Aspect Ratios - The Director's Vision

[Rogerstennis]

black bar haters，if u can't stand the bar，then U can buy 3 TVs，4:3，16:9,21:9

[Dotpattern]

Originally Posted by Rogerstennis

black bar haters，if u can't stand the bar，then U can buy 3 TVs，4:3，16:9,21:9

Well, these aren't really "solutions" to black bars since none of those TV's accommodates all aspect ratios which would result in either bars at the top and bottom or on the left and right depending on the aspect ratio of the movie you're watching.

[Rogerstennis]

Originally Posted by Dotpattern

Well, these aren't really "solutions" to black bars since none of those TV's accommodates all aspect ratios which would result in either bars at the top and bottom or on the left and right depending on the aspect ratio of the movie you're watching.

Then they can ask the TV manufacturers to make more aspect ratios TVs for them,haha
I never thought the black bar was a problem,even when i watched movies with the 4:3 CRT
sometimes the black bar is just for the subtitles when i watched foreign movies,and the pictures will be pure without subtitles，it feels good.

OAR forever！

[garyrc]

IMO wide screen (such as 2.39:1) has to be displayed over a greater screen area than lower screen ratios, or else some of the purpose of widescreen is defeated. Usually, part of the goal in using widescreen was to increase impact by increasing area, not to diminish it by providing a letterbox slot to look through.. The only way I'm aware of to achieve the larger area for wide ARs is to use a projector with a zoom lens, zoomed out so that the black bars top and bottom are offscreen (or, alternatively, with an expensive supplementary anamorphic lens for those that are anamorphically encoded...but i gather that there are no BDs that are anamorphic, so we're stuck with the zoom?). An important exception would be for movies that were intended to be displayed in 70 mm, which could be up to 25% higher, as well as being wider, most often in the AR of about 2.2:1. For most 70 mm movies (from 65 mm negatives) that are about 2.2 (I think Robert A. Harris said these end up more like 2.28 on BD), it would be neat to have a thin mask on the top of the home projection screen that withdraws to accommodate the added height of this format. If you really wanted to get fancy, very thin side masks would also withdraw a bit for BDs that are made from large negative movies, so the rank order of image sizes in home theater, from smallest area to largest would be Academy, 1.66, 1.85. 2.35, 2.39 ... then 2.2 with larger area due to an image size that is a little higher, or, both wider than any BD made from 35 mm, and necessarily also higher by up to approximately the 25% higher we used to see in some 70 mm equipped theaters, maintaining an AR of about the 2.28 that is the BD version of 2.2.. The exception to the exceptions would be any of the handful of 70 mm films that had an even greater AR. Ben-Hur would be an example. To really do that one up, you would build a screen that expanded to about 2.75:1, with the 1 being higher than 35 mm formats. Two forum members have done just that, one especially in honor of Ben-Hur's future release on BD.

[JayX]

This might be a good place to demonstrate to people how BD differs to DVD with respect to how widescreen is displayed.

With Blu-Ray, a film in 1080p will be a file with the dimensions of 1920x1080. However an NTSC 'Full Screen' DVD and an NTSC 'Widescreen' DVD will both have the same resolution of 720x480. But how is this? It comes down to the fact that the aspect ratio is controlled in this case by the aspect ratio of the pixels as opposed to the shape created by putting 720 square pixels in 480 rows.

This is what is called 'Pixel Aspect Ratio', and can be a little bit confusing at first. If you've ever tried to make video on your home computer and dragged in an image, you'll have noticed that the image distorts due to the PAR of the image being square (1.00) while the video project you're working in will most likely have a PAR that is slightly rectangular for 4x3 playback.

For DVD playback, there are 3 aspect ratios to consider: the Storage Aspect Ratio (SAR) which is 1.5 for an NTSC DVD (720/480 = 1.5, PAL is 720/576 = 1.25 as it uses a higher line count) then the Pixel Aspect Ratio discussed above (PAR) and then finally the Display Aspect Ratio (1.78:1 for a standard Widescreen Television). In essence, the PAR exists in order that the 3:2 image on the DVD looks 'correct' on the 4:3 display, despite the difference in aspect ratios.

This process is called 'Anamorphic Widescreen' as it is similar in concept to how an anamorphic lens works, which is why people say it 'stretches' the picture to playback in widescreen. This isn't strictly true, the player knows what DAR the TV monitor has and the 'anamorphic flag' on the DVD indicates which PAR is needed to decode the image.

Blu-Ray makes this process much easier as it allows square pixels to be used at full resolution, and thus the SAR and DAR are matched. Hurray for progress!

[Beta Man]

I've been put into Academy Ratio