Talk:1187: Aspect Ratio

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 22:29, 18 March 2013 by 74.215.2.247 (talk)
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Oh man, I haven't read Animorphs since I was a pre-teen. That takes me back. The aspect-ratio joke made me giggle mildly, but that was secondary to me. 76.106.251.87 06:10, 18 March 2013 (UTC) - The problem I see here is that the vertical black bars are pillarbox and not letterbox. How did Randall manage to goof on this? Cybertronic (talk) 06:25, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

"causing the image to be horizontally squeezed and including the matte bars." I'd like elaboration on this bi, I'm not quite sure what's being said... Though it sounds like it'd appease Cybertronic's complaint. - Zergling_man 58.96.88.83 07:11, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Hey, uhm, I'm not familiar with the format I'm supposed to use here or anywhere, but I'd like to point out that in the comic image, it looks like that car is being transformed from a 16:9 format to a 4:3 format, and the black poles on the ends are like the black parts a widescreen user would get while watching a 4:3 video. -- ‎62.65.213.175 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

Yeah, I got the impression this had to do with the 'Postage Stamp' problem. Something that was originally made in widescreen is converted to 4:3 using a 'hard matte' process: it's actually converted into a 4:3 signal, and the black bars are part of the signal. This contrasts with the 'anamorphic widescreen' process, where the full widescreen signal is included, without the black matte bars, which are added by the television if needed, and only if needed. An anamorphic widescreen video would show up on a 4:3 television letterboxed, with the black matte bars on top and bottom: on a widescreen television, it would instead fill the TV, assuming the aspect ratio was the same
A hard matted letterbox, on the other hand, shows up the same on a 4:3 television as the anamorphic would, but when shown on a widescreen television, is still shown in 4:3, with additional matte bars (black or grey) on the sides, in addition to the 'hard' mattes on top and bottom. This leaves your widescreen television showing a widescreen signal at only a fraction of the television's full size, with most of the screen wasted on needless matte bars. -Graptor 74.215.2.247 22:29, 18 March 2013 (UTC)