forever. People want to watch the
>>> movie "unaltered" at home. That's why.
>> Really? I hadn't noticed that one.
> 
> It was my understanding that most TVs in the UK these days are widescreen 
> anyways; if that's the case, it's not surprising you wouldn't notice the 
> difference. :-)

Most *new* TVs are widescreen. (Indeed, it is apparently impossible to 
buy one that isn't.) Which is most perplexing, because there are no TV 
signals broadcast in widescreen, so owning a widescreen TV instantly 
means that everything you watch must either be distorted or have black 
bars down the sides. Um... and this is a "good" thing because...??

>> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?
> 
> http://www.widescreen.org/aspect_ratios.shtml seems to have some relevant 
> information.

Only really says what aspect ratios were used and how it was done - not 
why these ratios existed in the first place.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> > It was my understanding that most TVs in the UK these days are widescreen
> > anyways; if that's the case, it's not surprising you wouldn't notice the
> > difference. :-)
>
> Most *new* TVs are widescreen. (Indeed, it is apparently impossible to
> buy one that isn't.) Which is most perplexing, because there are no TV
> signals broadcast in widescreen,

Um... most channels in the UK broadcast in widescreen, and have done for several
years. Most new shows are now recorded in widescreen too, even the BBC news.

Even prior to this, a widescreen TV could format a letterboxed movie without
distortion to fit the screen.

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>> Most *new* TVs are widescreen. (Indeed, it is apparently impossible to
>> buy one that isn't.) Which is most perplexing, because there are no TV
>> signals broadcast in widescreen,
> 
> Um... most channels in the UK broadcast in widescreen, and have done for several
> years. Most new shows are now recorded in widescreen too, even the BBC news.

Interesting. Everything I see on TV is still in 4:3 aspect.

> Even prior to this, a widescreen TV could format a letterboxed movie without
> distortion to fit the screen.

Sure, but nobody does this except for films. Normal TV programs are 
still in 4:3 aspect.



Now that my mum has a widescreen TV, this means that I can either have 
people with elliptical heads, huge black bars, or cut off half the 
picture. I opted for cutting off half the picture. (Which means that if 
they show something that *is* widescreen letterboxed, it comes out 
right. Except that, apparently, even "widescreen" films aren't actually 
16:9 aspect, so you still get letterboxing...)

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> >> Most *new* TVs are widescreen. (Indeed, it is apparently impossible to
> >> buy one that isn't.) Which is most perplexing, because there are no TV
> >> signals broadcast in widescreen,
> >
> > Um... most channels in the UK broadcast in widescreen, and have done for several
> > years. Most new shows are now recorded in widescreen too, even the BBC news.
>
> Interesting. Everything I see on TV is still in 4:3 aspect.

I don't know if the analogue signal supports widescreen, you might need to use a
digital receiver. Obviously, anything recorded before 2005/6 (whenever!) will be
4:3, and will be either stretched (urgh; I'm with Warp) or side-barred
(preferable) by a widescreen tv.

> Now that my mum has a widescreen TV, this means that I can either have
> people with elliptical heads, huge black bars, or cut off half the
> picture. I opted for cutting off half the picture. (Which means that if
> they show something that *is* widescreen letterboxed, it comes out
> right. Except that, apparently, even "widescreen" films aren't actually
> 16:9 aspect, so you still get letterboxing...)

Well, there's a range of movie aspect ratios, the "shortest" of which matches up
to the standard tv ratio (is that 16:9?). The wider format will indeed be
letterboxed even on a widescreen tv, although to a much lesser degree. You may
also have a 'zoom' setting (again, for movies), which will fill the screen
vertically and cut off a very small area of picture at the sides.

I must admit, the ability of widescreen TVs to automatically format the picture
is very variable. My current TV seems quite happy to side-bar, letterbox etc
depending on the signal, and only very occasionally seems to get confused, but
older CRT widescreens often were incapable of getting the ratio right without
manual intervention... :)

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Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Is there a reason why movies are filmed this way?

  Artistic image composition is easier on a widescreen image than on a
narrow image.

  Nature is very horizontal. This is fundamentally due to gravity: Everything
tends to level up on a horizontal plane due to gravity. Landscapes are vast
horizontal fields, and the vast majority of elements are located on this
surface. On the big scale everything is very flat, level and horizontal.

  The same goes for typical artificial constructs such as living quarters:
Rooms tend to be more spacious horizontally than vertically. Again, this
is due to gravity: People need to move horizontally, which means that people
need a lot more space horizontally than vertically.

  It's no wonder that a widescreen image is much more suitable for image
composition than a narrow image. In any typical scene you can fit a lot
more content in a widescreen image than on a narrow one. For example two
people standing on the ground are usually going to be separated horizontally
from each other, not vertically. Even a great separation can be captured
more easily on a widescreen image.

  The narrower the image is, the more "empty space" there will going to
be. For example, if you film a vast landscape using a very narrow aspect
ratio, a really big portion of the image will be empty sky which does not
bring anything to the image. A widescreen image, however, allows showing
more detail of the lanscape with less useless empty space.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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