Is 1.66:1 the "beginning" of widescreen aspect ratios?

[yoda313]

Ok the reason I ask is I recently bought 007 From Russia With Love on Bluray. When I popped it in it was widescreen but there were still small black bars on the left and right of the picture. Nowhere near the large vertical bars you get on full screen material but still noticeable. I was curious so I checked the back and it said it was 1.66:1 aspect ratio.

Now full screen is 1.33:1 isn't it? Then the next "standard" widescreen is 1.78:1 going up to 2.35:1 and even 2.40:1 on some movies.

How and why does 1.66:1 exist? Was it the jumping off point from square to rectangular?

Also I've seen other older 007 movies (the Sean Connery ones) on hd cable (like the thanksgiving marathon on Syfy last week). Those were approximately 1.78:1 because they filled my entire picture without bars which is typical of 1.78:1 formats. Now are these older 007 movies 1.66:1 also? If so are the cable channels "stretching" the movies to make them look like 1.78:1 so as not to get hdtv novices angry with them thinking they are showing full screen versions?

[jman98]

Like quite a few films that I know of in the 1960s, From Russia With Love was filmed with a process that allowed to be shown as 1.66:1 but also allowed it to be cropped to 1.33:1 without destroying the director's intention. I don't know a lot about the technical details, so I leave it to someone else to explain this process better. But basically you are seeing the film in its intended ratio. Full screen on old standard def TVs is 4:3 (or 1.33:1 - same thing), yes.

I don't know why you have vertical bars and I have no knowledge as to whether that was done deliberately or not.

[edDV]

Ok the reason I ask is I recently bought 007 From Russia With Love on Bluray. When I popped it in it was widescreen but there were still small black bars on the left and right of the picture. Nowhere near the large vertical bars you get on full screen material but still noticeable. I was curious so I checked the back and it said it was 1.66:1 aspect ratio.

Now full screen is 1.33:1 isn't it? Then the next "standard" widescreen is 1.78:1 going up to 2.35:1 and even 2.40:1 on some movies.

How and why does 1.66:1 exist? Was it the jumping off point from square to rectangular?

Also I've seen other older 007 movies (the Sean Connery ones) on hd cable (like the thanksgiving marathon on Syfy last week). Those were approximately 1.78:1 because they filled my entire picture without bars which is typical of 1.78:1 formats. Now are these older 007 movies 1.66:1 also? If so are the cable channels "stretching" the movies to make them look like 1.78:1 so as not to get hdtv novices angry with them thinking they are showing full screen versions?

See IMDB for release aspect info.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057076/technical

"From Russia with Love" (1963) was shot on 1:37 negative with release prints at
1.66 : 1 (intended ratio, Europe)
1.85 : 1 (intended ratio, USA)

These were for theatrical release. 16x9 (1.78:1) was chosen by Japanese/MIT/etc. research as the ideal home HDTV aspect much later in the '80's. Since theatrical releases were all over the map in aspect, the concepts of letterbox and pillarbox were created to fit film aspect to 16x9 displays.

Letterbox was accepted by the public in Europe but not in the USA. The TV companies responded to complaints by force fitting film aspect to 16x9 using simple side crops or more expensive pan/scan. HBO for one rarely lets letterbox show.

[yoda313]

"From Russia with Love" (1963) was shot on 1:37 negative with release prints at
1.66 : 1 (intended ratio, Europe)
1.85 : 1 (intended ratio, USA)

I guess I am wondering why they bluray release doesn't have the 1.85:1 version then if both were available.

It's not that I'm demanding to have it fill my tv I'm just curious if the original intent was for 1.85:1 for the US release.

I know mine is official - I bought it in the celaphane wrapper at a store that is similar to Walmart, kmart, and target (Meijer for those that are in the great lakes region).

Thanks for posting also jman98

[edDV]

Don't know for sure.

I'd guess since the film is British, they optimized for the Euro release version and released that at 24p Blu-Ray in all regions.
http://www.amazon.com/Russia-Love-James-Bond-Blu-ray/dp/B001AQO3WO

You might also question why the Region 1 version has English, Russian and Turkish language and not Japanese.

[yoda313]

Actually the disc I have in front of me has English DTS Master HD audio, English original mono, Spanish Mono, and French dolby digital 5.1. This was a 2008 print.

Also note this is a single disc edition not packaged with any "volume" sets. If you're looking at one from one of those volume box sets it might be slightly different.

[edDV]

Old DVD region 1 usually supproted English, Spanish and French (for Quebec). BluRay region 1 includes Japan, Southeast Asia and Taiwan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Blu-ray_regions_with_key.png

[yoda313]

Well I found out a little more about the From Russia With Love widescreen issue I was experiencing.

It turns out I was on my "standard" zoom mode on my tv. I went to "fill" mode on my 32" Westinghouse HDTV and it filled the screen without apparently losing anything (or microscopic edge loss if it cropped more than I think it did - in auto zoom crop that is not reencoding).

So maybe the 1.66:1 only leaves the minor vertical bars in the extreme zoomed out modes. When I do the first level fill mode on my tv the screen is filled.

[manono]

Since it's 1.66:1, assuming no overscan at all you're supposed to see black bars on the right and left sides. If you somehow zoom it to make the bars go away, you're either stretching the video on the right and left sides making people look slightly fat or (more likely), you're cropping above and below and losing some picture. Here's more information about the outstanding Blu-Ray of that film:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews23/from_russia_with_love_dvd_review.htm