I can't tell you how many times I was at the store back in the day and excited to see a new movie available but having to make sure the one I was picking up was the widescreen version. How were full screen movies even acceptable? Why were they even options? With TV's now, we don't have to worry about accidentally buying the full screen version, it's just the standard.
shareThe last 1.37:1 movie I saw in a theater (as close to TV 4:3 as there is in movies) was a a screening of the original, pre-Raymond Burr Godzilla. That was around 10 years ago. Yes it was quaint seeing a movie in the same aspect ratio as a "regular" pre-widescreen TV.
Yes, I recall (not so long ago in the scheme of things) what you describe. Widescreen HDTVs were horribly expensive as little as 15 years ago.
I was never sure why TV's took so long to move away from 4:3 after films started going widescreen by 1953. But even so, the idea of cropping a film to fit 4:3 TV's is just a strange decision. All movies should have been released only in widescreen.
shareI don't know all the reasons, but I imagine one reason is the technology required to make a TV show widescreen. TV programming was more shows than theatrical release movies. And people with small sets would have a hard time viewing a widescreen movie with black bars on top and on bottom. I'm not defending it, only saying why.
shareI used to hate Christmas at my cousin's house because we would watch a movie every year, but another cousin would always complain about widescreen. We'd have to watch a different movie that we didn't want to watch that was full screen just to stop hearing him complain.
shareI'm old enough to remember black and white tv's still being around, as in most people's second TV in the kitchen etc was a small black and white one - without a remote control!
shareI knew a few people who had those. It came with the bunny ears.
shareYep and they could be a real bitch to adjust. Often you would get the best reception when you stood there holding them!
shareIn late 1960s NYC, and I think even into the 70s, you got cable tv for the perfect reception, not cable channels. I don't remember how many cable channels even existed.
shareIn Australia we didn't have pay tv till the early 90's I think. Some people had satellite before then, but it wasn't common.
shareWhen I was a little kid in the early 70s growing up in Key West, FL we had cable TV since we were too far from Miami to pick up the wireless broadcasts. But we only had the three main networks and a local channel. Then in the later 70s we started to get some independent Miami stations, WTCG (now TBS), and HBO through cable. We were able to pick up radio stations from Miami.
shareYou’re looking at this through a modern lens, and that is coloring your judgement a bit.
However, go back in time just 20 years and things were a LOT different. Today, the average television size in an American home is 50 inches at the 16:9 ratio. In 2000, the average TV size was 27 inches at the 3:4 ratio. A great majority were also standard definition, so the clarity of the picture was no where what we are used to today.
Given those limitations, most people did not want to give up a quarter of their screen for the letterboxing bars to have a tiny, blurry picture just to see a movie in widescreen format. The pan and scan versions filled the screen, making the central action larger. Yes, you lost some of the movie, but it was a sacrifice many were willing to make. I knew many people who hated watching letterboxed films back in the day.
With modern LCD technology, producing extremely large 16:9 screens is no longer a challenge and, as such, they are affordable for most. Where a decent 43” widescreen would have cost thousands just two decades ago, you can now pick up a 50” HD LCD for just a few hundred bucks, so trying to appeal to those stuck with tiny 3:4 sets just isn’t an issue anymore.
But it wasn’t that long ago where the vast majority of home viewers were watching 27” 3:4 standard def sets, so the movie industry catered to their preference, which was to have every inch of that small screen filled.
I was actually thinking about the first TV I bought when I was 15 that was 14 inches. I had a similar one at a cottage, too. Maybe it was the film lover in me, but I refused to go pan and scan. The close-ups were weird and the panning was blurry and jarring. I think having black bars on the top and bottom is the far better option.
shareI preferred the widescreen versions, too, which is nice because all the old movies I own on DVD now fit on to my modern screens perfectly!
However, the number of folks who were film lovers was small compared to the general population, and the studios are always going to release versions that are going to appeal to the largest numbers. Once digital media formats were released, it was nice that studios did make the extra effort to release movies in both formats, so you did have a choice. I even have a good number of older DVD’s that came with both versions on the disk, standard on one side, widescreen on the other.
That's because most tv at the time were small. I remember I had a 32" tv back then and it's already looked big. My friends had 21" or 28".
My first flat wide screen LCD TV was a 32" too and it's actually smaller than my old 32" tube. I only used it to play Xbox 360. I still prefer the 4:3 CRT for movies because DVDs are still released with 4:3 option.
Only when I got a 42" LCD I retired my old tube because now almost every movie already got widescreen and the LCD is finally bigger than my old CRT.
Let's face it. The aspect ratio doesn't matter. The only thing matter is the quality of the movies themselves. I would rather watch good fun movie in 4:3 than a boring movie in the widest of the widest screen format.
I had a 14 incher (I'm talking about a TV, sicko) and would still prefer widescreen over pan and scan. I hated seeing extreme awkward close-ups of faces, and I hated the weird blur when they would pan just to get the rest of the image.
shareI bet you can't believe theaters have been cropping film to 1.85:1 for 50 years (prior to digital). 35mm is 1.37:1, and the projector has a metal bars top and bottom for widescreen. Anamorphic is different hack.
Full screen DVDs were often mastered without the cropping, so you see more than the director intended.
I know directors like James Cameron and Kubrick preferred the pan and scan versions of the films.
shareI actually miss full-screen and always preferred it over widescreen. Whenever I bought DVDs I tried to make sure I was getting the full-screen version. It was an uphill battle because widescreen seemed to be gaining ground against it, which was really frustrating to me.
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