Widescreen vs. Fullscreen DVDs

katiemac said:

Are fullscreen or widescreen DVDs better on a widescreen television? Or, in other words, is a fullscreen DVD formatted with the full-frame theatrical release?

I ask because a widescreen DVD on my widescreen television is still formatted with black bars on the top and bottom. A fullscreen DVD completely fills the screen, but I'm unsure if what I'm seeing is the full theatrical (technically, widescreen/rectangle) feature, or fullscreen (square) picture that's being stretched to fit.

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No, a fullscreen DVD is not the same height and width as the theatrical release. It has a different aspect ratio to fit a regular TV. And when it is formatted to fit the TV screen they don't just uniformly chop off the edges. They do some kind of editing so that the important part of a scene isn't lopped off.

Why it fits your widescreen TV that way, I have no idea.

Widescreen is how the movie is made for the theater.

Full-screen chops off the sides of the widescreen and then "pans" across the widescreen image. In other words, you're missing a lot of information. In other words, ifs formatted to fit a standard sized television screen.

If you want the picture the way the director framed it, yeah, widescreen's always best.

I actually prefer widescreen now because once the pan and scan was pointed out to me, it started making me dizzy watching movies on full screen. Dizzy became very annoying, and very annoying turned into my almost obsessive need to buy only widescreen DVD's.

There's an interesting article in the archives of American Cinematographer about some of the editing tricks they use to 'stuff' the widescreen image info into the fullscreen box. Like using mirrors to give just the right tilt, or cropping down the middle. I noticed they also re-edit so a longer shot will jump back and forth between the two sides of the wide image, say in a conversation between two characters. Scorsese and Kubrick in their later careers, acknowledging that fullscreen was how most audiences would first see their work, worked with their cinematographers so the shots would work in both formats.
Anyway, regarding your OP, most DVDs are 1:1.85 ratio, but some DVDs are in 1:2.35, or anamorphic, ratio. This makes it look narrower, with more prominent black space above and below the image. Normal widescreen is pretty common, while anamorphic is reserved for epics and large scale movies.
Fullscreen is the square box, and if you have a widescreen TV that is not properly set up, it may force the image to stretch horizontally. That's annoying, yeah.

A fun fact: first movie to use widescreen was The Robe, 1951.

I'm about to seriously nerd out here...

Forgive me if any of this is patronising but I believe you've asked a question which hasn't been answered yet (why do you still have black bars when watching a widescreen film on your widescreen tv) and this is the best way to answer it.

Very generally....

Films are shot in one of three aspect ratios.

4:3 (your basic, square tv shape) --



1.85:1 (which is the same as 16:9 and the standard shape of a widescreen tv) --



and 2.35:1 (for a screen that is 2.35 times wide as it is tall) --



If you lay all these films on top of each other, it looks like this --



This is just so you can see the differences. They're all the same height but the 2.35 is the widest followed by the 1.85.

This creates problems when putting things onto DVD.

In the old days, when we all had tvs that were square, 4:3, the 4:3 films fit perfectly because they were the exact same shape as your TV --



But 1.85:1 (16:9) and 2.35:1 films wouldn't. They either had to be panned and scanned, whereby the height of the image was kept but the sides were cut off --





or they had to be presented in their original aspect ratio with blacks bars --





Things changed when we got 16:9 or widescreen tvs. Films that were shot in 1.85 or 16:9 now fit our tvs perfectly. (an increasing number of tv programs are also shot in this ratio now.)



And it was the old, 4:3 films which now got the black bars because their images weren't long enough to fit the wider screens.

(also known as YDS, or, Youtube Douchebaggery Syndrome)



But... this still left a problem because a great deal of films are shot in 2.35:1 which is still too wide even for widescreen TVs. Since no company makes a 2.35:1 shaped TV, the only solution is to present the image with black bars at the top and bottom.



And that, I think, is the answer to your question. You're watching a 2.35:1 film on a 1.85:1/16x9 widescreen TV. Check the back of the DVD box, it'll have a section that says something like, "2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen."

It may seem wrong with black bars at the top and bottom of the image but this is the full image that you're supposed to see. You're not really missing anything. If you don't like the black bars, there are probably settings on your tv that you can use to stretch the image to completely fill the screen though bear in mind this will cause some loss in image quality.

There are all kinds of further complications to add to this such as the Super 35 film format which works differently for pan and scan but unless you're watching a James Cameron film, it's not likely to be a problem.

My advice; buy a projector so you can watch in whatever damn format you like.

No probs. The only way to get a 2.35:1 film to fully fit your widescreen tv would be to use your television's setting to artificially stretch the image. In that case you'd potentially lose bits of the image as well as the quality of the image itself.

I must say, I'm surprised (but very, very thankful) that some bright spark didn't think to pan and scan 2.35:1 films down to 1.85:1. You'd lose about a quarter of the image but it would fit a widescreen tv perfectly then. I wouldn't buy them because that would be an abomination, naturally, ( ) but given that these people have been happily hacking up 2.35:1 films for decades to an even worse effect, I'm surprised it hasn't happened yet.

Chris is such a smart guy. Thanks for that explanation! Very helpful.

I know! He totally made my brain hurt.

I remember in 2001, I went over to Canada to shoot a video for my brother's wedding and me being the format nut that I am, I shot it in 1.85:1. My grandparents, God bless 'em, who couldn't go to the wedding and who desperately wanted to see the video, went out and bought a brand new, widescreen TV because they thought they wouldn't be able to play it otherwise.

Turns out they wanted a new one anyway thankfully but the problems came when they rented Pearl Harbor which is a 2.35:1 film and found that it still had weird black bars at the top and bottom of the image - even on their brand new widescreen TV!

Imagine the Sisyphean ordeal of trying to explain what I did above, over the phone to your frantic 80+ year old grandparents who thought they'd somehow broken their tv because Pearl Harbor wouldn't fit properly. "I thought you said it was a wided-screen!"

They ended up not watching it. Probably the best thing for them really.

katiemac said:

Are fullscreen or widescreen DVDs better on a widescreen television? Or, in other words, is a fullscreen DVD formatted with the full-frame theatrical release?

I ask because a widescreen DVD on my widescreen television is still formatted with black bars on the top and bottom. A fullscreen DVD completely fills the screen, but I'm unsure if what I'm seeing is the full theatrical (technically, widescreen/rectangle) feature, or fullscreen (square) picture that's being stretched to fit.

Click to expand...

A full-screen is 4:3 aspect ratio and so, yes, it may fill your wide-screen (16:9) TV but it's very likely that the sides have been cut off.

Most widescreen TVs have options to change aspect ratios so you can fit your movies better.

Also, many movies are not 16:9. They can be even wider (2.39:1, for example) and so they will still leave a black bar on top and bottom. I tend to not fix that (by changing the TV's aspect ratios to try to fill the screen -- because it usually means upscaling and that leaves pixelation).


p.s. try to watch the NEW release of Sleeping Beauty -- at full Cinemascope 2.66:1 aspect ratio. That's really the ultimate.

I cannot stand watching anything in "full screen" It just doesn't do anything for me. I always try to find widescreen or what's known as letterbox DVD's. A quick question..was The Shining not filmed in Panavision? I can't remember if it was or not.

Thanks

The Shining was shot with Arriflex cameras (Panavision's rival) using a 35mm print. Normally, only the intended widescreen aspect ratio of this largely square (1.66) print is shot by physically masking off the top and bottom to prevent exposure. In the case of The Shining, the entire frame was exposed creating a 1.66:1 print which was then masked off at the top and bottom when shown in cinemas, creating a 1.85:1, or widescreen, print.

When it came time to release on VHS/DVD, this 1.85 print was "unmasked" creating a full-frame presentation. Kubrick apparently intended for the home release versions to be transferred this way because widescreen transfers were rare in those days and he hated pan and scan.

Subsequent DVD releases which could have been matted to produce the 1.85 print have been kept at the full-frame ratio with an "as Stanley Kubrick intended," note on the back of the DVD. It's been said that Kubrick preferred the 1.66 version of The Shining anyway - it certainly seems to work well for all those sweeping steadicam shots.

However, if you're watching this film on a widescreen TV, you can stretch the image horiztonally and then vertically using your TV's aspect ratio feature. This effectively chops off the top and bottom of the image and gives you the 1.85 print, albeit with a slightly reduced image quality.

mario_c said:

A fun fact: first movie to use widescreen was The Robe, 1951.

Click to expand...

1953 actually, and that's just the first film in CinemaScope, not widescreen in general. There were a few films shot in 70mm in the 1930s, the John Wayne western The Big Trail being one of them. You could also mention the silent film Napoleon, which uses three screens for its climax.

The reason why widescreen films on your widescreen tv are still letterboxed a little bit, is because while a widescreen tv is much wider than the traditional squarish tv, it is still not as wide as the big cinematic film sizes (for instance, a good old fashioned romantic comedy might be filmed in an aspect ratio that matches your tv's aspect ratio. A big epic cinematographer's wet dream film will be much wider.

Nothing beats a 1080i projector with an anamorphic lens.

Wow, that's an interesting piece of kit. Quite ingenious really though I can see a few problems. You're gonna need different sized screens for different formats and somewhere to mount it but I love the idea and this is essentially how movie theatres work - by unsqueezing the anamorphic image which is on the print.

Wonder if I can get the same effect by putting a thick-bottomed whisky glass on its side in front of the lens?

The problem with projectors, still, is ambience. You will need a special room with the right lighting (chances are, however, if you're spending money on that, you probably have a home theater set up). I have a projector but I only use it occasionally because the viewing condition is not optimal (too much ambient light).

That's true. Ideally, your walls should be in a windowless room and layered with velvet or at least painted black to absorb superfluous light. Failing that you need good quality blackout curtains. Projectors are a nightmare to set up but I think mine (and the screen) rank in the top 3 most awesome things I've ever bought. I don't really use it for TV or video games but DVDs always go up on it.