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.