ANAMORPHIC and cropped 4X3 look the same on widescreen tv why?

[PIMP]

I own a anamorphic adaptor. And i know the shot is wider then a 4x3 frame. The reason i know this is when i edit on Final cut pro and drag a 4X3 clip into the 16X9 aspect ratio you could see the right and left side are black,as opposed to it filling the entire frame.

My question is this. I recently viewed 4X3 cropped with fake letterbox on a bigscreen tv and it looked fine. I was told that 4X3 on a 16X9 bigscreen would look stretched out. But that wasnt the case from what i saw. Am i the only one to notice this or am i wrong about it. Its making me reconsider using the lense sometimes, because its a pain of assuring i have proper focus.

i could kind of see the difference between a normal tv. anamorphic seems wider then the 4X3.

thanks people, you guys rule

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[master151]

If it is 4:3 footage with matting, it can only be displayed "properly" (undistorted) on a widescreen tv with these picture scenarios:

1. Blank areas to the left and right (grey or black) with letterboxing on the top and bottom.

2. Zooming/Scaling the image up until the left and right sides meet the screen edges, and cropping the top and bottom. This may result in the indented image in your case because you would only be cropping the letterboxed portion, thus giving you an undistorted widescreen image that fills the whole screen.


Most people who own widescreen TV's (from my experience) don't know which picture setting to use for a given type of footage.

Also, you must tell your dvd player (via its menu settings) that you have a widescreen TV.