What doesn't make sense is that if they were just introducing the HD market with all new TV's and widescreen was to be the standard, then why not bump the standard up to "Theater Wide" WS and use that as the HDTV standard?
It sucks to have 16:9 as the standard and movie makers want to up the ante to extra widescreen when everyone just started buying WS TV's barely 10 years ago. Weren't movies already being shot in that frame before 16:9 was standard?
...Don't forget how lots of computer monitors were manufactured to 16:10 (wtf) in addition to 16:9 and 4:3, and how lots of 4:3 pre-HDTVs included 16:9 modes, plus there's a specification called "Super Widescreen" TV that's been in the conceptual stage designed specifically to display Hollywood's 2.35:1 pictures. Just throw more monkeys in that barrel.
The end result is: no matter what TV/monitor you buy, you will OFTEN end up wasting screen space with black bars, somewhere.
^ All this fuels a big part of my Anti-Industry stance. I once planned on ranting on the subject in detail for my site, and I was using the screenshots below as part of my research/presentation.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/forums/index.php?topic=22602.msg592023#msg592023Example,
- Misconception: Some Wii games, like Capcom's, don't display in "full" "widescreen," whereas Nintendo's display fine.
- Truth: Capcom's (and others') games are designed to proper 4:3 "computer SD" specs, 640x480 initial, meant to be stretched for an "effective" 16:9 resolution of ~853x480 (on a widescreen SDTV, the 480 height doesn't change (pixels are wide instead of square), so the math is based on the 480 lines that "stay true": 16 * 480 / 9 = 853.33). HIGH DEFICIENCY TELEVIZIONS do NOT display SD NTSC content correctly -- they cram all NTSC 720x480 pixels (640 plus the 80 "unused" pixels on the sides) into the viewable space, retaining the CRAP REGIONS OF THE IMAGE we're traditionally not meant to see. On classical TVs, only the middle ~640 pixels of the picture were actually viewable (on older computers, everything was viewable, so 4:3~640x480 was a clean and straightforward standard), becuz the sides were essentially overscan areas of the tube that were hidden under the TV's outer frame, therefore any "vertical black bars" would've been chopped, plus TV networks made sure their watermarks fit inside the viewable area correctly. The assumption was "4:3 can be converted to 16:9", but 720x480 ISN'T 4:3, it's 3:2, so WHAT, THE ****, WENT WRONG, INDUSTRY?
HDTVs should have ignored/chopped off the sides, but don't. Nintendo overcame this HDTV "SHORTCOMING" by drawing most of their games at 686x480 inside the video signal instead of 640x480 -- 640x480 is ideally supposed to be stretched to "16:9", but in real-life the effective viewing ratio on the TV is about "14.22:9" (the leftover 1.78 = empty black bars); 686x480 yields a real-life viewing ratio of about "15.24:9" remedying the "black bar" effect.
I hate everything.
Topic: Games Industry Death Watch 2010-present (Read 332468 times)
