Letter Boxing on Rentals

[Bocefish]

Letter boxing is beginning to really piss me off. They push big screen TVs like crazy yet it seems 90% of movies made recently only use up to 2/3 of the screen. It's even worse on the old CRT sets. With the obscene amounts of money Hokeywood makes, they could at least reformat the rentals.

 

[waogo]

If you mean the horizontal bars on widescreen TVs, that's because it is in a different, technically wider ratio. You can't tell in the theater, cause they move curtains to hide the leftover screen. cutting off the bars to fit tvs would do exactly like the old 4:3 format, and cut things out of the frame. So, in fact, it'd be a step back to put out such things, even for rentals.

 

[Just Me]

I always prefer to see the movie in the aspect ratio the director intended or the movie was shot. If that leaves bars on the top and bottom of my TV screen I am perfectly fine with that. I remember this complaint back in the video tape days as well. Pan and scan is horrible way to watch a movie.

 

[Jupiter551]

Letter boxing is beginning to really piss me off. They push big screen TVs like crazy yet it seems 90% of movies made recently only use up to 2/3 of the screen. It's even worse on the old CRT sets. With the obscene amounts of money Hokeywood makes, they could at least reformat the rentals.

Any new big screens should be widescreen, and widescreen is a much closer match to movie screens exactly so that there is no need for (much) letterboxing, it's actually TV stations and tv shows that make content made for the more square TV that cause rectangular letterboxed movies to exist at all.

 

[Shaun__]

Letter boxing is beginning to really piss me off. They push big screen TVs like crazy yet it seems 90% of movies made recently only use up to 2/3 of the screen. It's even worse on the old CRT sets. With the obscene amounts of money Hokeywood makes, they could at least reformat the rentals.

Any new big screens should be widescreen, and widescreen is a much closer match to movie screens exactly so that there is no need for (much) letterboxing, it's actually TV stations and tv shows that make content made for the more square TV that cause rectangular letterboxed movies to exist at all.

You are forgetting a lot of new movies are filmed in extra wide screen. I always hit the zoom button on my remote and just give up the outside edges to make it less noticeable.

 

[Bocefish]

Letter boxing is beginning to really piss me off. They push big screen TVs like crazy yet it seems 90% of movies made recently only use up to 2/3 of the screen. It's even worse on the old CRT sets. With the obscene amounts of money Hokeywood makes, they could at least reformat the rentals.

Any new big screens should be widescreen, and widescreen is a much closer match to movie screens exactly so that there is no need for (much) letterboxing, it's actually TV stations and tv shows that make content made for the more square TV that cause rectangular letterboxed movies to exist at all.

You are forgetting a lot of new movies are filmed in extra wide screen. I always hit the zoom button on my remote and just give up the outside edges to make it less noticeable.

Yep, widescreen TVs use a 16:9 aspect ratio (1.78:1), but as Wikipedia says, "the most common projection ratios in American theaters are 1.85:1 and 2.40:1", which are even wider. When you rent from Redbox, there is no friggin' way to tell (that I know of) how the movie was filmed. Most original DVD cases told you somewhere what the aspect ratio is but you don't get that with Redbox rentals. My idiot box has wide, zoom, normal and stretch options, but it's a PITA to figure out which one to use sometimes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspect_ratio_%28image%29

 

[JerryBoBerry]

On imdb on the right side you can click 'explore more' in the quick links section. There is a link there called technical spec. It has the aspect ratio the movie was filmed in.

 

[MisterL]

Letter boxing is beginning to really piss me off. They push big screen TVs like crazy yet it seems 90% of movies made recently only use up to 2/3 of the screen. It's even worse on the old CRT sets. With the obscene amounts of money Hokeywood makes, they could at least reformat the rentals.

I agree with you