leahcim

So I spent alot of money and bought my parents a BR player for Chrismas. She loves the oldeies, GWTW, Ben Hur, etc. My mom saw Snow White on my BR and hated the 4:3 aspect and asked why does it not cover the whole screen.

Is there anyway around this? I just know she will not be happy watching all here old movies in Hi Def if it is going to have the black bars at the side.

Adam Tyner

Her TV almost certainly has some sort of 'Zoom' or 'Stretch' feature. She can either take that 1.37:1 frame and crop it to 1.78:1 or just squash it to fill the screen. (Of course, watching the movie instead of the black bars would be the best solution. )

tylergfoster

Just tell her to get used to it. Sounds harsh, but I promise, once you've seen four or five movies with the bars, you just reflexively start to tune them out.

NiCK Crush

dx23

Jim

There are some people who just never get it, for whatever reason. His mom may be that way. I've tried to show my wife's mom for years what she's missing to no avail. Hard to fathom for those of us at this site.

Blu Man

I have no problem with them, In fact I love a movie with a crisp 2:35:1 or 2:40:1 aspect ratio. Looks more "filmic". Plus you can't really get rid of them with out making the image look funky.

Drav3n

damnit, u beat me to it! haha

NiCK Crush

Actually there is something you can do. Sell your Blu-ray player, and discs on ebay...then buy this:



and one of these:

tommyp007

Just......educate her.

Solid Snake

have you told that that's the way they made them back in the day and in the case of widescreen now today too?

LickTheABCs

fumanstan

At least on Snow White you could enable the artwork on the sides.

raven56706

Tell her..that porn is better in widescreen

jrsl76

Wow, I didn't realize that this was still a problem.

E Unit

A little old school, but have you showed her comparisons that show why there are black bars? Show her how much gets chopped off when it's "fills up the TV screen"?

Kory

Yeah I'm pretty sure the Disney Blu-rays that are 4:3 have a feature that fills in the black bars with artwork of some sort. With the other films, tell her she's SOL.

mzupeman2

Tell your mom they are not 'black bars', they are unused portions of the screen. If she wants an HDTV, she better get used to it for a lot of the television programming she watches. Also tell her 'widescreen' does also not equal 'full screen', because a majority of Hollywood films are not the perfect 16x9 that would fill up a screen.

Then try basic logic. Give her something that's the shape of a square, perhaps a potholder or anything laying around the house, then tell her to make it into a rectangle. Make her think about how that would distort that square, and tell her that's what she'll be doing to the image.

If she still just wants a full screen regardless, then I would give up.

The Cow

Get her a projector.

Or put curtains on the TV and only open them to the aspect ratio and tell her that's what it's like in the theater.

Adam Tyner

I think you'd be surprised how many people don't notice when an image is stretched/distorted or really just don't care. Not everyone looks at film as art.

collven

You guys seem to keep missing the fact that leachim's talking about old 4x3 movies, not widescreen.

The Cow

Only a couple posts. Most are spot on.

Commander Dan

It truly fascinates me how so many people spend so much time focusing on the dreaded “black bars.” (regardless of letterboxing or pillar-boxing) Why isn’t their attention focused on the actual movie?

Seriously, when I watch films on Blu-ray like The Dark Knight or Transformers 2 (the Wal-mart Exclusive “Big Screen” Edition) I rarely even notice the varying aspect ratio because I’m actually WATCHING THE MOVIE!

Drexl

Well, he mentioned Ben-Hur. Although, he didn't say what her reaction to 2.40:1 would be (actually she'll probably hate BH as it's like 2.76:1).

There seems to be more resistance to side bars. I guess it's because people have become so accustomed to letterboxing over the last decade, and they aren't used to pillarboxing. But, I imagine there are some who just like widescreen for its, well, wide-ness. Disney felt compelled to have the art panel feature to deal with this, but they don't offer such a feature for the 2.40:1 titles.

I'm still concerned about the comment that he spent a lot of money and bought them a BD player. Didn't he check here for deals?

JimRochester

It helps to watch in a darker room, they become less of a distration. Turn off the lights