{"id":257,"date":"2001-11-13T09:19:48","date_gmt":"2001-11-13T17:19:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=257"},"modified":"2019-11-26T08:05:12","modified_gmt":"2019-11-26T16:05:12","slug":"whats-with-the-black-bars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2001\/11\/13\/whats-with-the-black-bars\/","title":{"rendered":"What&#8217;s with the black bars?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:14515,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.hometheaterforum.com&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260105234116\\\/https:\\\/\\\/www.hometheaterforum.com\\\/&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-12 23:46:50&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-19 19:17:01&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:403},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-24 00:02:44&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-28 03:15:15&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-03-31 12:07:11&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 16:54:44&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200}],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:{&quot;date&quot;:&quot;2026-04-03 16:54:44&quot;,&quot;http_code&quot;:200},&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;},{&quot;id&quot;:16754,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/www.ryanwright.com\\\/ht\\\/oar.shtml&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/www.ryanwright.com\\\/ht\\\/oar.shtml&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>While most of my friends have been around me long enough to understand my preference for watching films in widescreen or letterboxed format, occasionally I get questions about the &#8216;black bars&#8217; at the top and bottom of the screen. While I think I usually do a pretty decent job of explaining why they&#8217;re there, one of the members of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.hometheaterforum.com\/\" title=\"Home Theater Forum\">Home Theater Forum<\/a> put together a really nice Shockwave Flash animation demonstrating what&#8217;s going on. If anyone&#8217;s got any questions about widescreen presentations, this link should help get the idea across:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ryanwright.com\/ht\/oar.shtml\" title=\"Why Widescreen?\">Original Aspect Ratio, or, Why Widescreen?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While most of my friends have been around me long enough to understand my preference for watching films in widescreen or letterboxed format, occasionally I get questions about the &#8216;black bars&#8217; at the top and bottom of the screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2038,2037],"tags":[23,39],"class_list":["post-257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech","category-tv-and-films","tag-film","tag-links"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}