On rare occasion, a picture will be windowboxed on purpose. During the opening, documentary-style sequence of
Rent on the
DVD and
Blu-ray Disc releases, the picture is windowboxed to suggest an older camera meant to present at a 4:3 aspect ratio; as the movie transitions from that segment, it then expands horizontally from a windowboxed 4:3 to a letterboxed
2.39:1 aspect ratio. Another example is in the movie
Brother Bear. On the theatrical and Widescreen DVD release, the beginning of the film is windowboxed until
Kenai, the main character, becomes a bear. This is to show that his world-view, and his perspective on nature, has widened. A form of windowboxing is also occasionally encountered in
3D film; by containing the reference plane in a box smaller than the actual screen, the filmmaker can increase the
stereoscopic effect of objects coming out of the plane and toward the viewer by having them extend outside the windowbox. Windowboxing has also been used in the instance of transferring films with the
academy ratio of 1.37:1 to video, as evidenced in recent DVD releases of older films shot in this standard. This is to compensate for the
overscan on many 4:3 TVs, which cuts off part of all four sides of the image. Windowboxing ensures that either more or all of the image is visible on these TVs; in a best case scenario the TV overscan cuts off nothing but the windowbox borders. It originally was used only for the credit sequences in 4:3 films, where the text could extend out to the very edges of the image, but it was gradually adopted to be used throughout the film. Critics often argue that windowboxing of this ratio is unnecessary due to the image loss caused by overscan being negligible. Moreover, for those who watch such films on computer monitors or newer TVs, both of which have little to no overscan, the black borders around all four sides of the image are visible, effectively shrinking the image on those displays. Windowboxing on video also reduces the total amount of resolution the image effectively uses, but defenders of the process argue that the lost resolution is negligible. Furthermore, DVD video has slightly more horizontal resolution than analogue video, giving it an effective aspect ratio of 1.38:1 which allows for a nearly full-screen 1.37:1 image to be stored without cropping, although whether this extra image information can be properly displayed depends on the equipment used. Ultimately, the use of 4:3 windowboxing on video is dependent on whether or not the issue of overscan is better solved via hardware (through the use of newer equipment, to the detriment of those with older displays) or via software (through the use of windowboxing, to the detriment of those with newer displays). The windowboxing was done so that overscanning would be prevented when playing a game on a 4:3 television unit, and so that no on-screen information would be cut off. Some widescreen televisions have a horizontal stretch feature that stretches the image with minimal vertical cropping, compared to the vertical amount that normal zoom feature would crop off, but it causes far more distortion rather than normally zooming in on all four sides of the image. ==References==