BL> Widescreen is a total wank. Am I the last one on the planet who
BL> knows why the 4:3 format is used?

NP> 4:3 aspect ratio was chosen for televisions because it was
NP> standard for movies at that time. This is no longer true, and
NP> hasn't been for many decades. Most movies are filmed in an
NP> aspect ratio close to 16:9. Sometimes wider.

 Jeeze... thanks for telling me that Niels.

 ACTUALLY, the 4:3 aspect ratio was chosen for the reason I stated.
The human eye "sees" a 4:3 aspect ratio.

 Old movies were filmed in 4:3 because that gave the most natural
vision for the least celluloid. Why do *you* think they chose 4:3? Do
you think some fuckwit just picked it out of a box?

 In those days they had *real* engineers, not a pack of wankers who
do it on computer using fucking Windows and a program written by a
mental defecvtive whith his head up his arse. I'm talking Thomas
Edison here, who spent ten years getting a light bulb to work! They
did actual measurements in those days.

 It may suprise you, but when TV began there were no movies shown; it
was live. That came later, and they used 4:3 for the same reason that
silent films did... it gave the greatest effective vision for the
smallest bandwidth. They did not pick 4:3 out of a box, even when
picture tubes were round!

 As I said earlier, watching TV in a lounge room is nothing like
watching a movie in a theatre (or nothing like watching a still image
of a photograph or a painting). In the theatre, widescreen makes sense
because it involves the viewer in the large action; in the corner of
the loungeroom it is still a small image overlapped by our eye's
natural 4:3 range of view. We just focus on the action and wipe the
overlap. To make it work, you would have to sit within a few feet (and
watch the little dots)

BL> We live in a 4:3 world. The Greeks knew it when they built the
BL> Parthenon.

NP> Parthenon is 3:2.

NP> I thought Parthenon was the ratio of Phi. Cant remember the
NP> formula though......

 The Greeks used all sorts of tricks in their architecture (the most
well known is the tapered column), but all architecture is based on
the 4:3 way we see things, and the aspect of where we stand to see it.
I'm not an architect, I'm only a TV engineer, but we see with the same
eyes. Of course, dogs probably think the Parthenon is all wrong... not
nearly enough piss.

     


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