Vertical letterboxing is *not* the correct way to fix bad aspect ratio. Plus a watermark though, does that mean this was actually *broadcast* this way?
Shinjidude said: Vertical letterboxing is *not* the correct way to fix bad aspect ratio. Plus a watermark though, does that mean this was actually *broadcast* this way?
Yes, the anime was broadcast in 4:3 and this screencap was taken from a 16:9 channel. Because NTSC 16:9 format pixels have a 40:33 pixel aspect ratio (i.e. nearly 4:3), the image should've been scaled to 1920:1080 and then cropped again to 1440 for proper viewing on a computer monitor. But then it should've been scaled to 640:480 because it isn't actually shown in HD yet so this is a pointless upscale anyway.
As is, the image would look fine on a 16:9 NTSC set.
It probably looked fine in the media player too because they have enough information to scale the image correctly but the screencap doesn't keep that information.
