I hate CinemaScope

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psycopathicteen
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I hate CinemaScope

Post by psycopathicteen »

If there's any movie marketing gimmick I'm tired of seeing it's CinemaScope. It's stupid and distracting, everything looks tiny, and that extra room on the sides of the screen is always wasted on showing walls, and it always feels like vertical detail gets cut off. Seeing a tall castle is nowhere near as impressive if they don't show all of it without making it seem like it's very far away.

DVDs are even worse. So many DVD movies get altered to fit into extra wide aspect ratios they were never intended to be in. Cut off more vertical picture, or make everybody fat.
DementedPurple
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by DementedPurple »

Yes, I agree. I guess it would be kind of cool in movie theaters, but it's still utterly pointless anyway because most of the time, people focus their attention on the main characters that have importance to the scene. I mean, who honestly has a CinemaScope TV anyway? When I watch a CinemaScope TV at best-buy, I can never tell the difference between that and a normal flat TV. Why make DVDs with cinemascope? for most people, all it does is add black bars on the top and bottom of their screen because like I said earlier, almost nobody has a cinemascope TV.
psycopathicteen
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by psycopathicteen »

I miss playing VHS on CRTs where everything was fullscreen. Blu-rays are good too because they're made specifically for HDTVs, but I don't have a Blu-ray player.

DVDs are a pain in the butt having to constantly fiddle with the remote to make the picture fit. It's a shame that most DVDs end up having a worse vertical resolution than standard definition TV.
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mikejmoffitt
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by mikejmoffitt »

What are you trying to refer to when you say "Cinemascope"? The ancient capturing/projection method to get anamorphic widescreen content on a little square piece of film? Or are you just referring to "ultra-wide" TVs, or curved ones? Or 2:39:1 aspect ratio?

Full-screen VHS movies were almost always pan-and-scan croppings of the original print. It's nice to fill a screen, but I don't miss that practice at the expense of parts of the original shot.
lidnariq
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by lidnariq »

(wikipedia seems to think that the CinemaScope trademark was only used in the 1950s. I have no idea what the current trade name is for ultra-wide-screen formats)

VHS was low enough resolution that pan-and-scan probably was worth it. DVDs, on the other hand ... probably not.
psycopathicteen
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by psycopathicteen »

The interlacing is way more noticeable. You only have about 136 lines per field.
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TmEE
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by TmEE »

ok, so it means non anamorphic widescreen.
tepples
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by tepples »

Anamorphic scope is about 180 lines per NTSC field, same as non-anamorphic widescreen.
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TmEE
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by TmEE »

Then I'm confused. Over here pretty much all TVs have means to reduce scan height (either via SCART 4:3/16:9 signal, info in Cvideo and via manual aspect ratio control), and what is referred to as anamorphic widescreen content over here uses up all the lines in video signal without wasting any on the black bars that way. Some TVs can do the reverse too, increase scan height to make bordered image fill the screen (function I sometimes needed during transitioning to digital broadcast when 4:3 and widescreen signalling wasn't quite consistent yet).
lidnariq
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by lidnariq »

non-anamorphic 2.4:1 that's been letterboxed to 4:3 NTSC should be 124 scanlines per field, AFAICT?

I mean, 224 ×4÷3 = 298; 298÷2.4 = 124.

180 scanlines per field on 4:3 NTSC would be 16:9 (298÷180) .... so if the source material is 12:5 and it's not anamorphic and it's taking 180 scanlines per field, that has to be cropped from the 12:5 master... unless I'm missing something.
tepples
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by tepples »

180 lines on 16:9 NTSC would be 64:27, or 2.37:1
lidnariq
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by lidnariq »

16:9 NTSC is anamorphic.
tepples
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by tepples »

Which is why scope DAR isn't quite as much of a problem in the DVD era, when monitors are expected to offer an anamorphic mode, than it was in the VHS era, which was practically all 4:3 all the time.

But I wouldn't recommend making an NES game in scope DAR. Super NES maybe, but only in mode 5 or interlaced 7. In mode 5, at least, you at least get 512x256 pixels.
psycopathicteen
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by psycopathicteen »

Why aren't anamorphic DVDs more popular? All the DVDs I can find have thick black bars.
lidnariq
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Re: I hate CinemaScope

Post by lidnariq »

That should be a confiugration option in your DVD player...

All the widescreen DVDs that I have are 720x480, and have a logical bit marking whether the content is DAR 16:9 or DAR 4:3...

Oh, but you're referring to the extra bonus letterboxing for 12:5 content. Yeah, that does appear to be baked in.
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