Aspect Ratios

[Ben Saunders]

I’ve noticed two things I’ve watched recently – the Star Wars Mandalorian Trailer and the music video for Kiss & Tell by Angels & Airwaves – have been in SUPER wide aspect ratios. This looks utterly daft on the webpage and has hideous black bars taking up 1/3rd of the picture in fullscreen. What the fuck is going on? Is this where entertainment is headed in general, or are these just two special cases?

I remember the latest series of Doctor Who was in wider-than-16:9 as well, but it was only a bit wider, with the black bars being much smaller – it was still annoying as fuck, though. it’s especially annoying for somebody like me who watches everything on a laptop which doesn’t have an incredible amount of screen real estate to begin with.

Is this an attempt to make things look “more cinematic”, or “like a movie”, is it a genuine artistic thing, is it a marketing strategy for ultrawide monitors and televisions? Will we be seeing more and more entertainment in this absurd aspect ratio? Is your average consumer impressed by ultrawide content, or will they just fiddle with their remote until they can stretch the image to cover the black bars, like some people do when stretching 4:3 content to widescreen?

Topic

[Ben Saunders]

Looking back at just how god awful RTD Who looked is really nuts to me. Did it look that bad back then and we were just blind?

Series 1 of Doctor Who was spectacularly low budget, they never leave Earth’s orbit once because they couldn’t afford to. Series 12 feels comparatively low budget too but I don’t have any numbers on that one.

[tombow]

which is similar to the 4.3 square shape of pre 2000s tv.
Not to be that guy, but only because I’m a girl so I’m being that girl in exactly the way one might be that guy, but 4:3 TVs were still relatively common into the early 2010s and some long-running shows like The Simpsons didn’t switch over to high definition 16:9 until as late as 2009.

I didn’t actually buy my own widescreen tv untill 2017 or so. Before then I had my 90s crt tv. I’m a bit behind on tv. I don’t actually have a licence. I just watch dvds and streaming. If I want to watch something like Red Dwarf on dave/uk I go to my parent’s.
And for some reason I like a soft image. Like if I’m streaming something I often put it down to 360p or 240p even if I’m on fast internet. I find super-HD images too sharp and bright to focus on somehow.

[Nick R]

I just looked it up and apparently Doctor Who was shot and edited in 16:9 from 2005 (but framed so that everything would work in 4:3), but wasn’t HD until 2009. Which is interesting, I guess. No idea if they broadcast it in 16:9, probably?

In the UK, I think it was broadcast in 16:9 on digital SD channels, but on analogue SD channels it was in the slightly cropped compromise format of 14:9.

In my experience, there seems to be a difference between the UK and North America when it comes to how people talk about aspect ratios and resolutions. I often see Americans/Canadians treating “widescreen” and “HD” as interchangeable terms.

I think this happened because in the UK, 16:9 standard def CRTs (and 14:9 and 16:9 widescreen broadcasts) were common for several years before the switch to HD broadcasts, HD consoles (360/PS3), and flat-panel LCDs/plasmas. So long-running British TV series often made two switches: first to SD widescreen, then to HD widescreen years later. (e.g. HIGNFY, which switched to widescreen in 1999 and to HD in 2009.)

In America on the other hand, widescreen SD CRTs were not common, and a TV series often switched to widescreen at the same time as it switched to HD. Also, I think pan-and-scan fullscreen 4:3 DVDs continued to be released in Region 1 long after they’d stopped in the UK. So I think that contributed to a perception in America that widescreen TV wasn’t a thing before HDTV.

[Ben Saunders]

if I’m streaming something I often put it down to 360p or 240p even if I’m on fast internet. I find super-HD images too sharp and bright to focus on somehow.

Do not let Katydid hear this, she’ll go ballistic

Yeah Nick, also the Xbox 360 and probably the PS3 as well were capable of outputting non-HD, but widescreen images. In fact, a lot of PS2 games had widescreen support, now I mention it.

[Ben Paddon]

Series 1 of Doctor Who was spectacularly low budget, they never leave Earth’s orbit once because they couldn’t afford to

Hello! This actually isn’t true. The reason the first series sticks to Earth or Earth-adjacent stories was to ease a general audience into the premise. The idea that they somehow couldn’t afford to take a disused warehouse and pretend it’s on the planet Zog is a ridiculous one, considering they do exactly that the following year… and recycling a location they’d used for the first series, no less.

[Ben Paddon]

Alternatively: “Yeah, the first series had such a shoestring budget they couldn’t afford to film on location in space.”

[tombow]

I never really thought enough about how much Dr Who’s ’05 series was aimed toward easing “regular people” (ie non sci fi fans) into getting into a sci-fi show.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

What is bonkers about that idea is that they seem to think most people will be more comfortable with the time travel aspect of the show than the space travel aspect.

Whilst rime travel is a core principle of the show, if you can get your audience on board with that in episode 2, then surely by episode 3 you can add in the space travel aspect, which most non sci-fi fans will be more comfortable with

[Dave]

What is bonkers about that idea is that they seem to think most people will be more comfortable with the time travel aspect of the show than the space travel aspect.

I don’t think it’s that bonkers. Historical fiction and period dramas are commonplace and considered fairly accessible to audiences, so even with a time-travel device facilitating the story I think people are still able to engage quite easily with ideas that bear close resemblance to human experiences in the real world, even if set in a different era.

When aliens and other more explicitly fantastical elements are at the heart of the story, I think it’s a harder sell to mainstream audiences, and marks out the show more clearly as sci-fi.

[Spaceworm Jim]

Logged in to basically post what Dave said, so I guess I just want to say I agree entirely with the previous poster. I don’t think Davies’ Who looks awful though, it just looks “of its time” and I don’t think it’s fair to use that against it.

[Spaceworm Jim]

That last bit wasn’t aimed at you, Dave, I should’ve made that clearer.

[Flap Jack]

I’d wager that Doctor Who had a relatively high budget in 2005, for a BBC drama series. The budget may have gone up a bit during the RTD era due to its massive success, but I definitely recall Moffat saying that the budget was being squeezed and shrunk throughout his tenure. Blame the Tories for that one.

Ultimately “how good does the show look” and “how high is the show’s budget” are not directly proportional, because it depends on how the budget is allocated and how the costs of those visuals change over time. It’s plain to see that Doctor Who has a lower budget now than in 2005, because back then they were producing 14 episodes every year, and now they’re producing 11 episodes every 18 months. Making more episodes is far more expensive than making fewer episodes but prettier.

Also, Series 1 looks good to me! Just make sure you watch it in crisp 576/25i SD, as God intended. Not any of this newfangled, slowed down upconverted HD nonsense.

[Nick R]

I never really thought enough about how much Dr Who’s ’05 series was aimed toward easing “regular people” (ie non sci fi fans) into getting into a sci-fi show.

Yeah, I watched the 1996 TV movie for the first time recently, and it’s really interesting to compare it to Rose, and how many the things RTD did differently to make it easier for an unfamiliar audience to get into it:

• The TV movie begins with an infodump voiceover. Presumably the intention was to reassure old fans that this was a continuation, while doing what the original Star Wars opening crawl did: namedropping several strange SF names in quick succession that new viewers would hopefully find tantalising and intriguing. But in reality, I bet it put off a lot of people who were not already predisposed to like sci-fi.
• TV movie: presented mainly from the Doctor’s POV. Rose: presented from the companion’s POV.
• TV movie: starts off with the last Doctor’s last moments. Rose: clean start with a new Doctor.

[Dave]

TV movie: starts off with the last Doctor’s last moments. Rose: clean start with a new Doctor.

This was always the big mistake, I think. Even just slightly restructuring the TV movie to start with Eight and then show Seven’s last moments as a flashback later would have helped. As it is, you’re introduced to your hero character who then turns into someone else partway through, which isn’t a great way to get newcomers on board.

[Ben Saunders]

As an eleven year old child, I thought the opening to the TV Movie was incredible. Daleks? The Master? Rassilon? Regeneration limit? Seven’s regeneration? Check, check, check, check. Now, I realise that movie is a total clusterfuck of throwing everything at the wall and hoping it will stick. The person behind it was a total fan and wanted to make a really authentic continuation of the show for fans, since it was fans who had kept the show alive until then, but the studio wanted it to be a normie-friendly reboot. So they tried to do both, and gave us neither.

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, introducing the audience to The Doctor, The Master, the Daleks, the TARDIS and regeneration in the first ten minutes probably wasn’t the best idea. Plus the narration by a different Doctor than the one that’s on screen, which is pretty confusing.

I have a lot of respect for how determined Segal was to get the TV movie made, and how he stuck firm on certain things like casting Paul McGann, keeping it an explicit continuation etc., even if the end result was a mess and he tried flying before he could walk with regards to reinventing The Doctor’s family history. Philip Segal is like the non-dickhead version of Ian Levine.

And clearly people still have a lot of fondness for the TV movie, if Big Finish are getting Eric Roberts back for ‘Masterful’.

Swinging back to the actual topic, the TV movie is in 4:3. Even though it was shot on film in the mid 90s, obviously it was edited on video for TV screens of the time. I guess theoretically a wide-screen version could be made, if the original masters (lower case m) still exist and they want to pay for the film to be re-edited from scratch and for visual effects to be recreated.

Then again, that could lead to a Buffy effect where you ruin the composition of shots and see crew members and filming equipment at the edges of the screen. Maybe they could compromise and do a true HD version, but still in 4:3.

[Ben Saunders]

I believe the TV Movie is one of those cases where all of the special effects were done in 4:3, so an HD version is prohibitively expensive. Either that or they lost the master film. Google search doesn’t fucking work anymore, so I can’t find anything from that. If you google anything that has both “Doctor Who” and “resolution”, you’ll just get results about the episode. No matter how many quotes you use. It never used to be like this.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

“doctor who” “resolution” “no lower case r” “no not the episode” “picture quality” “pixel numbers” “no I said not the episode”

[Flap Jack]

Yeah, I don’t know where to get concrete information about the archive situation for the TV movie, unfortunately. All I know, I learned from a Blu-ray Dot Com forum thread about the announcement and then release of the Blu-ray version.

The upshot was that folks were not happy that the Blu-ray was just an HD upconversion, and there was much speculation about whether it was lack of the original film reels that was preventing a “true” HD release or just the lack of a Star Trek: The Next Generation-sized budget.

[Ben Saunders]

“This movie was shot on 35mm film, transferred to 525i60 Digital Betacam and edited. The finished master is 525i60 Digital Betacam. The BBC owns 525i60 upconversion of this on Digital Betacam and on D3 Videotape. Universal Pictures only holds film trims in its archive.”
TARDIS Wikia

[Flap Jack]

Ah, should have known to check there. So Universal only have the film for the parts that didn’t actually end up in the movie. Helpful.

And the finished master is on Digital Betacam, but it didn’t even get a betamax release? What a waste.

[Ben Saunders]

The Blu-Ray is also apparently just an upscale of the 480p -broadcast- version. Not even the higher quality version which exists in the BBC archives. Great

[Moonlight]

Dave is apparently broadcasting BBC-era Dwarf reruns stretched into 16:9. It sucks. The eternal question of course is whether cropping or stretching is worse.

Stretching is absolutely fucking hideous every second it’s onscreen, but you don’t miss out on any of the picture.

Cropping tends to be fairly hideous too since every single shot ends up framed so unreasonably tightly it triggers claustrophobia I didn’t even know I had. On top of that sometimes important details end up chopped out of the frame.

Can we just agree that both suck, and broadcasting 4:3 shows with pillarboxing is the obvious solution that only a complete dipshit would object to?

[Ben Saunders]

Wait until AI is advanced enough to stretch things naturally, extrapolating surroundings etc. So, never

[Dave]

The eternal question of course is whether cropping or stretching is worse.

At least with stretching you can sometimes alter TV settings and unstretch it.

[Flap Jack]

Wow, I can understand cropping to widescreen for clips in a documentary to some extent, but doing this just for general repeats? Appalling.

Folks pushed for so long just to get them to stop showing Marooned Remastered. Now it feels like a waste of effort, if they’re just going to do this to all BBC-era episodes anyway.

It’s frustrating to argue against, because the demographic that will actively complain about this are mostly the ones who have the DVDs/Blu rays on their shelves so don’t exactly need to watch Dave, and the casual viewers will just assume that it always looked like shit.

[RunawayTrain]

Dave is apparently broadcasting BBC-era Dwarf reruns stretched into 16:9. It sucks.

I watched BTL on Dave and it was 4:3. Actually I don’t remember seeing any stretching of BBC-era Dwarf on Dave in the last few months (except the cropping in the documentary).

The TVs in our house are set to ‘Auto’ for this reason, to show things in the actual aspect ratio broadcast rather than arbitrarily stretching everything. Yesterday – also part of UKTV – tend to show other old sitcoms in original aspect ratio too (e.g. ‘Allo ‘Allo).

[Moonlight]

This was an online feed. There was no TV involved to set to anything.

[RunawayTrain]

This was an online feed. There was no TV involved to set to anything.

Ah right. Yes I think someone mentioned on another thread that via UKTV Play it was a different aspect ratio – very odd. I know nothing about the software that goes into this but I do know they had issues in the past with subtitles for on-demand when the broadcast versions were fine (took them a couple of years to sort out), because of technical differences, so maybe there’s also a difference in what aspect ratio it can handle?

It’s frustrating to argue against, because the demographic that will actively complain about this are mostly the ones who have the DVDs/Blu rays on their shelves so don’t exactly need to watch Dave, and the casual viewers will just assume that it always looked like shit.

Ugh, yes that’s true :(

[tombow]

wow. I had no idea the Mandolorian episodes were cinemascope-wide. Is it the first ever tv show made for home viewing to be that super-wide?

[Ben Saunders]

They’re literally trying to make that look like a movie, even moreso than other TV shows which normally do that kind of thing, since it’s Star Wars and everything. I read yesterday that the idea behind the 2:1 ratio of Doctor Who et al is to give television and movie producers a compromise between 16:9 and the ultrawide of cinema, to make the two in exactly the same ratio. Maybe one day everyone will have a 2:1 TV and black bars will be a thing of the past.

Also, The Mandalorian is rendered with permanent black bars to fit on a 16:9 screen, apparently, rather than leaving that up to the player. Also, is the Mandalorian “a TV show?” Does it ever air on TV?

[tombow]

Everyone I know who has streaming services like Netflix or Disney Plus watches them through a tv, laptop maybe if they’re a student or something. It’s home viewing anyway I guess, even if it’s not called TV. Maybe I should wonder if it’s the widest ever content made for the home viewer rather than the theater/cinema viewer.

Anyway …I can’t imagine they’ll ever be a standard one ratio for films, not with rebellious arty directors wanting to use the different varied cameras/film of the past. I can see it maybe being like, the norm, but with exceptions, like Tarantino demanding to use film when most films use digital, etc.

[Flap Jack]

We need to just accept that “TV show” as a term is now broad enough to include programming that is not necesarily carried on a television signal or watched on a television set, just as films don’t need to be shot on film, video doesn’t need to be on a videotape, and comics aren’t necessarily funny.

[tombow]

We need to just accept that “TV show” as a term is now broad enough to include programming that is not necesarily carried on a television signal or watched on a television set, just as films don’t need to be shot on film, video doesn’t need to be on a videotape, and comics aren’t necessarily funny.

are novels still novel?

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Also, is the Mandalorian “a TV show?” Does it ever air on TV?

I saw an article refer to streaming shows as something like “On Demand, Over the Internet Streaming shows” or something ridiculous like that.

Flap Jack is right, just because the method of delivery has changed, doesn’t make it any less a TV show.

(also worth remembering television is “pictures sent over a long distance” or however it translates, so the same thing is happening with internet video.)

An album on Spotify is still a record, even when the primary method for delivery hasn’t been vinyl records since the 80s.

[Ben Saunders]

An album on Spotify is still a record

ok boomer

It’s always funny to me when a band from the 90s says they have a new record out. No you don’t.

I’m going to call them ODOTIS shows now.

[Dave]

A record doesn’t equal vinyl, it literally means a record of the performance recorded. A CD is a record.

[Ben Saunders]

I mean sure if you want to sound 50

[Dave]

Oh, no debate that it’s an old-fashioned term. I’m just talking about accurate use of language. The word record only became synonymous with vinyl because that was the primary format for records at the time.

[Author]

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