Is this thread not on the topic of television screening apparatuses?

Well i prefer my TV and movies widescreen too. Those black bars that are occasionally i don't even notice.

I've always preferred widescreen personally. The idea of missing around 1/4 of the frame was too much for me to handle. Now, I have a widescreen TV so I only occasionally run into black bars and that's mostly when I play video games that are not of the current generation. ( Here's looking at you Morrowind )

Personally, I'd rather be a sheep that moves than a sheep that stubbornly sits as the wolves devour it.

lol, this, totally this!

But yeah, widescreen all the way, gives you the entire movie and doesn't chop off an inch on either side. Just take the first star wars movie when Han was being chased down the corridor by storm troopers. If you only had fullscreen it looks like he is being chased by 2 or so storm troopers...but if you have widescreen you find he is being chased by a whole contingent of stormtroopers. So, my point is, its not worthless and it does add to the viewing experience.

We have two eyes, one on the left and one on the right; therefore our field of view is larger horizontally than vertically. Doesn't widescreen make more sense?

Problem with that, is you're still a sheep.

I unfortunately have a wide-screen monitor, and quite honestly, I prefer my television(it's full screen). Widescreen is nothing special. Just wish stupid DVD makers would get it through their head that not everyone owns/wants widescreen and would stop making Fullscreen DVDs so hard to find ><

Fullscreen DVDs are pointless since you can change your TV aspect ratio to zoom in and chop the sides of the DVD and remove the black bars, if you really want to lose some of the original image.

Actually, the last four blue rays I bought were in 1.85:1 (Inception, Shutter Island, Kickass)
So my guess was that maybe every blue ray has this aspect ratio?
But in the end it doesn't matter, every TV or blue ray player offers a 16:9 option.


EDIT:
@ people, who don't like widescreen:
have you ever wondered why widescreen was 'invented'. And why 16:9 or 16:10?
Well, because thats similar to the field of view of our eye. Widescreen is natural, thats why they tried it out at first.

I do this alot. Problem is, if there is subtitles, in the movie, or I should say cinema, you see them on the screen but for what ever reason when they put it on DVD or BD, some of it is on the movie
and the rest is on the black bar on the bottom. I had this with Angels and Demons.

I just can't understand why they don't do what they did with Interview with a Vampire? I believe on WB or Warner Brothers did this. Back 15 or so years ago, whenever WB released a DVD you would have
widescreen on one side and on the other side would be anamporphic widescreen on the other side, so you had no black bars at all. Watching the Black bars can range from 1 inch to 5 inches, top and
bottome so that would be 10 inches of black space if not more.

Anamporphic filled up the entire screen with very little distoration. The only time you really nocitced it if they filmed a Sun or Moon, or a pure circle where it would become a bit oval shaped, but nothing
really noticable if they are not there.

I love this option and wish it would come back. Wide screen TVs seem to be a joke because we still have the black bars. Why not must make a TV that is the ratio in what they make movies in?

Because then all the TV shows would have black bars on the sides, and people would complain about that instead.

Because then you would have side bars on television shows. Not everything is filmed in the same ratio, black bars are really not a big deal.

HDTV aspect ratio = 16:9
Movies = 2.35:1

Question answered?

I don't see why preferring a wider screen would be an example of sheep-like behaviour. Such claims could be considered insulting but they're just too ridiculous for me to think seriously about it. The aspect ratio of my LCD screen is 16:10, my TV is 16:9.

You have the side bars now with 16X9. I do not see your point. Maybe I am missing something you mean.

No you don't.

Yes you do. Shows not taped in HD, you have the big black bars on the side.

If everything was standard then we wouldn't have this problem. Thing is, everyone wants to do their own thing, so we have no standardization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATSC_%28standards%29 What shows are not broadcast in widescreen?

Shows that weren't filmed recently? :unsure:


Or can you just edit older shows to be HD and such?

The reason fullscreen DVDs are so hard to find is because 1. Movies are not filmed in 4:3. 2. Widescreen (whether 16:9 or 1.85:1 or whatever) is the film standard, since human eyes have a larger horizontal field of view than a vertical field of view, which means we can take in more visual information when it is on a horizontal plane versus a vertical plane. 3. Just about every single HDTV I know has multiple settings so you can remove the black bars and 'zoom in' to a 4:3 image, sacrificing roughly 1/4th of the field of view.

Actually, both DVD and Blu-Ray only have native support for 16:9 (or so says Wikipedia). As DEFRON noted, anything else is likely hard-matted in.

Hooray? And yes, we do have standardization. Film: 1.85:1 (or 2.39:1), HDTV: 16:9, SD: 4:3. That's standardization based upon image quality, roughly. Also, just about every HDTV has the capability of stretching a 4:3 image to a 16:9.

That goes without saying, I thought we were talking about recent TV though, since the topic was widescreen? Standards have changed since TVs have changed

TVs can stretch those old shows, if you'd like. I prefer to stick with the unaltered picture, because bars don't bother me.

Lots of TV shows in US and Canada are not taped in HD. Lots of commericals are not in HD. Not sure if you know the show Amzang Race is finally being done in HD, about 5 years when alot of shows were in HD.
Not all shows are in taped in HD.

I think we are getting off topic now, so I will stop.

By what some of you have told me, I have no clue what the problem with my TV is. It's a 32", 720p Sony Bravia and, according to my TV (through some pop-up that lists the current ratio and resolution being used), the screen ratio is 16:9. When I put a Blu-Ray disc in, the menu screen for the movie fits my TV screen perfectly, but when I play the actual movie, those bars appear and I get this thin strip of actual movie in the middle of the screen with those wretched bars on the top and bottom.

Because movies are in a wider format than widescreen TVs.

Ohhhhh. 720p. That makes a lot more sense.

Now, my guess is that your Blu-Ray is 1080p. Which means, roughly 1920 horizontal pixels by 1080 vertical pixels. Your TV, however, only supports 1920 x 720, which means that it needs to fit 1080 pixels into 720 pixels - or so my theory goes. Likely the movie is hard-matted for 1.85:1 or thereabouts and since your TV is trying to fit 1080 pixels into 720 pixels (by deinterlacing) the black bars are made even worse.

But, again, as has been discussed, movies are not 16:9, so you'd be getting the black bars even if you had a 1080p TV. Unless you want to spend around 4k-5k on a 21:9 TV, there will always be black bars.