Letterbox is annoying, even on new 61" TV!

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 09:57:59 -0500, Peter H. Coffin wrote:

Your screen is 1.7:1. The movie's 2.35:1 How is it supposed to use the
whole screen?


My point is the directors think that this format is wonderful,
and the rest of us that watches it do not. My point was it
is annoying to buy a 61" TV, then loose have the picture.
If you don't agree with that, what can I say?

James Egan wrote:
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 09:57:59 -0500, Peter H. Coffin wrote:

Your screen is 1.7:1. The movie's 2.35:1 How is it supposed to use the
whole screen?


My point is the directors think that this format is wonderful,
and the rest of us that watches it do not.

Please speak for yourself. Directors choose aspect ratios for reasons
having to do with the story being told.

My point was it
is annoying to buy a 61" TV, then loose have the picture.

That would be "lose".

It's too bad you are annoyed. If you could be bothered to learn *why* a
director chooses an aspect ratio, you might learn to appreciate
wide-screen movies.

If you don't agree with that, what can I say?

I don't agree with that. You could say that you are willing to learn why
others are more than satisfied by being able to see movies in the
director's chosen aspect ratio.

Too bad David Lean can't explain it to you.

http://www.davidlean.com

He chose to use virtually every aspect ratio available over the course
of his career. Each choice was deliberate and related to the way he
wanted to tell the story.

Matthew

--
I'm a consultant. If you want an opinion I'll sell you one.
Which one do you want?

On 2007-03-17, James Egan wrote:

My point is the directors think that this format is wonderful,
and the rest of us that watches it do not. My point was it
is annoying to buy a 61" TV, then loose have the picture.

People go to a theater to see a spectacle. That means wide. 2.35:1 is very
common. BEN HUR is 2.76:1.

Now, I admit there is something satisfying about an aspect ratio that
completely fills a TV screen. A friend has an HD 4:3 CRT. It is the ultimate
film noir display. It's just nice to see those old black-and-white classics
fill up a squarish screen.

Similarly, those titles which are close to 16:9 look very neat on a widescreen
TV.

But complaining about black bars for wider titles is nuts. I would be annoyed
if I did not have access to truly wide movies, whether they fit the screen or
not.

-Bill
--
Sattre Press History of Astronomy
http://sattre-press.com/ During the 19th Century
by Agnes M. Clerke
http://sattre-press.com/han.html

In article ,
James Egan wrote:

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 08:27:51 -0700, Richard C. wrote:
=========================
Many movies are 2.35:1/2.40:1.
They will be letterboxed even on a 16:9 (1.78:1) set.
There is nothing wrong with that.
It is a wonderful thing!
Besides, that still uses about 75% of the screen (which is more than half).
Zooming or worrying about black bars is a fools game.
==========================


I think directors think that letterbox is wonderful, and everyone
that watches their movies doesn't. g

The director doesn't care about letterbox, one way or the other. He
just shoots the movie in the aspect ratio that suits his style.

If you ever go to the cinema, you may notice that the big screen is also
letterboxed for some films.

Some of them are REALLY ridiculous. The movie Troy looked like
I was loosing 40-50% of the picture. The good thing is on a
61" set, the picture is really large to begin with!

Well, you could tighten up the picture by either distorting it to fill
the screen or truncating the sides while filling the screen from top to
bottom.

--
Tom Stiller

PGP fingerprint = 5108 DDB2 9761 EDE5 E7E3
7BDA 71ED 6496 99C0 C7CF

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 16:33:55 -0400, Matthew L. Martin wrote:

James Egan wrote:
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 09:57:59 -0500, Peter H. Coffin wrote:

Your screen is 1.7:1. The movie's 2.35:1 How is it supposed to use the
whole screen?


My point is the directors think that this format is wonderful,
and the rest of us that watches it do not.

Please speak for yourself. Directors choose aspect ratios for reasons
having to do with the story being told.

My point was it
is annoying to buy a 61" TV, then loose have the picture.

That would be "lose".

It's too bad you are annoyed. If you could be bothered to learn *why* a
director chooses an aspect ratio, you might learn to appreciate
wide-screen movies.

If you don't agree with that, what can I say?

I don't agree with that. You could say that you are willing to learn why
others are more than satisfied by being able to see movies in the
director's chosen aspect ratio.

Too bad David Lean can't explain it to you.

http://www.davidlean.com

He chose to use virtually every aspect ratio available over the course
of his career. Each choice was deliberate and related to the way he
wanted to tell the story.

Matthew


I know that directors select goofy aspect ratios for their own
egocentric artistic purposes. I have never met ANYONE in my
entire life that was not annoyed by them, except for several
in this newsgroup.

"James Egan" wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:05:05 -0400, Guest wrote:

I can't believe that some people are STILL asking this question and
acting
as if there is something wrong. I also find it hard to believe that
someone
would spend the kind of money that he did and NOT know what the hell he
was
getting into. It boggles the mind, but then again, I have a buddy who
buys
things just to impress people and he does not know what it is or does as
long as it costs and not many have it.


I can't believe that someone is so stupid and so immature. Of course
I'm familiar with letterbox,

If that was the case, there is no reason for you to be surprised or annoyed.

but not with letterbox and LARGE screen
TV's.

? So by your twisted logic, the larger the screen gets, the more th
epicture fills up the screen? Common sense man, common sense!

It was more of a comment. You are so off base with your asinine
comment, one would think that you are some immature childish juvenile,
but I doubt it.

I see that you have some new words that you looked up. It seemed to be very
hard for you to spell or even use the simple ones in their proper context.

James Egan wrote:


I know that directors select goofy aspect ratios for their own
egocentric artistic purposes. I have never met ANYONE in my
entire life that was not annoyed by them, except for several
in this newsgroup.


James,

OK. Now we know what you are doing.

The rest,

Please stop feeding the troll.

Matthew

--
I'm a consultant. If you want an opinion I'll sell you one.
Which one do you want?

On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 18:33:27 -0400, Guest wrote:


"James Egan" wrote in message
. ..
On Sat, 17 Mar 2007 14:05:05 -0400, Guest wrote:

I can't believe that some people are STILL asking this question and
acting
as if there is something wrong. I also find it hard to believe that
someone
would spend the kind of money that he did and NOT know what the hell he
was
getting into. It boggles the mind, but then again, I have a buddy who
buys
things just to impress people and he does not know what it is or does as
long as it costs and not many have it.


I can't believe that someone is so stupid and so immature. Of course
I'm familiar with letterbox,

If that was the case, there is no reason for you to be surprised or annoyed.

but not with letterbox and LARGE screen
TV's.

? So by your twisted logic, the larger the screen gets, the more th
epicture fills up the screen? Common sense man, common sense!


Different TV's have different aspect ratios dip-****. Common sense!


It was more of a comment. You are so off base with your asinine
comment, one would think that you are some immature childish juvenile,
but I doubt it.

I see that you have some new words that you looked up. It seemed to be very
hard for you to spell or even use the simple ones in their proper context.


I'm a highly paid professional, but what are you? Go away ninny,
you're wasting bandwidth, and causing me to do the same.

"Guest" wrote in message
...
I can't believe that some people are STILL asking this question and
acting as if there is something wrong. I also find it hard to
believe that someone would spend the kind of money that he did and
NOT know what the hell he was getting into. It boggles the mind,
but then again, I have a buddy who buys things just to impress
people and he does not know what it is or does as long as it costs
and not many have it.

The questions will probably continue for years. There is no way to
know what part of the population still do not know or do not
understand current technology. I recently had to inform someone that
the OTA TV they have been watching for the last 8 months was not
really HD - they did not know that they had to tune to the digital HD
channels instead of the same old analog channels they were used to
watching with the old non-HDTV.

In article ,
Tom Stiller wrote:

The director doesn't care about letterbox, one way or the other. He
just shoots the movie in the aspect ratio that suits his style.

Directors care about letterboxing after the fact, though. Spielberg and
Scorsese were promoting letterboxed tv (and dvd) releases of their
pictures years ago. I'll leave it to you to Google what the very first
letterboxed dvd release was; it wasn't a picture directed by either of
those two.
--
W. Oates