Author Topic: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.  (Read 437533 times)

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Offline james_s

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3450 on: March 21, 2023, 11:12:50 pm »
Well, FullHD and 4K are both pretty much standard.
But anything else, sure everything goes.

720p, 1080i, 1080p ("FullHD") and 4K all have a 16:9 aspect ratio.

Movie theaters have had a variety of formats over the years, all part of the effort to keep the experience novel. They weren't considering home viewing on TV sets.
 

Online SiliconWizard

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3451 on: March 21, 2023, 11:58:33 pm »
Maybe the future for movies is an adaptive aspect ratio.
And not just consisting in cropping, but something more adaptive giving a better experience in various aspect ratios.
Haven't worked out the details though, just a very general idea at the moment.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3452 on: March 22, 2023, 12:22:49 am »
I think TV programs used to allow for 4:3 cropping with 16:9 output, to allow for those still with old sets. At least, on BBC news the presenters and any significant visuals were always within that crop area. (Looking now, I think it's still like that - the ident and time display are both inset somewhat from the respective sides. Subtitles, too.)
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3453 on: March 22, 2023, 01:06:59 am »
Maybe the future for movies is an adaptive aspect ratio.
And not just consisting in cropping, but something more adaptive giving a better experience in various aspect ratios.
Haven't worked out the details though, just a very general idea at the moment.

What could you possibly do? The director frames the shots with a specific aspect ratio in mind. Absolutely anything you do to display it in a different aspect ratio without black bars is going to involve cropping or stretching which is going to change the way the shot is framed. Some people won't care about that, some will. Many/most TV sets do have various picture modes and will zoom and crop or stretch the picture for viewers that prefer that. You could also install a frame over the face of the TV to mask off the unused portion if it was really that bothersome.
 

Offline rdl

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3454 on: March 22, 2023, 01:10:13 am »
The problem is almost always because of stretching. Just don't do that and then fit as best as possible without cropping. I really don't see why this is so hard. Surely some kind of auto adjust is possible. If not that, or in addition to that, comprehensive aspect ratio and cropping controls need to be implemented. VLC seems to do it easily.

I stayed at a motel recently and whoever set up their TV system is an idiot. Everything was forced to 21:9 widescreen no matter the source and the TVs were normal 16:9, so varying amounts  of black bar top and bottom. I never saw anything that wasn't badly distorted while I was there.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3455 on: March 22, 2023, 01:15:12 am »
Isn't that what they already do? The picture should be scaled so that it fills one axis of the display and has black bars on the other axis if the aspect ratio doesn't match. Properly configured there should never be bars on *both* the top/bottom and the sides.
 

Offline IDEngineer

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3456 on: March 22, 2023, 01:17:47 am »
It should be easy to detect the incoming aspect ratio and scale it to fit the shorter screen axis, using black bars to fill the opposite axis. Some TV's even have an "auto" sizing setting but it NEVER works like this.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3457 on: March 22, 2023, 01:20:21 am »
Mine has always worked like that. There are lots of ways to screw it up though, lots of people have no idea how to set up their TV, I remember when HD and flat panels were first getting popular I used to see them connected with composite video which is SD-only all the time. People had no idea that their HD TV was only HD if they fed it a HD source over a compatible interface.
 

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3458 on: March 22, 2023, 01:21:13 am »
When wider TVs started showing up, a client of mine complained that he now hated watching old TV shows. I asked why. He said the tops of their heads are chopped off.

I said that you need to adjust the aspect ratio on the TV. He said "Oh, I know that. But the Mrs doesn't want to see the black bars on the screen."

 :palm:
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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3459 on: March 22, 2023, 01:29:15 am »
Don’t forget the obligatory “What’s up gaazzzzzzz? It’s ya boy <insert_wannabe_gangsta_sounding_silly_username> blah blah blah blah”
This is when I click out. A rule for these drongo influencers; the bigger the microphone the smaller the content.

Sadly the yoof of today doesn't know how to use their kit. Have you watched them trying to use a phone they seem to use it in any other way than it was designed to be used.

Oh and don't get me started on the ones who have to try and outdo Dave and AvE on stupid ways to open a box. Daft idiots trying to use a hammer to open a box.

Yeah, they hold their phone out parallel to the floor in front of them & yell at it!
Meanwhile, the people concerned about RF exposure to the brain think that they hold it up to their head like a "real phone", whereas it's only "OFs" that do that.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3460 on: March 22, 2023, 02:04:23 am »
When wider TVs started showing up, a client of mine complained that he now hated watching old TV shows. I asked why. He said the tops of their heads are chopped off.

I said that you need to adjust the aspect ratio on the TV. He said "Oh, I know that. But the Mrs doesn't want to see the black bars on the screen."

 :palm:

I don't get why the black bars are so offensive. Would it be that different than making the display narrower? Most people watched 4:3 content on a 19" TV, maybe 25" if you were well off, throughout most of the history of TV. Modern sets are huge in comparison so with black bars on the sides you'll still have a bigger picture than a 19" set in almost all cases, often larger than a 25". The wider screen can display a wider picture but there's no reason it has to. Lots of CRT sets had speakers or other cabinet features flanking the display.
 

Offline paulca

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3461 on: March 22, 2023, 11:03:22 am »
Dynamic aspect ratio.  They did this back when widescreen became the norm in Cinema but not on home VHS/TV.  They did it manually back then, although it's possible to do it automatically now.  "Pan and scan".

On how "not simple" aspect ratio actually is, check these out.  https://www.red.com/red-101/anamorphic-lenses and https://www.red.com/red-101/video-aspect-ratios


Also check the various options for same when encoding MPeg video.  16:9 movie aspect may not mean a 16:9 pixel aspect nor necessarily 1:1 aspect.  In fact how "pixels" are treated is quite intrique and the pixels as the movie process from one format to the next are subject to change, including their size and aspect, whether down/up sampled or not.
« Last Edit: March 22, 2023, 11:13:12 am by paulca »
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Offline PlainName

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3462 on: March 22, 2023, 02:27:31 pm »
Quote
I don't get why the black bars are so offensive. Would it be that different than making the display narrower?

The hatred for phones with a notch springs to mind...
 

Offline paulca

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3463 on: March 22, 2023, 02:39:22 pm »
I was working for "Pace Plc" when 3G and 4G mobile data networks were only just starting to yield reasonably high "broadband" rates.

Phones back then (2012-2014) were only boosting 5" screens tops.

However, the amount of flak Pace started to receive because their media distribution platforms and DRM libraries did not support 1080p for mobiles yet.

People with a 4.5" screen with a maximum resolution of around 600x400 where demanding 1080p over 480p.... on a 400p screen.
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Offline TimFox

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3464 on: March 22, 2023, 04:16:44 pm »
I find it amusing that there are now two simultaneous trends in viewing movies:
Ginormous screens in home theaters.
Minuscule screens on mobile phones.
Somehow, the producers need to produce content for both applications.
 

Offline paulca

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3465 on: March 22, 2023, 04:36:02 pm »
And both at the same time.  VR.  VR movie players make it appear you are watching on a massive cinema screen.
"What could possibly go wrong?"
Current Open Projects:  STM32F411RE+ESP32+TFT for home IoT (NoT) projects.  Child's advent xmas countdown toy.  Digital audio routing board.
 

Offline themadhippy

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3466 on: March 22, 2023, 04:54:18 pm »
Its amusing all the moaning about black bars these days,in the days of proper cinemas it was common practise to  mask  the screen designed for ciniscope when showing a 1-85 film,no bugger complained back then.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3467 on: March 22, 2023, 05:47:53 pm »
Quote
I don't get why the black bars are so offensive. Would it be that different than making the display narrower?

The hatred for phones with a notch springs to mind...

I hate the notch because it takes out a chunk of usable display. I much prefer a bezel that creates black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, the complete image is available and the edges are straight. It would bother me if TV screens had a weird shape, and the notch wouldn't bother me if the weird "ears" could be blacked out and shift all the content down below it.
 

Offline IDEngineer

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3468 on: March 22, 2023, 06:07:42 pm »
Agreed. Anything that interrupts the usual rectangle is a problem because there's no "safe space" that anyone can know for certain will never contain important content. Classic example: Those scrolling text lines at the bottom of many TV news programs. They're often RIGHT OVER THE TOP of some similar text content in the existing video they're using as part of their report! Likewise the network's own logos or "promo pieces", often in the lower right corner... where they typically stack up over the logos/thumbnails of the content itself. Add in partial transparency (itself an admission of the stupidity of this concept!) and you get some weird Pollock-like renderings that are utterly unintelligible and completely frustrating.

A far better approach, if someone insists on stealing some screen real estate, is to downscale the image (to maintain the aspect ratio) and put your content in the created black space. Sure, it's still a visual interruption and maddening, but at least they've respected the original content (which is the reason you're a consumer of their product!) while satisfying whatever corporate overlords have demanded their own content be displayed. I see this a fair bit... the main image shrinks for a few seconds, some sort of nonsense content appears, and then the main image zooms out to the original size. That's an intelligent way to handle this.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3469 on: March 22, 2023, 06:12:16 pm »
I can't watch anything that has those logos hovering in the corner, or worse, the animated ads with sound that come up during a show you're watching. That trend pushed me away from pay TV and now broadcast TV in general. The obsession with branding the content reduces its value to me to zero, thankfully most streaming and content you buy on discs doesn't have this.
 
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Offline PlainName

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3470 on: March 22, 2023, 06:35:22 pm »
Quote
I don't get why the black bars are so offensive. Would it be that different than making the display narrower?

The hatred for phones with a notch springs to mind...

I hate the notch because it takes out a chunk of usable display.

Just consider the display an aspect ratio that would have the notch be a black bar otherwise. Problem solved :)
 

Offline TimFox

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3471 on: March 22, 2023, 06:48:58 pm »
Agreed. Anything that interrupts the usual rectangle is a problem because there's no "safe space" that anyone can know for certain will never contain important content. Classic example: Those scrolling text lines at the bottom of many TV news programs. They're often RIGHT OVER THE TOP of some similar text content in the existing video they're using as part of their report! Likewise the network's own logos or "promo pieces", often in the lower right corner... where they typically stack up over the logos/thumbnails of the content itself. Add in partial transparency (itself an admission of the stupidity of this concept!) and you get some weird Pollock-like renderings that are utterly unintelligible and completely frustrating.

A far better approach, if someone insists on stealing some screen real estate, is to downscale the image (to maintain the aspect ratio) and put your content in the created black space. Sure, it's still a visual interruption and maddening, but at least they've respected the original content (which is the reason you're a consumer of their product!) while satisfying whatever corporate overlords have demanded their own content be displayed. I see this a fair bit... the main image shrinks for a few seconds, some sort of nonsense content appears, and then the main image zooms out to the original size. That's an intelligent way to handle this.

The worst example I face of the superimposed text and logos in broadcast TV is how they often obscure the network's display of the game's score in sports reporting.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3472 on: March 22, 2023, 07:03:26 pm »
Quote
I don't get why the black bars are so offensive. Would it be that different than making the display narrower?

The hatred for phones with a notch springs to mind...

I hate the notch because it takes out a chunk of usable display.

Just consider the display an aspect ratio that would have the notch be a black bar otherwise. Problem solved :)

Yes, like I said, if there was a way to shift the content down so that there was a black bar in place of the notch it wouldn't bother me. As far as I know though there is no way to do this, if you watch a video in landscape mode, the notch juts into the side of the video and obscures part of it.
 

Offline PlainName

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3473 on: March 22, 2023, 07:42:56 pm »
Quote
if you watch a video in landscape mode, the notch juts into the side of the video

Oh! That's a different matter, yes. Willfully aggravated design.
 

Offline Ed.Kloonk

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Re: Your pet peeve, technical or otherwise.
« Reply #3474 on: March 23, 2023, 02:37:22 pm »
 >:(
Sci-fi where the author bounces back and forth in time every other chapter.

Trying to get through Andy Weir's follow-up to The Martian, Project Hail Mary. Audiobook.

All over the place like Pulp Fiction. No gimp yet.

iratus parum formica
 


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