Chaos Angel wrote:Just a quick question. Does anyone know why the black bars are larger in letterboxing than they are in anamorphic video that is sized for standard-resolution TVs? I would imagine that they'd be the same size, is why I ask, and I'm curious.
Because anamorphic video is wider than TV video. It's closer to the movie aspect ratio already, so there's less adjustment necessary.
Your TV has an aspect ratio of 1.33 (4:3). Movies vary, but typically have an aspect ratio of 2.25. If you show a movie in letterbox format on a TV screen and you size it so the movie is the same width as the screen, then it will cover 1.33/2.25=0.591 fraction of the height of the screen; you need your black bars to cover roughly 41% of the screen.
Anamorphic video has an aspect ratio of 1.78 (16:9). If you show that same 2.25 movie sized to be the same width as an anamorphic screen, then it will cover 1.78/2.25=0.789 fraction of the height of the screen; you need black bars to cover roughly 21% of the screen, or about half as much as for letterbox.