On Fri, 14 Apr 2023 09:06:07 -0700 (PDT), "pete...@gmail.com"
<petertrei@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Friday, April 14, 2023 at 11:30:10?AM UTC-4, Paul S Person wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 Apr 2023 14:17:19 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
>> <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>>
>> >On 4/13/2023 9:25 AM, Paul S Person wrote:
>> >> On Thu, 13 Apr 2023 08:44:27 -0700, Dimensional Traveler
>> >> <dtr...@sonic.net> wrote:
>> >>
>> >>> On 4/13/2023 8:27 AM, John Halpenny wrote:
>> >>>> On Saturday, April 8, 2023 at 12:03:35?PM UTC-4, Paul S Person wrote:
>> >>>>> On Fri, 07 Apr 2023 23:20:10 -0700, The Horny Goat <lcr...@home.ca>
>> >>>>> wrote:
>> >>>>>> On Tue, 04 Apr 2023 08:43:54 -0700, Paul S Person
>> >>>>>> <pspe...@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>> As a long time "RAT" that's very good advice.
>> >>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>> I do know that my wife was VERY disappointed that our 65" (16x9)
>> >>>>>>>> didn't look any bigger diagonally than our old 55" (4x3).
>> >>>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>>> My response was to write it out as a math problem to determine what
>> >>>>>>>> the height and width was for each TV (I only used a calculator to
>> >>>>>>>> calculate the diagonal for each using ye olde Pythagorean equation -
>> >>>>>>>> it was easy if you had sketched it out on paper first)
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> I somehow got the impression that the size measurement of TV sets
>> >>>>>>> /was/ the diagonal.
>> >>>>>>>
>> >>>>>>> Oh, well.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> And you would be right. My wife's comment was that it didn't SEEM
>> >>>>>> bigger because she was going by the height of the tube not the
>> >>>>>> diagonal.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> In the specific case we were discussing she was talking about a 65"
>> >>>>>> 16x9 vs a 55" 4x3.
>> >>>>>>
>> >>>>>> You're a smart guy and can presumably do the math....if you need a
>> >>>>>> hand let me know
>> >>>>> Actually, one of things prompting me to keep my 4:3 Toshiba is that
>> >>>>> space is limited and the horizontal size of a 16:9 TV would pretty
>> >>>>> have to be the same. Which might produce the same effect as that your
>> >>>>> wife experienced.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> In fact, I did a spreadsheet computation many years ago, suggesting
>> >>>>> that a 25" diagonal TV would be (width:height)
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> ratio inches
>> >>>>> 4:3 20:15
>> >>>>> 16:9 21.79:12.26
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> suggesting both that a 25" diagonal 16:9 TV might not fit in the
>> >>>>> available space, and that it would visibly squatter.
>> >>>>>
>> >>>>> (Since the "available space" is a moveable cart which is actually
>> >>>>> moved, TV stability is also an issue with modern TVs. There are /no/
>> >>>>> simple solutions to this problem.)
>> >>>>>
>> >>>> Do they sell wide screen TVs because you can get a larger number for the diagonal measurement for the same screen area ( or price)?
>> >>>>
>> >>> I suspect that the "High Definition" formats tending to be widescreen
>> >>> ratios has something to do with it.
>> >>
>> >> It is, of course, true that TV shows tend to be 16:9 rather than 4:3.
>> >> But that is more fitting the content to the standard screen size than
>> >> anything else.
>> >>
>> >> SD and DVD are as likely to be 2.35:1 as HD and BD are. It depends on
>> >> the aspect ratio of the film, not the TV it is to be displayed on.
>> >>
>> >I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me or not but that was kind of my
>> >point. The TV's changed to better fit the material they were going to
>> >be displaying.
>> Sorry I was unclear.
>>
>> The /content/ changed to match the new TV aspect ratio.
>>
>> This is why older TV materials, such as the Mary Martin /Peter Pan/ or
>> the version of /Once Upon a Mattress/ with Carol Burnett as Winifred
>> the Woebegone are 4:3 and not 16:9.
>>
>> The move to 16:9 was basically a marketing gimmick.
>
>I'm willing to bet that you've never seen a CRT tv in any ratio but 4:3.
>That's the ratio of 35mm film, and was chosen to match the
>standard 'Academy Ratio', going right back to silent films.

The first statement is true. The second is not.

Academy Ratio is 1.375:1. 4:3 is 1.333:1. They are /not/ the same,
although it is true that they are generally treated as such.

Except, of course, when they are widened to fit a 16:9 TV.

>Movies went widescreen long before TV did. It led to problems
>when showing them on TV. Remember letterboxing, pan-and-scan,
>and cutting off the left and right edges of movies?

Letterboxing, IIRC, was unknown until /The Color Purple/ came out on
VHS. But perhaps I just didn't see the TV shows that were letterboxed.

P&S and other atrocities were why, at some point, contracts began to
/require/ that the 4:3 in the middle of the image be something that
would work as a movie when shown on TV. All the other stuff was to be
.... superfluous. Or so I have read.

When I got my legitimate DVD of /Hey Good Lookin'/ I compared it with
the regrettable 4:3 copy I had previously purchased out of desperation
to have it. One was on the TV, the other on the computer.

Imagine my surprise when I found that /both/ versions were missing
parts the other had, and that /both/ versions had parts the other
lacked. It isn't as simple as "cutting off the sides".

Another example is the DVD and BD of /Something for Everyone/.
Although both are said to be letterboxed, the DVD has a flag set (per
the computer DVD player program) that /forces/ it to be Full Screen
(which is why I tried the BD and, after the test, returned the DVD as
the BD actually was letterboxed on my TV). In this case, it wasn't a
matter of "cutting off the left and right edges of movies"; both
started at the same place on the right, the DVD just stop displaying
everything to the left of a given point when played on the BD player.

>That made wide screen TVs popular, and non-4:3 screens were
>easily made after the switch away from CRTs. After the switch,
>TV-only content started to take advantage of the newly available
>real-estate. This mostly happened during the 2000s.

That's strange, since the standard /theater/ ratio was (and is) 1.85:1
by (long before) 2000, and 16:9 is 1.78:1.

I mean, if the TV screen ratio is being /driven by the ratio used by
movies/ why would it be 1.78:1 instead of 16:9? Is it merely a
coincidence that 16:9 is 4:3 with each term squared?

Again, IIRC, letterboxing entered the home video enthusiasts' minds
when /The Color Purple/ came out. And it generated a /lot/ of
enthusiasm, but if that carried over to TV screen ratios it took a
while because the movie came out in 1985 and I purchased my copy in
1989.

At some point, I investigated DVD Players and was shown a Home Theater
System, allegedly the only place a DVD Player could be found. A
colleague at work became very upset when they found that, after paying
$2000 for a Home Theater System, I was able (this was a year or two
later) to purchase a DVD player all by itself for $400 and use it with
a perfectly ordinary TV set.

As I said, "marketing technique". The idea was to sell Home Theater
Systems, which alone would have DVD Players and Wide-Screen TVs. The
problem was, the equipment makers figured out that they could make
more money selling the components separately for less (volume! volume!
volume!) and that was the end of the exclusivity.

>Many movies today are made in 21:9, so we still get letter boxing
>on 16:9, but its nowhere as bad as on a 4:3 CRT, partly because the
>screens are so much bigger. 21:9 TVs exist, but they aren't selling well.

Among the things Paul S Person wrote:

> Letterboxing, IIRC, was unknown until /The Color Purple/ came out on
> VHS. But perhaps I just didn't see the TV shows that were letterboxed.

The music video for "A View to a Kill" by the two Durans was one where I noticed it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3pQDMi4W-g

If you get bored by the film clips or the music, 1:37 in is the visual joke that put it in my memory. I gather there was other letterboxing going on, if only in other music videos; by my thought, the joke depends on letterboxing being something we notice, but are trying not to notice.

> P&S and other atrocities were why, at some point, contracts began to
> /require/ that the 4:3 in the middle of the image be something that
> would work as a movie when shown on TV. All the other stuff was to be
> ... superfluous. Or so I have read.

Sometimes the studios letterboxed the credits for movies that spread them all over the widescreen. My DVD of "Colossus" begins that way, raising hopes for the film. Sometimes they left the image anamorphic; one Gene Kelly in a sailor suit movie ended with everybody getting tall and thin.

> >That made wide screen TVs popular, and non-4:3 screens were
> >easily made after the switch away from CRTs. After the switch,
> >TV-only content started to take advantage of the newly available
> >real-estate. This mostly happened during the 2000s.

> That's strange, since the standard /theater/ ratio was (and is) 1.85:1
> by (long before) 2000, and 16:9 is 1.78:1.
>
> I mean, if the TV screen ratio is being /driven by the ratio used by
> movies/ why would it be 1.78:1 instead of 16:9? Is it merely a
> coincidence that 16:9 is 4:3 with each term squared?

I believe 16:9 was adopted as a compromise to best keep the screen "filled" whether showing old TV or Academy Ratio movies, or the 2.xx of widescreen.
Some article I read waaaay back before they got the idea of digital TV transmission illustrated a wide screen as a large 4:3 block with three smaller 4:3 blocks stacked to the side. I'm not certain there wasn't some hope that a portion of the signal would be an NTSC signal that would be compatible with old TVs.

--
-Jack

On Sun, 16 Apr 2023 12:51:54 -0700 (PDT), Jack Bohn
<jack.bohn64@gmail.com> wrote:

>Among the things Paul S Person wrote:
>
>> Letterboxing, IIRC, was unknown until /The Color Purple/ came out on
>> VHS. But perhaps I just didn't see the TV shows that were letterboxed.
>
>The music video for "A View to a Kill" by the two Durans was one where I noticed it:
>
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3pQDMi4W-g
>
>If you get bored by the film clips or the music, 1:37 in is the visual joke that put it in my memory. I gather there was other letterboxing going on, if only in other music videos; by my thought, the joke depends on letterboxing being something we notice, but are trying not to notice.

I don't watch music videos, unless forced to by others.

But I don't doubt that it happened.

>> P&S and other atrocities were why, at some point, contracts began to
>> /require/ that the 4:3 in the middle of the image be something that
>> would work as a movie when shown on TV. All the other stuff was to be
>> ... superfluous. Or so I have read.
>
>Sometimes the studios letterboxed the credits for movies that spread them all over the widescreen. My DVD of "Colossus" begins that way, raising hopes for the film. Sometimes they left the image anamorphic; one Gene Kelly in a sailor suit movie ended with everybody getting tall and thin.

Films that weren't "protected" (I think that was the term) for
television (meaning 4:3). I had several of them myself, but managed to
avoid the "tall and thin" problem. Exept for /Romancing the Stone/
where, instead of letterboxing the end credits, they removed the lens
and everything became tall and thin. (The concept I am using is that
they used the proper lens to display the film but only captured the
4:3 part they graciously decided to show us, until they got to the end
credits. This was a VHS tape, of course.)

I have at least one BD of an Academy Ratio film where the movie is
surrounded on /all four sides/ by black bars. My DVD of Hitchcock's
two French propaganda pieces are presumably Academy Ratio but are
letterboxed. So /some/ Academy Ratio DVDs/BDs actually do show the
entire image. Of course, either the source has to be in good enough
shape for this to make sense, or a lot of time and money must be
invested to restore it. Expanding the image to hide the scratches on
the top, bottom, and sides happens.

>> >That made wide screen TVs popular, and non-4:3 screens were
>> >easily made after the switch away from CRTs. After the switch,
>> >TV-only content started to take advantage of the newly available
>> >real-estate. This mostly happened during the 2000s.
>
>> That's strange, since the standard /theater/ ratio was (and is) 1.85:1
>> by (long before) 2000, and 16:9 is 1.78:1.
>>
>> I mean, if the TV screen ratio is being /driven by the ratio used by
>> movies/ why would it be 1.78:1 instead of 16:9? Is it merely a
>> coincidence that 16:9 is 4:3 with each term squared?
>
>I believe 16:9 was adopted as a compromise to best keep the screen "filled" whether showing old TV or Academy Ratio movies, or the 2.xx of widescreen.

Well, I suppose it is in a mathematical sense:
4:3 1.33:1
16:9 1.78:1
64:27 2.37:1
but I don't think it makes sense in any other way.

>Some article I read waaaay back before they got the idea of digital TV transmission illustrated a wide screen as a large 4:3 block with three smaller 4:3 blocks stacked to the side. I'm not certain there wasn't some hope that a portion of the signal would be an NTSC signal that would be compatible with old TVs.

I certainly hoped so. But it was not to be.
n --
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."

On Sat, 15 Apr 2023 09:14:50 -0700, Paul S Person
<psperson@old.netcom.invalid> wrote:

<snippo, making correction>
>That's strange, since the standard /theater/ ratio was (and is) 1.85:1
>by (long before) 2000, and 16:9 is 1.78:1.
>
>I mean, if the TV screen ratio is being /driven by the ratio used by
>movies/ why would it be 1.78:1 instead of 16:9? Is it merely a
.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .1.85:1?
>coincidence that 16:9 is 4:3 with each term squared?

That should make more sense, at least.
--
"In this connexion, unquestionably the most significant
development was the disintegration, under Christian
influence, of classical conceptions of the family and
of family right."