Talk:Letterbox

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the letterboxing is often careless? care to elaborate?

[edit] Added image

Added the image (a while ago), so I removed the image request Last Avenue 18:37, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Not always effective

Most 16:9 is still new and that most of the time, letterboxing is fairly effective. The notable exception is on documentaries broadcast in 16:9 which include old footage broadcast in 4:3, as the directors don't care to change the aspect ratio throughout the whole program, so that in the segments originally broadcast in 4:3(remember, up until around 2004 99% of everything was broadcast in 4:3, and still about 35% is today) are actually shown in 16:9! This means that either a) The image is stretched so that everyone appears fat, or b) the top and bottom is cropped, so that some information is sometimes missing. Why can't the producers just pillarbox these segments? I don't mind when a program switches from 4:3 to 16:9 in a current news program, so why distort the old footage?

[edit] Etymology

I just talked to a coworker who, despite being familiar with the film format, had no idea that doors in some countries were fitted with letter boxes and therefore never knew where the name came from. Do you think we should mention it? Marnanel (talk) 15:47, 14 December 2007 (UTC)