Is white letterboxing smarter than black letterboxing today!

[DavePS3]

The original idea behind letterboxing was simply for wider screens like Cinerama but when transferred to video like on Laserdisc, it was meant to be anamorphic, meaning no info in the black bars at all but that wasn't attainable until a couple of years into DVD. The first couple of years, none of the letterboxed DVD's were anamorphic.

As it is, because no lines of resolution are supposed to be in the black areas, it does and has presented an issue with Plasma and OLED displays because of Image Retention or Burn-In. Some Plasmas gave you the option of switching to white or light gray bars to avoid all that but watching films with the white was really annoying to most, who had a more dimly lit room when watching.

[RFK]

My first letterboxed film was an early media VHS of A Boy and His Dog. The bars on top and bottom were bright blue? The second letterboxed film was Manhattan on VHS which Woody Allen demanded to be released uncropped. The studio released it with light gray bars.

[Lee A Stewart]

Originally Posted by DavePS3

The original idea behind letterboxing was simply for wider screens like Cinerama but when transferred to video like on Laserdisc, it was meant to be anamorphic, meaning no info in the black bars at all but that wasn't attainable until a couple of years into DVD. The first couple of years, none of the letterboxed DVD's were anamorphic.

Nope. Many of the first titles that came out in March 1997 on DVD were anamorphic. "Enhanced For 16x9 TVs."

[Boris_Karloff]

Originally Posted by RFK

My first letterboxed film was an early media VHS of A Boy and His Dog. The bars on top and bottom were bright blue? The second letterboxed film was Manhattan on VHS which Woody Allen demanded to be released uncropped. The studio released it with light gray bars.

It was really amazing to see the beautiful cinematography of Manhattan in letterbox format but the gray bars were not so amazing.

[JEArgumedo]

Originally Posted by tripletopper

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.

That isn't why TV networks add blurred pillarboxes or artwork or logos on the sides for older content. It's so people won't change the channel. A lot of people just don't like black bars and they think it's cropping or covering up a picture. I get that sounds silly to people on the Blu-ray.com forum, but the people on this website aren't exactly mainstream audiences. While the practice has thankfully not caught on for Blu-ray/streaming movies/TV, for TV and user-generated web video (YouTube), it's here to stay as filling the screen with more than black bars results in better viewer retention. Remember, people flipped out when Justice League was suddenly 4:3 and HBO Max had to put a disclaimer in front of the movie so that people wouldn't complain... and they did anyway.

As for why those blurred pillarboxes are so common: It's extremely easy and quick to do on tight deadlines. Just duplicate your video over the same video, size up the one on the bottom layer, add gaussian blur, maybe add a drop shadow or lower the brightness on the bottom layer video and boom, done. Takes no time to render either. Yes, black pillarboxes are easier and even faster, but again, viewer retention is the most important thing and audience research shows that black bars aren't desirable.

[avexhype]

Saw this on promo shoots and some movie clips. Although concerns of blockage are imminent, go to the source for a fuller picture and image.

[DavePS3]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

Nope. Many of the first titles that came out in March 1997 on DVD were anamorphic. "Enhanced For 16x9 TVs."

Nope. Those out of the gate were not anamorphic.

[Lee A Stewart]

Originally Posted by DavePS3

Nope. Those out of the gate were not anamorphic.

Blade Runner
Eraser
Mad Max 2 The Road Warrior

All were anamorphic - all released March 26, 1997

[UFAlien]

Also, there actually were anamorphic laserdiscs. The first one officially, purposefully available to consumers was Unforgiven in 1994 that came as a pack-in with a widescreen TV: https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/00014/16901/Unforgiven

But there were test/demo discs as early as 1989 and a handful of movies that were accidentally released with an anamorphic squeeze in the early 80s:

https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/41092/VL4030/Mad-Max
https://www.lddb.com/laserdisc/28332...c-Horseman-The

[mosuncertain]

stop being racist

[Eidolon]

Eureka's Blu-Ray of Metropolis has gray side-borders instead of black, and I find them very irritating. I don't know why they did this instead of the usual black. White borders would be awful.

[jvonl]

How is this even a question?

[milo bloom]

Regarding early non-anamorphic DVDs, that was simply the studios re-using old laserdisc transfers that were hardcoded as letterboxed.

The 16x9 transfers required either a new scan or to use 1997 era software to "upconvert" it, which would have had varying results. Unenhanced DVDs were released for several years until widescreen TVs started coming down in price, then all the videophiles demanded 16x9.

[Lee A Stewart]

Originally Posted by milo bloom

Regarding early non-anamorphic DVDs, that was simply the studios re-using old laserdisc transfers that were hardcoded as letterboxed.

And they looked like crap and collectors avoided them like the plague.

The 16x9 transfers required either a new scan or to use 1997 era software to "upconvert" it, which would have had varying results. Unenhanced DVDs were released for several years until widescreen TVs started coming down in price, then all the videophiles demanded 16x9.

They were releasing non-anamorphic DVDs long after 16x9 TVs became affordable, especially 4x3 TV shows.

[Hydra Spectre]

Originally Posted by Lee A Stewart

And they looked like crap and collectors avoided them like the plague.



They were releasing non-anamorphic DVDs long after 16x9 TVs became affordable, especially 4x3 TV shows.

I know the DVDs of the Cartoon Network MAD show were letterboxed non-anamorphic 4:3 despite being a 2010 show. They had no excuse as the show was produced in HD.
At least with the 2006 theatrical DVDs of the Star Wars Original Trilogy, George Lucas just took 1993 digital masters and put them on DVD. Upscaling them to anamorphic may have introduced some artifacting. So Lucas had an excuse, but not Cartoon Network.

Also, a trend I get pissed off at is with music videos having massive borders just because they felt like it. Not on the top and bottom or the sides, but surrounding the entire image.
I mean, why do this? At least the black windowboxing from anime releases of old did this to accomodate CRTs with overscan at the time. And Scott The Woz, even when he did something worse with blue windowboxing, at least it eventually became a plot point. And for him, it's like a watermark that it's a Scott The Woz video.

But now, I only associate windowboxing with vintage anime or Ohioans who love Nintendo.

[AmishParadise]

I actually found a great use for black bars which are not black in color, but white. For aspect ratios north or south of 1.78:1 I physically mask my 150" 1.78:1 projector screen down replacing the projected black bars with black bars made out of Joann's Royalty 3 black velvet. This provides a true black hole around the presentation. Moving my projector screen masking into place is a manual process, the presentation itself being used as a guide. I start playback of the given Blu-ray chapter skipping if needed until I find a frame where there's strong delineation between the presentation and the black bars. I pause playback at that point and move my masking into place.

Yesterday I came up with an alternate method when going to move my masking into place. I was re-authoring one of those pesky movies that changes aspect ratios. I prefer watching these types of movies using a fixed aspect ratio so that I can use my masking. My solution prior was to re-encode the video. Using AviSynth I'd crop each frame down to my preferred aspect ratio (2.39:1 in this case), then adding black bars, i.e. matting the 2.39:1 presentation to 1.78:1 as required by the Blu-ray format.

That being said, I didn't end up re-encoding the video in this case. Instead I included a POPUP MENU which when activated displays the black bars for 2.39:1. When activating the POPUP MENU the black bars are displayed in addition to an OSD type graphic that calls out the aspect ratio the black bars are intended for. Pressing "OK" on the Blu-ray player remote toggles the OSD graphic on and off. Navigating left or right toggles through black bars for the other primary aspect ratios used by the movie. Any time the black bars are changed the OSD graphic is displayed once again until the "OK" button is pressed.

But wait, there's more! Navigating "UP" or "DOWN" provides for changing the black bars to white bars. I included this feature so that I could use the white bars as a guide when going to movie my projector screen masking into place rather than having to use the actual presentation as a guide. I start the movie and immediately pause playback. I enable the POPUP MENU, turn the black bars into white bars, move my masking into place, turn the white bars back to black bars and resume playback of the movie.

When creating the POPUP MENU my sole focus was on using it to digitally mask the black bars that way when the presentation encroaches on that portion of the frame I don't end up seeing the movie projected on my masking. It then dawned on me that I could use the black bars created by the POPUP MENU as a guide when going to move my masking into place. I just needed to include the option to make them brighter when needed.

I backup every Blu-ray I purchase to BD-R, TV series content being the one exception though I still backup TV series content from time to time. For movies I don't usually include any menus, but from now on I'll be including a POPUP MENU that displays black bars the precise height used by the given presentation. I'll toggle the color to white, move my masking into place, then disable the POPUP MENU. If the given presentation includes changing aspect ratios I'll leave the POPUP MENU on digitally cropping the image down to the desired aspect ratio. And no, I won't be watching anything with white bars as the topic of this thread suggests. That's just crazy talk! To each his own naturally.