Several CED titles were issued in letterbox format (" Amarcord", "The Long Goodbye", "Manhattan", "Monty Python and the Holy Grail"Īnd RCA's "King of Hearts"). Prior to this everything was presented in Pan and Scan mode whereby the wide version of the film was intelligently cropped to where the action was - but still eliminating 30% or more of the picture. As a result, letterboxing was developed to mat the picture with black bars on the top and bottom, enabling the wide center area to show the aspect ratio of the original theatrical presentation.
Some intelligent producers actually thought that some people would perhaps enjoy actually seeing the whole film. When VHS came to market, people, for the first time, could watch theatrical movies in their homes. Remember VHS & Laserdisc? It Kind of Started this Whole Craze. This still results in a loss of at least 30% of the original image. Though better than merely cropping the image, Horizontally across the widescreen film to keep the action in the Movies encoded into 4:3 ratio by intelligently panning and scanning The DVD player then expands the image appropriately (if set correctly) Such that it utilizes all available resolution in the encoding process. This is the typical standard for encoding widescreen content on a DVD Also refers to the old practice of encodingīlack bars along with the image on VHS tapes and early DVDs as a poor
Usually referring to playing widescreen format pictures on standardĭefinition television. The presence of black bars at the top and bottom of the picture. Standard aspect ratio for standard definition television (NTSC/PAL) and Digital Television (DTV). Standard aspect ratio for high definition television Later, DVD came along followed by high definition widescreen televisions, and life got confusing (but better.) In order to understand all of these differing formats you'll need to understand something about each and the purposes for which they were designed.Īspect ratio: the ratio between the width and height of an image.
16 9 letterbox full#
These videos presented the full picture as you saw it in the theater, but did so on our 4:3 (non-widescreen) televisions. Someone introduced us to widescreen videos on VHS. Why are There Black Bars on My TV? Understanding Aspect RatiosĪ Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Not So Far Away…