Why are credits "windowboxed" on DVDS?

[Steven Sigel]

I've noticed that a lot of older (1.37:1) films have their opening credits "windowboxed" (i.e. black bars on all 4 sides).

Is this due to underscan problems on regular television sets? Or is there some other answer for why they are doing this??

[John Whittle]

You're right, it relates to overscan on monitors. Movies were designed for 1.37 and they used the full frame. You'll notice that many 16mm prints cut off titles because of the reduction lenses used in the lab and the slight difference between the 1.37 and 1.33 frame. On video it's even worse with many receivers missing at least 10% of the picture. That's one reason most of us don't see any difference between a 1.78 16x9 picture and a 1.85 16.9 picture since both fill the picture with slight overscan (something like 9 lines or thereabouts).

Warners has done the window boxing on most of the recent cartoon transfers they've done, but go to full image when the show starts--seems like they should window box the whole show.

John

[Steven Sigel]

Thanks John,

That's what I figured.

Personally, I'd prefer that they didn't do that - when you run the dvd on a DLP projector (which doesn't have the same problems that a tv does), it just looks weird....