• Trying to watch BBC content on Netflix - 2.39:1 aspect ratio

    From Sylvia Else@sylvia@email.invalid to aus.tv on Wed Sep 14 22:25:10 2022
    From Newsgroup: aus.tv

    Why on Earth would someone make a TV program with a 2.39 to 1 aspect
    ratio? It means that on a conventional 16:9 screen, it's using a shade
    under three-quarters of the screen, leaving the rest black.

    For some reason, this does something to my eyes, and I cannot watch it.

    Some producer fancies himself as a maker of wide-screen movies. Well, he
    needs a good dose of reality.

    FWIW it's worth this was the BBC production "Collateral". I can't tell
    you whether it's any good.

    Sylvia.
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  • From Peter Jason@pj@jostle.com to aus.tv on Thu Sep 15 07:15:37 2022
    From Newsgroup: aus.tv

    On Wed, 14 Sep 2022 22:25:10 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
    wrote:

    Why on Earth would someone make a TV program with a 2.39 to 1 aspect
    ratio? It means that on a conventional 16:9 screen, it's using a shade
    under three-quarters of the screen, leaving the rest black.

    For some reason, this does something to my eyes, and I cannot watch it.

    Some producer fancies himself as a maker of wide-screen movies. Well, he >needs a good dose of reality.

    FWIW it's worth this was the BBC production "Collateral". I can't tell
    you whether it's any good.

    Sylvia.

    Has your TV remote an ''expand'' function to fill the screen at the
    expense of a little distortion? Mine has.
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  • From Sylvia Else@sylvia@email.invalid to aus.tv on Thu Sep 15 15:05:43 2022
    From Newsgroup: aus.tv

    On 15-Sept-22 7:15 am, Peter Jason wrote:
    On Wed, 14 Sep 2022 22:25:10 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
    wrote:

    Why on Earth would someone make a TV program with a 2.39 to 1 aspect
    ratio? It means that on a conventional 16:9 screen, it's using a shade
    under three-quarters of the screen, leaving the rest black.

    For some reason, this does something to my eyes, and I cannot watch it.

    Some producer fancies himself as a maker of wide-screen movies. Well, he
    needs a good dose of reality.

    FWIW it's worth this was the BBC production "Collateral". I can't tell
    you whether it's any good.

    Sylvia.

    Has your TV remote an ''expand'' function to fill the screen at the
    expense of a little distortion? Mine has.

    Doesn't appear so.

    Sylvia.
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  • From Computer Nerd Kev@not@telling.you.invalid to aus.tv on Thu Sep 15 18:14:07 2022
    From Newsgroup: aus.tv

    Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid> wrote:
    Why on Earth would someone make a TV program with a 2.39 to 1 aspect
    ratio? It means that on a conventional 16:9 screen, it's using a shade
    under three-quarters of the screen, leaving the rest black.

    An interesting question. 2.39:1 is an anamorphic format (eg.
    CinemaScope), which has apparantly become more accessible for lower
    budget productions since modern digital movie cameras have higher
    light sensitivity than film and therefore don't have the high
    lighting requirements that anamorphic lenses demand with film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format

    The lens characteristics apply a few optical effects to the
    final image which are now associated with a particular cinematic
    look, and that's what these TV directors apparantly tend to aspire
    to:
    https://neiloseman.com/the-rise-of-anamorphic-lenses-in-tv/

    That notes the approach of filming in anamorphic format, but then
    cropping the final film to 16:9, just for the sake of the
    cenematic-style lens characteristics.

    The show you watched apparantly took this further and decided to
    use the original 2.39:1 aspect ratio that they shot with, for TV.
    Which indeed seems like a silly waste of everyone's screen area,
    but actually it turns out that anamorphic TVs were introduced in
    2010 as a high-end option for movie enthusiasts. They're known as
    21:9, so that it sounds bigger than 16:9, presumably: https://www.eoshd.com/news/philips-release-2-39-1-anamorphic-tv-with-2560x1080p-resolution/

    But based on this Wikipedia page, that fad seems to have only
    lasted a few years and all the major manufacturers have ditched
    their anamorphic TV lines now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21:9_aspect_ratio#Flat_panel_TV

    However the current fad, and this one is completely beyond my
    understanding, is apparantly anamorphic smartphone screens, with
    many models released over the last couple of years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21:9_aspect_ratio#Smartphones

    So maybe enough people are watching stuff on their smartphones now
    that it convinced that director to keep the anamorphic format
    instead of chopping the image into something sensible? In any case,
    there's an interesting background to all this.

    For some reason, this does something to my eyes, and I cannot watch it.

    SBS broadcasts some movies in their original aspect ratio, or at
    least something 'narrower' than 16:9. I noticed it recently with
    this Chinese film on SBS World Movies, which IMDB says was 2.35:1:. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11448076/technical

    I don't have any particular trouble with it except by things just
    being smaller. I don't think the effect is worth the sacrifice of
    screen area though (at least for that movie, and most others), but
    it may be better than important things getting cropped out if
    nobody's willing to do a pan-and-scan type conversion.

    FWIW it's worth this was the BBC production "Collateral". I can't tell
    you whether it's any good.

    I mainly stick to the detective shows that do one crime per
    episode. These ones that go on and on for ages, exploring far more
    sub-stories and characters than I can remember between episode
    viewings, then have some new bit of evidence pop up at the end,
    rendering 90% of the prior content irrelevent anyway, well they're
    not my sort of thing. But unfortunately they seem to be the current
    trend (possibly due to streaming services - I still watch this
    stuff on broadcast TV myself so I can't watch all the episodes in a
    row, not that I'd want to anyway).
    --
    __ __
    #_ < |\| |< _#
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  • From Trevor Wilson@trevor@rageaudio.com.au to aus.tv on Thu Sep 15 19:49:26 2022
    From Newsgroup: aus.tv

    On 15/09/2022 3:05 pm, Sylvia Else wrote:
    On 15-Sept-22 7:15 am, Peter Jason wrote:
    On Wed, 14 Sep 2022 22:25:10 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
    wrote:

    Why on Earth would someone make a TV program with a 2.39 to 1 aspect
    ratio? It means that on a conventional 16:9 screen, it's using a shade
    under three-quarters of the screen, leaving the rest black.

    For some reason, this does something to my eyes, and I cannot watch it.

    Some producer fancies himself as a maker of wide-screen movies. Well, he >>> needs a good dose of reality.

    FWIW it's worth this was the BBC production "Collateral". I can't tell
    you whether it's any good.

    Sylvia.

    Has your TV remote an ''expand'' function to fill the screen at the
    expense of a little distortion?-a-a Mine has.

    Doesn't appear so.

    Sylvia.

    **What is the brand and model of your TV set?
    --
    This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus software. www.avast.com
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  • From Peter Jason@pj@jostle.com to aus.tv on Fri Sep 16 07:10:03 2022
    From Newsgroup: aus.tv

    On Thu, 15 Sep 2022 15:05:43 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
    wrote:

    On 15-Sept-22 7:15 am, Peter Jason wrote:
    On Wed, 14 Sep 2022 22:25:10 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
    wrote:

    Why on Earth would someone make a TV program with a 2.39 to 1 aspect
    ratio? It means that on a conventional 16:9 screen, it's using a shade
    under three-quarters of the screen, leaving the rest black.

    For some reason, this does something to my eyes, and I cannot watch it.

    Some producer fancies himself as a maker of wide-screen movies. Well, he >>> needs a good dose of reality.

    FWIW it's worth this was the BBC production "Collateral". I can't tell
    you whether it's any good.

    Sylvia.

    Has your TV remote an ''expand'' function to fill the screen at the
    expense of a little distortion? Mine has.

    Doesn't appear so.

    Sylvia.

    My TV is a 2006 Sony, quite old. Perhaps yours has the function, but
    difficult to access?
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  • From Yosemite Sam@felix@goaway.com to aus.tv on Mon Sep 26 17:40:14 2022
    From Newsgroup: aus.tv

    On 15/09/2022 7:15 am, Peter Jason wrote:
    On Wed, 14 Sep 2022 22:25:10 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
    wrote:

    Why on Earth would someone make a TV program with a 2.39 to 1 aspect
    ratio? It means that on a conventional 16:9 screen, it's using a shade
    under three-quarters of the screen, leaving the rest black.

    For some reason, this does something to my eyes, and I cannot watch it.

    Some producer fancies himself as a maker of wide-screen movies. Well, he
    needs a good dose of reality.

    FWIW it's worth this was the BBC production "Collateral". I can't tell
    you whether it's any good.

    Sylvia.
    Has your TV remote an ''expand'' function to fill the screen at the
    expense of a little distortion? Mine has.


    my TV has that function sans distortion. you just lose some of the
    content on each side as you zoom to fill the screen. However, I don't
    fill the screen completely. I leave a bit of black at top and bottom to minimize to some extent the loss of content from the sides.
    --
    https://tinyurl.com/Yosemite-Sam

    FUCK PUTIN!!


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  • From Peter Jason@pj@jostle.com to aus.tv on Tue Sep 27 06:43:49 2022
    From Newsgroup: aus.tv

    On Mon, 26 Sep 2022 17:40:14 +1000, Yosemite Sam <felix@goaway.com>
    wrote:

    On 15/09/2022 7:15 am, Peter Jason wrote:
    On Wed, 14 Sep 2022 22:25:10 +1000, Sylvia Else <sylvia@email.invalid>
    wrote:

    Why on Earth would someone make a TV program with a 2.39 to 1 aspect
    ratio? It means that on a conventional 16:9 screen, it's using a shade
    under three-quarters of the screen, leaving the rest black.

    For some reason, this does something to my eyes, and I cannot watch it.

    Some producer fancies himself as a maker of wide-screen movies. Well, he >>> needs a good dose of reality.

    FWIW it's worth this was the BBC production "Collateral". I can't tell
    you whether it's any good.

    Sylvia.
    Has your TV remote an ''expand'' function to fill the screen at the
    expense of a little distortion? Mine has.


    my TV has that function sans distortion. you just lose some of the
    content on each side as you zoom to fill the screen. However, I don't
    fill the screen completely. I leave a bit of black at top and bottom to >minimize to some extent the loss of content from the sides.
    Actually mine is the same with a "wide", "normal" function.
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