The pillarbox effect occurs in widescreen video displays when black bars (

matte Matte may refer to: Art * paint with a non-glossy finish. See diffuse reflection. * a framing element surrounding a painting or watercolor within the outer frame Film * Matte (filmmaking), filmmaking and video production technology * Matte pa ...

s or masking) are placed on the sides of the image. It becomes necessary when film or video that was not originally designed for widescreen is shown on a widescreen display, or a narrower widescreen image is displayed within a wider aspect ratio, such as a 16:9 image in a 2.39:1 frame (common in cinemas). The original material is shrunk and placed in the middle of the widescreen frame. Some older

arcade game An arcade game or coin-op game is a coin-operated entertainment machine typically installed in public businesses such as restaurants, bars and amusement arcades. Most arcade games are presented as primarily games of skill and include arcade vi ...

s that had a tall vertical and short horizontal are displayed in pillarbox even on 4:3 televisions. Some early sound films made 1928–1931, such as '' Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans'', were released in even narrower formats such as 1.20:1 to make room for the sound-on-film track on then-standard film stock.Sunrise (1927) Technical Specifications
IMDb These will appear pillarboxed even on 4:3 screens. Pillarboxing is the vertical equivalent of letterboxing and is sometimes called reverse letterboxing. Its name is derived from its resemblance to pillar box-style mailboxes used in the UK and the

Commonwealth of Nations The Commonwealth of Nations, simply referred to as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 56 member states, the vast majority of which are former territories of the British Empire. The chief institutions of the organisation are the C ...

. The four-direction equivalent is called windowboxing, caused when programming is both letterboxed and pillarboxed. In order to use the entire screen area of a widescreen display (which is already significantly less than a fullscreen of equal diagonal measurement), and to prevent a reverse

screen burn-in Screen burn-in, image burn-in, or ghost image, is a permanent discoloration of areas on an electronic display such as a cathode ray tube (CRT) in an old computer monitor or television set. It is caused by cumulative non-uniform use of the s ...

plasma display A plasma display panel (PDP) is a type of flat panel display that uses small cells containing plasma: ionized gas that responds to electric fields. Plasma televisions were the first large (over 32 inches diagonal) flat panel displays to be rele ...

s, the simplest alternative to pillarboxing is to

crop A crop is a plant that can be grown and harvested extensively for profit or subsistence. When the plants of the same kind are cultivated at one place on a large scale, it is called a crop. Most crops are cultivated in agriculture or hydropon ...

the top and bottom. However, this results in the loss of some of the image within what the producer assumed would be the safe area. This

overscan Overscan is a behaviour in certain television sets, in which part of the input picture is shown outside of the visible bounds of the screen. It exists because cathode-ray tube (CRT) television sets from the 1930s through to the early 2000s were ...

may or may not bother the viewer, but it often cuts-off the channel banner or other on-screen displays. Likewise, the vertical equivalent of pan and scan is called "tilt and scan" or "reverse pan and scan". This moves the cropped "window" up and down, however it is rarely done. A third option is to stretch the video to fill the screen, but this is often considered ugly, as it severely distorts everything on the screen. Because certain screen resolutions can be used for both fullscreen and widescreen ( anamorphic), widescreen signaling (such as the

Active Format Description In television technology, Active Format Description (AFD) is a standard set of codes that can be sent in the MPEG video stream or in the baseband SDI video signal that carries information about their aspect ratio and other active picture charac ...

) must be used to tell the display device which to use, or the viewer must set it manually, in order to prevent unnecessary pillarboxing or stretching on widescreen displays.

Stylized pillarboxing on television

Some high-definition

television network A television network or television broadcaster is a telecommunications network for distribution of television program content, where a central operation provides programming to many television stations or pay television providers. Until the mid ...

s and

TV station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the eart ...

s use "stylized pillarboxing", meaning they fill-in the blank areas on the sides with their HD

logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...

or other still or

motion graphics Motion graphics (sometimes mograph) are pieces of animation or digital footage which create the illusion of motion or rotation, and are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects. Motion graphics are usually displayed via e ...

, when the program being shown is only available in 4:3 aspect ratio ( standard definition). The use of graphics assures viewers that they are watching the HD version of a channel, instead of their thinking they are watching the SD version, along with filling the entire screen with a video image rather than the regular black bars. This also tells widescreen television sets with automatic resizing not to stretch the video, and instead to present it in the proper aspect ratio (although conversely, this may cause fullscreen SDTV sets and analog cable TV headends to horizontally compress or to windowbox the video). Square Fit 201933015353081

A limited number of local stations also apply custom pillarboxes, but most have removed them with both the advent of all-HD schedules and customer complaints about erroneous technical information in PSIP data. Some TV shows present an "echo" of the edges of the program video in the sidebars, usually blurred. Local

television station A television station is a set of equipment managed by a business, organisation or other entity, such as an amateur television (ATV) operator, that transmits video content and audio content via radio waves directly from a transmitter on the ea ...

s in the U.S. typically use graphics or a simple color

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gr ...

for electronic news-gathering packages shown on their local news programs. Until equipment replacement withdrew the majority of SD cameras from news organizations, portable ENG cameras were often not able to shoot in HD (due to their number and expense), though the studio cameras were in high definition. Some channels have a similar format called "enhanced HD", in which extra informative graphics and text is shown on the side, such as expanded stock quotes, charts, and graphs on CNBC HD+ in the past. Some Japanese

anime is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...

switched from SD to HD during their run. Sometimes a flashback to a scene produced in SD had to be shown. For instance, in '' Naruto'', the image of Naruto and Sasuke filled in the blank gaps as one of the SD-era flashbacks is being shown. Also, in the '' Family Guy'' episode "

Back to the Pilot "Back to the Pilot" is the fifth episode of the tenth season of the animated comedy series ''Family Guy''. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on November 13, 2011. In "Back to the Pilot", two of the show's main characters, baby genius ...

", Brian and Stewie travel back in time to when the show first premiered, in 1999. To show that, back then, they produced episodes in standard-definition, the entire scene was pillarboxed.

References

External links

The Widescreen and Letterbox Advocacy Page
{{Film formats Film and video technology

Stylized pillarboxing on television

See also

References

External links