The Wonderful New Influx of Original Aspect Ratios
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Finally …
…as this year has rolled along there is one fabulous metamorphosis that has crept (or creeped as we would say growing up west of the Suwannee River) slowly into main stream America …
Broadcasters are broadcasting movies in their ORIGINAL ASPECT RATIO !
In other words – it is now more and more common to see the original screen size of a movie in the way it was originally shown in the theater.
Around 60 years ago, widescreen started to become the norm in theaters. As opposed to the “square box” 4×3 aspect ratio that originally dominated and then made the original television standard.
It is a wonderful thing to see – especially on TCM – to look up the aspect ratio on IMDB and enjoy the original on more and more movie channels.
Still – there are pay channels that slice off the ends to fully fit the modern 16×9 – but EPIX is showing original aspect ratios more and more now.
That little black bar at the top and bottom is not noticed on modern widescreen LCD screens when you see a film in its original anamorphic screen size of 2.39:1 or the old 2.20:1 or even what they called “Vista Vision” back in the 1950s with it’s more standard 1.85:1
What does this all mean?
We see what the cinematography was intended to be. Some movies are like seeing it for the first time !
We saw the new film “8MM” first edited to fit a 16×9 screen … and then EPIX started showing it in the original and that little extra put back on the sides made the whole movie – especially the train crash scene – really amazing – as it was intended …
TCM even shows widescreen on the standard def channels now …
Thanks to all those channels who have followed TCM’s lead … and shame on the 4×3 chop-up channels !
Sure – it’s HD broadcasting with all those flat screen TVs out there now that made it possible.
Wide screen TVs have created a surface area which now we are free from being locked into a full frame square box … the old CRT TVs (cathode ray tube) even lost more of the frame around the edges which materials made for TV broadcast had to allow for. The early TV screens were round like an oscilloscope.
Wide screen allows experimenting with split screens and using “negative space” as part of the pallet to draw the eye this way or that … a frame more for how the eye really sees … wide …
A new HD “print” has to be made for the new HD broadcast channels. So it’s hit and miss on some channels. 
But I can see where pan and scan will soon be a thing of the past – and will kill a cable channel if they continue to show those butchered movies.
For me – it’s better to watch 1930s 4×3 movies (the standard for that time) on TCM’s HD channel.
Yes – the image is a bit smaller keeping the pixel size normal … but the image is tighter – the contrast looks better and the audio is definitely much better than the standard definition channel. It could be the higher sampling rate or maybe they equalize better (seems bad frequencies like around 4KHz is notched down) – or a combination of both. Much better !
Now if we can just get the car into the living room –
… then I’d really relive the good old times enjoying movies !
Category: Tony Rollo Blog
