why can there be an aspect ratio for video that keeps the whole image

i have seen pan and scan video 4:3 then compared it to the 1.85 : 1 version and it seems the pan and scan 4:3 has more of the video at the top and the bottom then the 1.85 : 1 copy but the 1.85 : 1 copy does have more video at the sides its the same with other aspect ratios too why is this cant they keep all of the video without loosing any of the image

I'm sure others more knowledgeable in the subject can give a better explanation, but ...

In shooting a movie, more image is (sometimes, but not always) exposed to film than is necessary for what the director wants. Ideally, when the movie is shown in theaters (and properly appears on video), you'll see no more and no less that what the director intended.

However, when a 1.85:1 movie is reformatted to fit a 4:3 screen (again sometimes, but not always), whoever does that job will go back to the film that was shot and "open it up" at the top and/or bottom (sometimes referred to as open matte), gaining more information there, and maybe losing information on the sides, as well. Occasionally, this means you'll see boom mikes, air hoses and other things you weren't supposed to see.

The vast majority of people who post here assume that when the director frames a shot, he knows what he's doing, and that's what should be released on video.

Here's a page that provides a more technical explanation than mine. Skip down to the section: Hard Matte / Open Matte - 1.66:1 to 1.85:1.

http://www.widescreen.org/aspect_ratios.shtml

And now cable companies are cropping widescreen movies to fit 16:9 on TV. That's just as annoying.

That's because widescreen advocates frequently misrepresented what "widescreen" movies actually were.

A 2.35:1 movies shot in widescreen will have to be trimmed down to fit onto a 4:3 screen.

A 1.85:1 movie is (generally) shot at 1.37:1 (only slightly wider than the 1.33:1 SD television screen) and then masked at the top and bottom for theatrical presentation. When these movies are transferred to 1.33:1, the full camera negative is usually presented without the masks.

A 2.35:1 movie shot on Super-35 is sort of a hybrid between the two, where more image is shot than will appear in either 2.35:1 or 1.33:1. So the 1.33:1 image from one of these films will probably have more image at the top and/or bottom and less on the sides.

Someone here has a signature that sums it up rather well: "It's not about more image or less image, but the RIGHT image."

Ahem.

I wouldn't blame TV stations, because I know that's what you meant since a cable company is something else, unless you're referring to their on demand stuff, in which case it's still similar. We'd either get the stuff shipped in or it would be recorded off a satellite feed. More the former than the later. The later was mostly for TV shows.

I've heard that HBO has a "policy" of only using cropped transfers of 2.35 movies, only exceptions being Steven Soderbergh movies where he insisted on them being shown correctly. My idiot roommate in the 90s had HBO and I never watched it because everything was pan and scan back then; some things never change. In a perfect world there wouldn't even BE any cropped transfers.

Just had a discussion online with someone about the Blu release of Blade. IMDB lists the aspect ratio at 2.35:1. Apparently some of the home video releases cropped it to 1.85:1. He has a copy with this affliction. According to him they used a combination of cropping and pan and scanning to get the ratio down.

True very true. AntennaTV (or at least the station I was receiving it on) did what I consider to the one of the most annoying things for about 2 or 3 years. They would take 4:3 shows and stretch them to 16:9. Currently at the start of this new season they have went back to pillarboxing.

I can live with some cropping, but I think back in the vhs days (or at least when they knew dvd was just a few years away) they should have gotten people used to the ideal - Hey most movies were intended to be watched in widescreen and that is the way they will be released on home media.

There are many, many people who simply do not like to see black bars running across their screens regardless of why they are supposed to be there.

There is no perfect. If you watch a 4:3 TV, 1.85 and 2.35 have black bars but films like Casablanca (1.33:1) fill the screen nicely.

On a 16:9 TV you get virtually unnoticeable black bars at 1.85:1 and larger bars with 2.35:1 but with Casablanca you get vertical pillar bars to allow for the correct aspect ratio.

With 16:9 TVs many people just stretch and distort the 4:3 image or zoom it causing the top and bottom of the image to disappear.

Given that most modern TVs have a black frame anyway, I don't see how black bars on the screen itself become so visually intrusive for some people.