Post #1167532
2026-04-14 22:19 UTC
Replies (7)
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@Alien_Sunset@dice.camp 2026-04-15 12:11
@beadsland@beige.party @beandreams@friendhole.social I wonder if @ajroach42@retro.social knows much this?
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@beadsland@beige.party 2026-04-17 21:34
Related question. For those who were watching television in the 70s and 80s, who were not living in the United States at the time, was the broadcast of anamorphic widescreen movies at 4:3 something you remember from the era? As a recap of the thread thus far, anamorphic widescreen is a method of horizontally compressing images, at time of recording, so to store images on storage media with a 4:3 frame. Playback equipment can then be used to expand the film back to widescreen for projection or playback. That said, there's nothing to stop one from playing back or broadcasting the 4:3 aspect ratio filmstock as is. Per Andrew on this thread: "It was cheaper to do that than to properly pan and scan, and didn't require the specialized lens. \ It became the aesthetics of cheap, of trash, of Punk." https://retro.social/@ajroach42/116409462236702732 That said, one respondent is pontificating that in 45 years of film editing they've never seen this happen anywhere, that pan and scan was the universal standard. That they were employed as a film editor pretty much establishes that their perspective was of someone who did the thing they believe everyone did. (Everyone including those who couldn't be arsed to pay a film editor to do the thing.) So please do chime in. Did you see movies, watching TV outside of Usia, cheaply broadcast in the 70s and 80s, where all the actors were impossibly skinny, the film having been broadcast at 4:3 without any effort to letterbox, let alone pan and scan? Again, boosts appreciated.
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@cwicseolfor@zeroes.ca 2026-04-15 06:08
@beadsland A friend once was playing a 2010s-era Final Fantasy game and I’m usually rubbed markedly the wrong way by that art style, but I found it more attractive than usual, more compelling. Worth noting we were both artists and fans of figure drawing. After several minutes of staring I figured out the TV was actually slightly horizontally compressing the output, intended for TV dimensions, on a slightly wider screen than standard to fill the screen. It didn’t make them look altogether human in proportion, but a lot less weird. I think you’re onto something significant.
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@ireneista@adhd.irenes.space 2026-04-15 06:07
@beadsland oh that's fascinating
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@BobLefridge@mastodon.nz 2026-04-15 07:40
In the beginning, the world was 4:3. As widescreen gained in popularity through the 60s, broadcasters used a technique called "pan and scan". Basically it copied the film through a little 4:3 window, with the operator choosing which part of the image to exclude. The alternative was letterboxing which looks better and doesn't mess with the director's vision. But people didn't like black stripes on their TVs, so P&S stuck around until the late 80s or so. @beadsland
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@thatdawnperson@toot.cat 2026-04-15 11:27
@beadsland Anamorphic widescreen and SCART may be useful terms in your search.
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@jhv@triangletoot.party 2026-04-15 14:18
@beadsland Please don't ask me to remember how I acquired this information, because I don't. However: There was essentially competition between TV & movies. TV settled on an aspect ratio. Then movies started trying to make their product fit poorly on TV screens because they felt like wider aspect ratios that didn't fit well on TVs were in movies' interest. Some of those formats were as crazy as 2.76:1 for Ben-Hur (1959). IMO, what movies really had was better resolution.