Converting Aspect Ratio 4:3 to 16:9

I don’t know how to do a poll in this new forum.

For watching 4:3 (old format) video on a wide screen 16:9 display, which do you prefer:

A) Shrink to fit (black bars on sides)
B) Zoom (cut off top and bottom)
C) Stretch consistently
D) Stretch edges, not middle

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A. I don’t like it when the video is stretched or obviously cut up. It’ hurts my eyes and oddly enough makes me queasy LOL :smiley:

So even though it will be smaller I prefer the original ratio and block in the sides.

I choose to shrink it because it just feels wrong to have the picture cropped or distorted in any way from what was originally intended. But I often get push back by people telling me they don’t notice the difference and that I shouldn’t care.

Maybe they should watch their own TV :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

I think maintaining the original makes the most sense. So, yup, black bars on edges. It looks silly but better than zooming and cropping or doing any sort of stretching.

I suspected that answer “A” would be most popular among graphic designers. But I think we might be in the minority in the rest of the non-graphic designer population of the world.

A. Yup. Black bars. Otherwise I’m getting cheated out of some of the movie I paid for.
Football games should be letterboxed too, for those of us still with standard TVs.
Hey, it ain’t broke yet…:upside_down_face:

I’d choose either A or C depending on whether I feel like getting full use of my TV screen or not on that particular day.

Definitely shrink to fit unless it’s a wide angle in 4:3 format (bars on bottom and top); then it would be zoom.

I usually set it to Shrink to Fit. The black space either side doesn’t intrude and I hate it when things are stretched. There is another option called ‘Pan and Scan’ where the picture is cropped at the sides and is moved within the frame whenever something is happening near one of the edges. This is an option on my TV but I don’t use it very often.

I forgot about zooming on a letterbox picture.

I just went to a clinic this morning and noticed a letterbox picture that was stretched, not zoomed. It always bugs me when I go into a public facility and see the wrong aspect ratio. The people who work there never care because they aren’t watching it. Sometimes I look for a remote or buttons in reach to fix the picture.