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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John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> 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.

  Well, technically speaking I didn't claim that energy consumption is not
a problem with LCDs... :P

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> 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... :)

Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have 
that "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It 
makes it so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges 
is horribly distorted.

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Warp wrote:

>   Disadvantages of LCD:

> - Relatively poor contrast (but it's fastly getting there).

And brightness. (Although this tends to be more of a problem with small, 
portable displays. And since it's impossible to make a small, portable 
CRT display *at all*, I guess we can live with that.)

> - Often has limited color depth, requiring software dithering, which
>   reduces image quality.

My PC monitor has this. It's surprisingly annoying.

> - Dead pixels, which may be more annoying than the CRT distortions.

This seems to be very, very rare. I've only seen it on one or two LCD 
displays. [Including the one I'm using right now, BTW.] Well over 99% of 
the LCDs I've seen have no dead pixels at all.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have
> that "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It
> makes it so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges
> is horribly distorted.

Oh yeah, I know the one you mean. Ghastly. Worse than regular stretching, IMO!

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Bill Pragnell wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have
>> that "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It
>> makes it so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges
>> is horribly distorted.
> 
> Oh yeah, I know the one you mean. Ghastly. Worse than regular stretching, IMO!

Damn straight!

I guess they figure all the "interesting" stuff will always be in the 
center of the image or something.

Still, no matter what you do, there is no way the problem can ever be 
solved without distortion or black bars. It's just mathematically 
impossible. Which is why I find it so puzzling that manufacturers have 
artificially created this problem in the first place...

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49f194db$1@news.povray.org...

> Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have that 
> "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It makes it 
> so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges is horribly 
> distorted.

You're sure of that? I just bought a LCD (a 600? LG model, nothing fancy), 
and the remote has a neat "Ratio" button that lets me browse through a bunch 
of different formats so that I can pick the best one depending on the input 
(Internet, DVD, satellite etc.) and there's no distortion except when I 
choose 16:9 for a 4:3 input.

G.

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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] agroparistechfr> wrote:

> 49f194db$1@news.povray.org...
>
> > Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have that
> > "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It makes it
> > so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges is horribly
> > distorted.
>
> You're sure of that? I just bought a LCD (a 600? LG model, nothing fancy),
> and the remote has a neat "Ratio" button that lets me browse through a bunch
> of different formats so that I can pick the best one depending on the input
> (Internet, DVD, satellite etc.) and there's no distortion except when I
> choose 16:9 for a 4:3 input.

Can't speak for The Invisible One, but I've only ever seen that non-uniform
distortion on widescreen CRTs.

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>>> Most TVs I see either have the whole picture distorted, or they have that
>>> "magic mode" that's supposed to fix the picture, but doesn't. It makes it
>>> so that stuff in the center looks OK, but stuff near the edges is horribly
>>> distorted.
>> You're sure of that? I just bought a LCD (a 600? LG model, nothing fancy),
>> and the remote has a neat "Ratio" button that lets me browse through a bunch
>> of different formats so that I can pick the best one depending on the input
>> (Internet, DVD, satellite etc.) and there's no distortion except when I
>> choose 16:9 for a 4:3 input.
> 
> Can't speak for The Invisible One, but I've only ever seen that non-uniform
> distortion on widescreen CRTs.

Lots of LCD TVs seem to have a "magnify" mode that stretches the sides 
so that the middle can be unstretched. It looks slightly less bad than 
unifirm stretching, but still no match for having a signal who's aspect 
ratio actually matches the screen.

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