[ELI5] Why do movies always start with a reminder that it has been modified from its original format to fit my screen? Duh…right?
In: 1
Movies don’t always do that… just older ones.
Movie screens can be all sorts of shapes, from nearly square, to a really skinny rectangle.
But back in the 1950s to 2000s, our TVs were nearly square, compared to modern “16:9” “widescreen” TVs.
To make movies comfortably watchable on those old TV screens, the preferred way was for the studio to cut the sides off of their rectangular movie to make it fit the square TV.
These days, TVs are more versatile and have better image quality, so now, the preferred method to present a movie on Blu-ray or cable is is to present it as-is and allow the viewer to choose whether they want to crop it or stretch it.
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