Computer
Cowboy

No more "Black Bars"

Film is for the most part shot in one of the following aspect ratios: 1:85:1 known as Academy Flat or just Flat and 2.35:1 known as CinemaScope or just Scope. There are some variations and exceptions but most of them are close to Flat.

HDTV paired with Blu-ray is a great way to deliver film to the home, but letter boxing of 2.35:1 content remains a constant annoyance. The reason behind the letterboxing when watching films on an HDTV is actually a good one. When a film is transferred to Blu-ray it is presented in it’s original aspect ratio or OAR for short. The film creator chose an aspect ratio for a reason and if the aspect ratio is changed it can drastically alter the viewing. For example Steven Spielberg chose to shot Jurassic Park as flat to make the dinosaurs appear taller, if he had chosen to shoot it in scope the effect would not have been the same. When DVD and SDTV was the norm many films came in two versions, sometimes on the same disc sometimes separate releases. The Full Screen version was produced with a method called pan and scan. The pan and scan process is a way for the film to be cropped to fit on a 4:3/1.33:1 SDTV. The effect of pan and scan on a 2.35:1 film is disastrous. Large amounts of the frame are thrown away in the process. So for all intents and purposes OAR is a great improvement over pan and scan.

The 16:9 HDTV aspect ratio works out to 1.78:1 which is very close to 1.85:1 also known as Academy Flat or just Flat. Did you know that when you watch Flat movies on an HDTV there is also a small bit of letterboxing? It is not usually noticeable because it is such a small amount of the screen or because over-scan crops the image so you lose a little bit of the picture on the left and the right as well as the letterboxing on the top and the bottom.

CinemaScope content on a standard HDTV is a totally different story. When viewing a Scope film on a 1080P display you will see a 140 pixel tall black bar on the top and the bottom of the screen. You lose about 25% of the viewing area of the screen to the letterboxing. So what can be done you might ask? There are two solutions to this problem and unfortunately both of them involve not viewing CinemaScope on your current HDTV.

The easiest way to view CinemaScope in it’s OAR at home is to buy a 21:9 HDTV from Phillips. There are however a few problems with this solution. The 21:9 HDTVs are around $5K and they aren’t really available in the states. The 21:9 TVs also solve one problem while creating another. Scope will use the full panel of a 21:9 TV but 16:9 or Flat content will display massive amounts of Pillar-Boxing. I don’t recommend getting a 21:9 TV unless you have lots of money and really like Scope.

The most affordable, practical and awesome way to view Scope films and Flat films at home is to set up a front projection system with an Anamorphic lens. Then it becomes as simple as moving the Anamorphic lens into the light path when you what to view Scope films and leaving the lens out of the light path when you want to view Flat films or standard HDTV content. There are a couple of caveats. The material needs some preprocessing before being projected through an Anamorphic lens. There are a few ways to accomplish this. Using an HTPC you can crop the black bars out and stretch the remaining content so that everything is tall and skinny. When the tall skinny image passes through the lens the proper geometry of the image is restored and you have an extra wide CinemaScope image. There are also two other possible ways to do this preprocessing. You can either use scaler between the source device and the projector or you can use the projector to do the scaling if the projector supports it. I prefer the HTPC route because it offers the most flexibility. I can even watch 3D Blu-ray in CinemaScope using the HTPC method.