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Comment by kijin | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I watch a movie with some of my extended family, there's always someone who asks why the movie doesn't fill the entire screen. They want either the black bars removed and the area filled with images (like Photoshop Content-Aware Fill?), or the whole movie zoomed in (cropped) so that the sides are lost. I, along with some of the other serious movie-watchers in the family, have to convince these individuals every time that no, that's not how you watch a movie. (My favorite argument: "That area is reserved for subtitles.")

But I don't think most of the general public cares about the aspect ratio, only about utilizing the maximum square footage of their overpriced TV. Netflix is just catering to this demographic, just like DVD vendors who came up with 4:3 versions of 2.39:1 movies. The number of customers who complain about the wrong aspect ratio is probably much smaller than the number of customers who complain about the black bars.

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> Whenever I watch a movie with some of my extended family, there's always someone who asks why the movie doesn't fill the entire screen.

I'm seeing more and more things like this, which seem to fit into a category of "geometrical illiteracy." Making 4:3 video wider to "use the pixels" on a widescreen just looks wrong. It makes people look squatter than they actually are. Many diagrams and animations on Discovery channel shows that supposedly fall into the category of "science education" seem to be made by scientific illiterates. Apparently, the visual artists are looking up all of the terms in the script and description, but who have no real understanding of the underlying concepts. Wildly incorrect geometries are present in the majority of these.

A prime example. The a plane moving as in the animation shown would produce forces in the exact opposite direction!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggP32UJeTHQ#t=865s

If this is what a large fraction of human beings are like, how are we supposed to maintain a democratic and technological society?

For years all the pubs near me would show 4:3 TV sports broadcasts stretched to their widescreen TV's so all the players looked slightly fat.

sigh.

If this is what a large fraction of human beings are like, how are we supposed to maintain a democratic and technological society?

...yet another reason I've concluded that democracy is seriously overrated.

Think of it as a kind of sacrificial metal. As it corrodes it prevents far worse corrosion. Totalitarian governments becoming corrupt cause an order of magnitude more damage per capita than rotting democracies.

Thank you for that concept. I'm going to go have a drink and hold my head for a bit, but it's definitely a useful way to think about it.

That clip is from a show called, "Penn & Teller Tell a Lie," wherein they present lies (and one truth) as fact.

Additionally, you probably misheard when Penn said, "centripetal force," and assumed he said, "centrifugal force."

Probably not the, "prime example," you thought it was.

> That clip is from a show called, "Penn & Teller Tell a Lie," wherein they present lies (and one truth) as fact. Additionally, you probably misheard when Penn said, "centripetal force," and assumed he said, "centrifugal force." Probably not the, "prime example," you thought it was.

1) If the plane would spin sound its own axis like that, the iced tea would have hit the canopy. The diagram is just wrong.

2) They presented several truths and one lie.

Are you trolling by "telling a lie?" You would have completely mislead anyone who only took a casual glance at the video.

> My favorite argument: "That area is reserved for subtitles."

I guess you're joking here, but I really wish subtitle presentated was more formally systematized. And, your idea actually seems like a good one, it's just too bad video players don't behave like that. E.g., I'd love if VLC player shifted the visible screen as up as it can, and reserve the one big bar at the bottom to showing subtitles.

VLC most likely has some filters (look for one called "expand" maybe) that will do this.

I was only half joking.

I'm not sure if VLC has the same feature, but KMPlayer (freeware but closed-source) has all sorts of options to tweak the way subtitles are displayed, and even allows you to edit the subtitles on the fly. I suppose these features are largely due to the fact that subtitles are absolutely essential in Korea (where KMPlayer come from).

Those features are from MPlayer, KMPlayer just puts them on a GUI.

Also, I don't get the idea that subtitles are favoured in any way by MPlayer. Did you see the amount of options you have for handling sound?

I meant the Korean KMPlayer [1], not KDE's KMPlayer [2]. The former does not use MPlayer.

[1] http://www.kmpmedia.net/

[2] http://kmplayer.kde.org/

This is one of the reasons I ended up using the Mac app Movist (which was once open source, but later redone to be on the Mac App Store for $5). I actually mainly use this because of better shortcuts and because of its subtitle handling.

You should put a fake bezel at the top and bottom of the tv, then remove it 1/2 way through and see if they notice.

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