When you scale your native 16:9 to fit a 4:3 tv screen, you must take one thing into account: TV safe zones. Contrary to popular belief, scaling to 75 percent in your editing program will not fit the original frame into the TV. It may give it the actual 16:9 ratio, but you will not see all of the orignal frame, it will still cut off the edges of your shot. My suggestion would be to turn on the TV safe zones in your monitor on your editing software to use as a guide. Then you enter the value of 67, rather than 75. As a result, you may have a true letterbox image on your tv and the entire shot in which worked hard to frame will be seen in its entirety.

But when viewed on something that does show the entire frame, like a computer, or a newer TV, you'll have letterbox edges on all four sides, which will look stupid. I try to plan for the safe-zone even when shooting 16:9 - that's the best plan.

Ahh, but most consumer camcorder monitors overscan anyway. So by letting the video go past video safe (as it should), chances are the entire shot in which worked hard to frame will be seen in its entirety. Unless you are monitoring on-set with an under-scanning monitor, you're actually giving yourself a larger FOV. Generally this isn't the norm.

But who cares, right? At the end of the day, this is just one more choice we as filmmakers make that contributes to the aesthetic of our films.

Another layer of complexity... I didn't even think of that. It's true, most LCDs overscan, and a select few have a special "all scan" mode which can be toggled on and off.

So the answer is there is no answer?

elliott (otiose)...