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Alan45
Village Elder
Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9861
Location: Virginia
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2014 2:27 pm
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@Touma
A 4:3 show that has been pillar boxed will automatically show up in proper aspect ration on a 16:9 screen. A 4:3 screen will see the show as being 16:9 and will letter box it as well leading to a very small picture. Since the 4:3 screen are older an are usually not that large it presents a problem.
I suspect that the people at Viz who made the decision probably thought that by now "everybody has 16:9 screens". But from the comments this is obviously not true. I would point out to those still using a 4:3 screen, that they will eventually have to replace that screen with a 16:9. Of course by that time the Viz sets will probably be sold out. It is sort of a problem. Buy something now that is unsatisfactory but may be acceptable in the future or wait and pay E-bay prices for something you could have gotten much cheaper.
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Touma
Joined: 29 Aug 2007
Posts: 2651
Location: Colorado, USA
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2014 4:55 pm
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Alan45 wrote: | @Touma
A 4:3 show that has been pillar boxed will automatically show up in proper aspect ration on a 16:9 screen. A 4:3 screen will see the show as being 16:9 and will letter box it as well leading to a very small picture. Since the 4:3 screen are older an are usually not that large it presents a problem. |
A normal, ordinary, standard DVD of a 4:3 show will give me a 4:3 image on a 16:9 screen, and a 4:3 image on a 4:3 screen.
What purpose is the pillarboxing supposed to serve?
That is what I do not understand.
If it was necessary to have the pillars to prevent the 4:3 image from being stretched horizontally on the 16:9 screen then I could understand it.
But it is not necessary. I have never had a regular 4:3 DVD stretch across a 16:9 screen. I doubt that they are all pillarboxed.
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Alan45
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Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9861
Location: Virginia
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2014 6:58 pm
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@Touma
I suspect it depends on your TV/player combination. On my set, a 4:3 image automatically pops up as 16:9. That is the TV automatically assumes that an HD signal will be 16:9. It is easy to fix with my remote but it takes a few seconds. This happens even with DVDs since my DVD player automatically up scales everything to 1080p.
With a pillar boxed image, it is in fact 16:9 (that is the pillars are part of the image) so it comes up correctly. I'm not sure if this is the only way to fix this minor irritation. Unfortunately it has the effect of throwing the people with legacy systems under the bus. I don't mind having to change to a 4:3 aspect ratio to view older shows, but apparently the people at Viz thought it was a problem. Possibly no one there has an older set.
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Zalis116
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Joined: 31 Mar 2005
Posts: 6874
Location: Kazune City
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Posted: Thu Nov 13, 2014 11:49 pm
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Touma wrote: |
A normal, ordinary, standard DVD of a 4:3 show will give me a 4:3 image on a 16:9 screen, and a 4:3 image on a 4:3 screen.
What purpose is the pillarboxing supposed to serve? |
I could hazard a guess -- it allows for more corner-cutting in the production process. The Blu-Ray image has to be pillarboxed, since Blu-Ray has to be encoded in 1920x1080 and has no anamorphic capability. So it's a matter of [Take Blu-Ray image] -> [Hit "Next" a bunch of times] -> [Set DVD flag to display the (pillarboxed) image as 16:9] -> DVD version complete! At the least, that's likely easier than actually undergoing a different process to produce a non-pillarboxed DVD that displays a 4:3 image, AKA "what every other company does when they release DVDs and Blu-Rays of a 4:3 show."
Fwiw, my TV tends to skew to whatever mode it was showing previously, so sometimes 4:3 DVDs will appear stretched, and sometimes 16:9 DVDs will appear squished before manually setting the right AR. Of course, Viz's pillarboxed 4:3 DVDs actually remove the option to stretch the main image to fit a 16:9 screen, for those who might choose to do so. Maybe that's a good thing on some level, but enforcing videophile purism on some people isn't worth the hassle of a 4:3 DVD that won't play right on a 4:3 TV.
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Alan45
Village Elder
Joined: 25 Aug 2010
Posts: 9861
Location: Virginia
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Posted: Fri Nov 14, 2014 8:35 am
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In this weeks pod cast they said they won't do it any more, but will not fix the first volume either.
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TurboWasis
Joined: 09 Nov 2006
Posts: 15
Location: Toronto, Ontario
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Posted: Tue Nov 25, 2014 2:29 am
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Quote: |
Another thing separating black-and-white cinema from television of the 80's and 90's is that black-and-white cinema was recorded on actual film reels whereas 80's and 80's television was recorded on magnetic tape. |
Uh no. Your average 80's and 90's US network television shows were indeed shot on film. Some of these shows may have been delivered to TV stations on magnetic tape but they were shot on film. Even shows as recent as LOST in 2004 started out being shot on film and switched to HD later on. Shows shot on video would have mostly been lower budget programming on say the BBC or CBC etc for example.
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leafy sea dragon
Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
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Posted: Fri Nov 28, 2014 7:50 pm
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I see. My only experience in the entertainment business has been from small, ultra-low budget studios, which still produced television on magnetic tape when I was a participant, or analyzing from afar, so I was not aware of that. Thanks. I was also taught in college exclusively using Mini DV tapes, so I thought that was a standard.
Sorry for the late reply.
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