The brilliant scam of cinematic "black bars"

Comments · 3.1K

• SL

  @slidebean · 2 months ago (edited) · pinned

  📼 If you were around for the VHS/DVD era... which did you buy: Theatrical (Widescreen) or Full Screen?<br><br>PS - Brady Corbet never replied. <br><br>🤖 Check out Nexos here and grab 75% off with this code: <a href="https://nexos.ai/slidebean">https://nexos.ai/slidebean</a>

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• LU

  @LucaDarioBützberger · 2 months ago

  I do not necessarily mind the black bars, if they are not burned into the video file .<br>21:9 movie on a 16:9 TV, no problem, that&apos;s ok. But whoever decided to encode a 21:9 movie into a 16:9 video stream, resulting in black bars all around the picture on an actual 21:9 display, should be burning in hell. <br>No maatter where, movies, tv shows, youtube videos. Do NEVER encode the black bars into the video. Video players and monitors are perfectly capable of adding them by themself.

  3.1K

• UT

  @utuBrV1oI · 2 months ago (edited)

  I hate even more when they butcher classic 4:3 tv shows, chopping off the top &amp; bottom to make them look widerscreen on modern tvs.

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• PE

  @Peekofwar · 1 month ago

  I think some video games add black bars during cutscenes, which basically silently informs the player it&apos;s a cutscene vs gameplay.

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• RO

  @Roan7995 · 2 months ago

  I don&apos;t mind the black bars; an image stretched out of its aspect ratio makes me bonkers.

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• AL

  @Albtraum_TDDC · 2 months ago

  And then you have people filming with their phones today held vertically...

  532

• LA

  @LauraSomeNumber · 1 month ago

  I worked for the support line of Denmark&apos;s biggest cable company and I would have people calling to complain that they had black bars on the side when watching old TV shows, they wanted the screen stretched. I never understood wanting this, someone complained about this with Fraser and my immediate thought was why would you want Kelsey Grammar&apos;s head to be even bigger

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• ER

  @ErikDJ123 · 2 months ago

  They didn&apos;t just crop the Full Screen for VHS. &nbsp;They did &quot;Pan &amp; Scan&quot;.

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• JA

  @jasmo6559 · 2 months ago (edited)

  You mentioned that 16:9 was a truce but didn&apos;t say why that particular aspect ratio was chosen for HDTV when it launched. At that time most TV shows were 4:3 while the majority of movies were 2.35:1 aspect ratios. &nbsp;Turns out that 16:9 fits nicely in the middle. &nbsp;Meaning that watching an older 4:3 TV show on a 16:9 HDTV results in approximately 25% wasted space as vertical black bars while watching a 2.35:1 movie on a 16:9 HDTV results in, once again, approximately 25% wasted space as horizontal black bars. &nbsp;So, 16:9 was picked to try to best fit a mixture of TV and Movie watching at the time.

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• ON

  @OnslaughtSix · 1 month ago

  Ain&apos;t no &quot;right&quot; aspect ratio, only the one that they want you to see. Put the black bars up and show me everything they wanted me to see.

  3

• ST

  @Stu_1977_SEmelb · 2 months ago

  One interesting thing you didn&apos;t mention was how Pixar would actually create different versions of their films, re-frame and re-render entire sections of images, just for the different aspect ratio versions that were released (theatrical versus home release). &nbsp;Interesting stuff.

  40

• TI

  @TinyMousse · 2 months ago

  There isn&apos;t any black bar, I use an OLED TV in the dark

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