Is white letterboxing smarter than black letterboxing today!

[tripletopper]

I always thought "black letterboxing" was chosen because most TVs during the day when VHS/Laser Disc/Selectavision first introduced Letterboxing, the thought was that Black is the most passive cobtent for your tv to produce. In other words. Cathode Ray Tube TV shoot zero electrons during the microseconds it's scanning black.

Most modern tv displays seem to be the inverse, shooting a passive white light and using one active technique or another to block cyan, yellow, and magenta light to compose the colors.

If all this is true, then to save on th-nnbe pigment causing elements, shouldn't the lettboxing be white, not black?

But maybe the pigment elements are only consumed/worn when a pixel is changing colors. If that's the case, then a letterbox has to be just any one constant color. In which case, black is still the best color. Because some people go out if their way for CRTs, and if the only thing that matters is stasis, and not necessarily the color itself, then that explains the current usage if black letterboxing.

However, that does not explain newscasts, which uses "blur-o-vision" to make a 9*16 portrait cell phone video mode fill the whole screen and give you funny blurry animatiom which distracts from the main action. I saw it a long time ago when Indians games used it to hide letterboxing of 4x3 replays of old footage within 16x9 broadcasts.

If the primary purpose is to act as a "tv saver" the fuzz border fails. The only ligical expoanation is American's fear of " a smaller image". Outside of the film devotee and the classic gamer who know better, most think smaller is worse. I don't know how this mentality has ruined film tv, and video gaming for so long, but it did.

[JFizDaWiz]

I'd hate to watch a film with dark scenes and white bars, would really ruin the shot. Black is just the perfect neutral colour, it blends into dark scenes and doesn't worsen bright scenes (when watching in a dark room)

And since it has to be part of the image black is here to stay forever. My old Panasonic TH-42PX60U allowed for grey letterboxing but that only worked on 4x3 material and it didn't look that good.

[RFK]

White bars would never work. The idea is having the image stand out in a darkened room, not add white strips to it.

[tripletopper]

I'm just against this "fuzzy Vision" on the sides of picture.

I thought the tradition of black letterboxing started because you had CRT TVs prominent when it started and when CRT TVs do black, they turn off their electron gun or don't shoot any electrons off.

So the theory is that black letter boxing saves TVs by not turning on the electron gun.

I saw gray letterboxing on 4x3 TVs and that's supposed to a "screen saver". But is it really?

I know that most technologies today start with white light and filter down to colors and black.

How do the pigment elements get consumed to force you to buy a new TV are they consumed on a continuous basis where in order to maintain black you have to continuously use resources to maintain a black. If the answer is no then black litter boxing is still good because the only thing that gets consumed is the change of color not the initial presentation of a non-white color.

As I said I talked myself back into black litter boxing because it still works on CRT TVs and the important thing on modern TVs is that it doesn't move or animate or otherwise change colors in the middle of the frame.

I hate the special fuzz-o-vision they always put on news footage taken from phones and retro footage on modern 16x9 shows.

What's the purpose of this fuzz-o-vision? Why do news companies and other TV presentation companies do that on a regular basis?

And why do when they remaster a 4x3 film for 16x9 do they cut out portions instead of sideways letter box?

Why couldn't the ColecoVision when presenting Donkey Kong present a sideways letterbox as opposed to subtracting a ramp from Donkey Kong? (Actually, I have a good answer for that: limited number of pixels, and the complexities of programming side bars that are not part of the game field takes up way more memory than it's worth back then when the typical Colecovision game was 16-32 kB.

[superpacman]

Originally Posted by tripletopper

How do the pigment elements get consumed to force you to buy a new TV are they consumed on a continuous basis where in order to maintain black you have to continuously use resources to maintain a black. If the answer is no then black litter boxing is still good because the only thing that gets consumed is the change of color not the initial presentation of a non-white color.

This doesn't happen in an OLED tv. OLED TV's doesn't try to simulate black, so no resources are being used. Nothing is turn 'on' if the pixel is black.

[tripletopper]

So you're saying OLED's default state is black, sort of like a CRT.

Am I right that Plasma uses gas to pigment the white light?

Am I right that LCD get "consumed" at color changes, not any particular color, so black and white would be equally acceptable choices?(in terms of tv consumption, not necessarily human aesthetics)

What about LED? Is that consumed with a presense of a light/pigment or is it based on color change?

Also isn't "fuzz-o-vision" letterboxing stupid? It's the worst of all worlds. It's distracting. It consumes all kinds of TV with it's motion and changing colors/non vlack / non white on CRT/OLED. It looks ugly. "Fuzz-o-vision" is the third worst way to compensate for different ratios, third only to zooming, and distorting x:y ratios.

[Doomhunter]

I usually just cover up the side bars by holding up two small dogs

[Deciazulado]

On LCDs the "white bars" would let more light pass out making it run cooler?

On OLEDs black saves energy.

But the main issue might be the brightness of a surround influences how you perceive what's inside the surround. Supposedly most transfer houses (should) have dim lighting and surrounds (I've seen specs of <10 nits, and <5 nits for HDR) and use equivalent of gamma 2.4. In homes you might have lights on and light painted walls, so γ2.2 etc might work better if you don't turn off the lights. (Computer monitors use sRGB which is really more like a γ of 2.0 on the shadows). So white bars might need the program to be done and seen in γ1.8 or lower, like Apple γore

This site has and viewing modes to make that easier. (Forum has also a couple more backgrounds styles, one neutral light gray too)

Black on an image bars doesn't add anything to or influence the image.

[LokiMok]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

This site has and viewing modes to make that easier. (Forum has also a couple more backgrounds styles, one neutral light gray too)

I've been here since 2016 & never noticed that. Thanks for pointing it out!

[VictoryAtNight]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

On LCDs the "white bars" would let more light pass out making it run cooler?

On OLEDs black saves energy.

But the main issue might be the brightness of a surround influences how you perceive what's inside the surround. Supposedly most transfer houses (should) have dim lighting and surrounds (I've seen specs of <10 nits, and <5 nits for HDR) and use equivalent of gamma 2.4. In homes you might have lights on and light painted walls, so γ2.2 etc might work better if you don't turn off the lights. (Computer monitors use sRGB which is really more like a γ of 2.0 on the shadows). So white bars might need the program to be done and seen in γ1.8 or lower, like Apple γore

This site has and viewing modes to make that easier. (Forum has also a couple more backgrounds styles, one neutral light gray too)

Black on an image bars doesn't add anything to or influence the image.

[Canada]

I've noticed the sun and the moon on this website before I never knew what it did.

[drb999]

No, white would stand out way too much and would be very distracting.

[mikesncc1701]

Every time I think of white letterboxing, I always remember this video.

JAY-Z - Big Pimpin' ft. UGK - YouTube

[Hydra Spectre]

I prefer blue windowboxing.
Just add a big blue border over the entire film and have an Ohioan Tom Holland lookalike virgin who owns Sonic Jam on the SEGA Saturn and Sonic 2 with a line talk about stupid Nintendo games.

All joking aside, that would be awful for OLED screens. Full black turns off that pixel, which saves energy and the lifespan of said pixel. And there's also the fact that fullbright white letterboxing would eat away some of the brightness of other pixels.
Lastly, it would be really jarring to have full brightness on the top and bottom, when a scene is supposed to be otherwise really dark.

[tripletopper]

Can everyone agree that "fuzz-o-vision", used on news and traditional tv stations is an awful trend.

It contains animated pixels that double and mirror the main 9x16 picture used in vertically oriented cell phone videos.

It ruins CRTs and OLEDs by being non black. It ruins plasmas by not being white, ruins LCDs and LEDs by constantly being animated, and ruins us all, regardless of display technology, humanly by distracting us from the main picture in the center.

Can we all always agree that "fuzzovision" is awful?

[RFK]

I really don't understand what you mean by fuzzovission. Have you had your eyes checked recently?

[tripletopper]

Originally Posted by RFK

I really don't understand what you mean by fuzzovission. Have you had your eyes checked recently?

FuzzoVision is phenomenon on television sportscast and newscasts where if they take footage of either retro-media that's 4x3, or cell phone footage that is vertically oriented, the letterboxing is not a pure black letterbox but is actually a distorted copy of what's being played now in the main frame.

I have no idea what it's really called. I don't know what the purpose of that form of letterboxing is, but I don't like it. If I find a link to a broadcast of something in fuzzle Vision I'll link it here.

[tripletopper]

Here's an example just searching for "cell phone video in news".

https://www.youtube.com/supported_br...tube.com/watch

[Cremildo]

Is this for real

[tripletopper]

Yes I wanted to show the first example of fuzzle vision that I got on a random search and that would be an awful way to watch anything. It's distracting it doesn't act as a screensaver. It's wrong on all accounts this FuzzoVision on vertical videos and 4x3 videos.