Are you bothered by seeing a 2.35/2.40 flim on a small, 27" or lower 4:3 TV? (1 Viewer)

[DisneySwan1990]

My question is this:Are you bothered by seeing a 2.35/2.40 flim on a small, 27" or lower 4:3 TV? I know it really bothers me, but does it bother you when you watch it on disc media (some LD's, and all DVD's and Blu-Ray)

 

[Greg.K]

I prefer a larger screen but I don't mind letterbox bars, and it's vastly better than watching pan & scan.

 

[Mark-P]

What I would be bothered about is watching ANY movie on a 27" 4X3 TV. But no, black bars don't bother me one bit.

 

[Edwin-S]

No. It wouldn't bother me if that type of TV was the only choice available at the moment. It would bother me more if I really wanted to see the film and was not able to watch it at all.

 

[Carl Johnson]

I got my first DVD player in 1998 and at that time I had a 27" television. One of the main reasons I got into the format was a preference for widescreen. Regardless of screen size I would never purchase a movie that's fullscreen if it was originally wide.

 

[DisneySwan1990]

I prefer a larger screen but I don't mind letterbox bars, and it's vastly better than watching pan & scan.

So you can get used to seeing 2 inch black bars on your small TV?

 

[DisneySwan1990]

I got my first DVD player in 1998 and at that time I had a 27" television. One of the main reasons I got into the format was a preference for widescreen. Regardless of screen size I would never purchase a movie that's fullscreen if it was originally wide.

So you can get used to the 2.35/2.40 bars on your 27" TV you had back then?

 

[DisneySwan1990]

What I would be bothered about is watching ANY movie on a 27" 4X3 TV. But no, black bars don't bother me one bit.

So you can get used to watching 2.35/2.40 films on a TV that's the six of two Game Boy Colors, and not be bothered by the bars at all?

 

[TravisR]

I got my first DVD player in 1998 and at that time I had a 27" television. One of the main reasons I got into the format was a preference for widescreen.

Same here. Even before that, I got a laserdisc player when I was in high school and the TV I had back then was a 20 incher. Occasionally, I'd move the LD player down to my dad's 32 inch TV but that was infrequent. I was happy to live with the bars on a small screen to see the movie correctly.

 

[mdnitoil]

I didn't have a problem with it back when I owned a 27" TV and I don't have a problem today when I get giant vertical bars watching old movies on my widescreen TV.

When I'm watching a movie, the surroundings tend to become less important because I'm focused on the movie. If the number of pixels on the screen not being lit up is a problem for me, then it means I'm not that interested in what I'm watching.

 

[OliverK]

What I would be bothered about is watching ANY movie on a 27" 4X3 TV. But no, black bars don't bother me one bit.

Same here, moved to a projection system a looong time ago and never looked back. I HATED watching movies on a small TV but I hated it even more when they were cropped at the sides.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Answer: No. I've been watching widescreen movies since I got my laserdisc player and 19" TV back in the early 80s. I didn't watch the bars, I would watch the picture.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

The black bars never bothered me. I'd rather have the complete movie as the filmmakers shot it, even if it plays a little smaller on my display. I'd watch letterbox VHS tapes back in the day on screens as small as 13". My TV all through college was only 19 or 20 inches, and I had no issues watching letterboxed VHS tapes or DVDs on it.

 

[FoxyMulder]

I have a 29 inch 4/3 bedroom set, a Sony Trinitron from the late nineties, still going strong, i watch 2.35:1 films late at night from the satellite on it all the time. There is nothing more hideous to me than viewing a cropped 2.35:1 film.

A bigger screen is better but more picture information is better still regardless of the screen size, according to my mate Godzilla, size matters, sure i said but you have to put it all into context, what's the point of watching anything if half the image is missing.

I also have a projector and a plasma, and i have viewed on my 17 inch laptop, widescreen all the way no matter the size of screen.

 

[Greg.K]

So you can get used to seeing 2 inch black bars on your small TV?

I watched the movie, not the bars. It was a revelation seeing Star Wars, among others in 2.35 on TV on LD, even though it was small. I had a 32" TV back then, but 27" wouldn't have changed things.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Crud, when I got my first LD player in 1991, I watched 2.35:1 letterboxed movies on a 15-inch TV - a 27-inch screen seemed HUGE back then!

Different world now, of course, but if I had a 27-inch TV, I'd still watch letterboxed movies on it and enjoy them.
Actually, I DO still have a 27-inch 4X3 set in my bedroom - I don't watch much on it, but if I do screen a letterboxed movie, I'm fine with it. I never minded the black bars...

 

[classicmovieguy]

I had several years of watching DVDs on smaller old-style 4:3 TV sets, but I probably couldn't face going back to them now.

 

[Vic Pardo]

I have a 32-inch Sony Bravia and in order to read the subtitles on a letter-boxed film I have to switch to "normal" mode which puts the entire image in a rectangle in the center of the screen, so the image is, diagonally, only about 22 inches. If I filled it out to "zoom," which would fill up more of the screen and still retain the proper aspect ratio and not squeeze or stretch the image, the subtitles would be cut off on the bottom. On a non-foreign or English-dubbed film then I would do it. But most of the films I watch on that TV are in a foreign language.

 

[OliverK]

I have a 29 inch 4/3 bedroom set, a Sony Trinitron from the late nineties, still going strong, i watch 2.35:1 films late at night from the satellite on it all the time. There is nothing more hideous to me than viewing a cropped 2.35:1 film. A bigger screen is better but more picture information is better still regardless of the screen size, according to my mate Godzilla, size matters, sure i said but you have to put it all into context, what's the point of watching anything if half the image is missing. I also have a projector and a plasma, and i have viewed on my 17 inch laptop, widescreen all the way no matter the size of screen.

It takes some guts to watch movies on anything but your projection system - I never did that since I got into projection

 

[Simon Massey]

No
My first OAR film at home that I bought was Alien on VHS and I had a 16 inch portable TV
Loved every minute of it