Discovery filmed in 2:1 aspect ratio

[Jedman67]

Many people hate black bars at all costs!

^Racists!

 

[Qonundrum]

Wasn't 1.79:1 16:9 TV designed to get around letterboxing while being a middle-of-the-road workaround for the old 4:3 aspect ratio (whose unaltered frames require pillarboxing or stretching or chopping off the top and bottom of frames that might contain detail if a director is making full use of what's in front of the camera's aperture in that aspect ratio)? Then again, even 1.85:1 films get cropped instead of letterboxed anyway ( *rolleyes*)...

 

[LocutusCrusher]

You might be thinking of something like 14:9

 

[Shalashaska]

OK -- so I'm now watching the BBC America HD broadcast of TNG that sparked my original comment (BBC America has a July 4th holiday TNG marathon going on right now). The aspect ratio issue is almost is as I remember it.

That is to say, on BBC America's SD channel, they are showing it in 4:3. However, it is simultaneously being shown on BBC America's HD channel, but the HD picture itself has a wider aspect ratio than the SD. It is not quite a 16:9 picture -- as there is still some thin pillar-boxing on the HD channel -- but the picture is wider than a 4:3 aspect ratio.

When I flip back and forth between the SD channel and the HD channel, I can see what they did, which was (as your link indicated) to zoom the picture slightly to try to fill the HD 16:9 screen, but (as I mentioned above) the zooming does not quite fill the 16:9 aspect ratio -- hence the need for some pillar-box bars, but ones that are relative thin. However, that zooming also comes at the cost of cropping the top and bottom of the picture. And (importantly) the HD channel's image is NOT showing more of the image to the left and the right compared to the SD channel's 4:3 image -- the image on the left and right of the picture is the same on both channels.

The result is that the HD channel image might be wider relative to height than the SD channel image, but the SD channel actually shows more of the image, even though it is in 4:3.

That's different. That's zooming in to a wholly different aspect ratio. The Blu-rays are just framed differently, still 4:3, same aspect ratio, but not the same framing as what's on the DVDs.

Not necessarily better or worse, just different. That BBC America broadcast is objectively worse though. That's the station cropping the image because people think black bars means less picture information (or they don't care and just want to fill their screen, creative intent be damned), when it's really the opposite.

Wasn't 1.79:1 16:9 TV designed to get around letterboxing while being a middle-of-the-road workaround for the old 4:3 aspect ratio (whose unaltered frames require pillarboxing or stretching or chopping off the top and bottom of frames that might contain detail if a director is making full use of what's in front of the camera's aperture in that aspect ratio)? Then again, even 1.85:1 films get cropped instead of letterboxed anyway ( *rolleyes*)...

The difference between 1.85 and 1.78 is really small, most wouldn't notice it.

A lot of 1.85 films are actually opened up a small amount to 1.78 on Blu-ray, so that you're seeing more of the picture, not less. Similar to what Kubrick did opening up many of his full-aperture films to 1.37/1.33 on some VHS/DVD home video releases. That was much more pronounced/severe though.