The Last Witch Hunter is a fantasy action film released in 2015. It stars Vin Diesel as the protagonist, Kaulder, who is an immortal witch hunter. The movie is set in a world where witches exist and they are the cause of many problems and catastrophes that occur in society. In the film, Kaulder is the last remaining witch hunter, cursed with immortality by the powerful Witch Queen. He has spent centuries hunting down and killing evil witches to maintain the peace. However, a new threat arises when the Witch Queen is resurrected and plans to unleash a deadly plague on humanity.
There's three ways to handle 16:9 content on a 16:10 screen:
- source video is 1280x720 16 9 aspect ratio - screen size is 1280x768 16 10 aspect ratio - image will be displayed as 1280x720 with black bars on top. Black bars get added -- to the sides or top and bottom of the screen -- so the TV show or movie can fit on your TV without bring cropped or stretched.
However, a new threat arises when the Witch Queen is resurrected and plans to unleash a deadly plague on humanity. To stop the Witch Queen and save the world, Kaulder teams up with a group of unlikely allies, including a young witch named Chloe, a skilled priest called Dolan, and a powerful witch known as The 37th Dolan. Together, they must unravel the mystery behind the Witch Queen's plan and find a way to defeat her.
Widescreen, letterbox and black bars: How to wrangle TV aspect ratios
What are those black bars on your screen when you watch a movie? Should you get rid of them? Can you? Behold, the world of aspect ratios, and how to deal with them.
Geoffrey Morrison ContributorGeoffrey Morrison is a writer/photographer about tech and travel for CNET, The New York Times, and other web and print publications. He's also the Editor-at-Large for The Wirecutter. He has written for Sound&Vision magazine, Home Theater magazine, and was the Editor-in-Chief of Home Entertainment magazine. He is NIST and ISF trained, and has a degree in Television/Radio from Ithaca College. His bestselling novel, Undersea, and its sequel, Undersea Atrophia, are available in paperback and digitally on Amazon. He spends most of the year as a digital nomad, living and working while traveling around the world. You can follow his travels at BaldNomad.com and on his YouTube channel.
Geoffrey Morrison March 26, 2016 7:00 a.m. PT 6 min readEver watch a movie, and get distracted by the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen? Ever wonder what they are, and why they're different sizes? Wasn't the switch to "widescreen" TVs supposed to prevent all this?
Well. yes and no.
The problem is there's still often a difference between how wide a TV show or movie is, and how wide your TV is. Black bars get added -- to the sides or top and bottom of the screen -- so the TV show or movie can fit on your TV without bring cropped or stretched. Some people find these bars distracting, but they're a good thing.
Wide, wider, widest
Enlarge ImageNote how much is lost when cropping the original image (bottom) to fit screens with a squarer aspect ratio.
"Aspect ratio" is the ratio of the width of a rectangle to its height.
A perfect square has an aspect ratio of 1x1, or 1:1. A rectangle that's twice as wide as it is tall would have an aspect ratio of 2x1, or 2:1.
Things start getting a little confusing when you have stranger ratios. For example, the old tube-style TVs were slightly wider than they were tall. They had an aspect ratio of 4x3, which could also be described as 1.33:1 (technically, 1.33333333333. 1 but let's not get too crazy).
If it's been a while since you've seen a tube TV (try a cheap hotel. ), another really common 4:3 device is the iPad.
Your HDTV is even wider. It has an aspect ratio of 16x9, or 1.78:1 (again, 1.7777. ). So for every 16 inches wide your TV screen is, it's 9 inches tall.
Old TV shows generally have an aspect ratio of 4x3. In order to fit them on your wider screen, 16x9 HDTV, something has to give. You can't fit a square peg in a rectangular hole, so to speak.
The easiest way is to put bars on the left and right. ESPN, for example, does this a lot with old footage, putting their logo on the right and left. Nightly news shows often show a blurred out version of the image on either side of the "real" image.
Another, less ideal, way is to crop and zoom on the image, removing the top and bottom, but fitting the image on the 16x9 screen. This often removes things like foreheads.
Another even less ideal way to do it is to stretch the image horizontally. This makes everyone look exceptionally fat.
A common way to show 4x3 content on a 16x9 screen.
If all you watched on your TV were current TV shows, with the occasional rerun of "Night Court" thrown in, you'd be all set. Old shows would have sidebars ("pillarboxing"), new shows would fill your TV.
The problem is movies. Hollywood has had many, many different aspect ratios over the years. These days the most common are 1.85:1, and 2.39:1. Depending on your favorite old movie, however, these could range from 1.37:1 ("Casablanca") all the way to 2.76:1 ("Ben-Hur," and more recently, "The Hateful Eight").
Most Blu-ray and streaming services show these movies in their original aspect ratio, with either thick black "letterbox" bars at the top and bottom of 2.39:1 aspect movies (2.40:1 as it's put on the Blu-ray):
A 2.40:1 image as shown on a 1.78:1 (16x9) HD/UHDTV. Bonus points if you can figure out what town this is in.
Or with small letterbox bars when showing a 1.85:1 movie (comedies, some smaller dramatic films):
A 1.85:1 aspect ratio image as shown on a 1.78:1 (16x9) HD/UHDTV.
So even though it seems like you're seeing less image, you're actually seeing the entire image. As in, everything the director intended you to see. Many directors use this format to its full advantage, putting important aspects of the story all over the screen, or setting up beautiful shots, all of which gets lost if the aspect ratio isn't correct.
And sometimes the same film will actually employ different aspect ratios, often for effect. "Oz the Great and Powerful" switched from black-and-white 4x3 to color 2.35:1 after the protagonist moved to Oz, for example, and "Life of Pi" was a 16x9 film that included two changes, once during the flying fish scene and another in homage to the cover of the book. And for some films presented in IMAX, like "The Dark Knight" and "Tron: Legacy," only certain portions were shot in the 1.44:1 IMAX format. Here's a great collection with plenty of other examples.
Cropping and stretching
All TVs come with aspect ratio controls to zoom or stretch the image so it fills the screen. Often they buttons are labeled "wide" or "format." These exist largely because people get upset that black bars cover the screen, thinking they weren't seeing "the whole image" (even though, as we've discussed, they were).
Would you like too know more?
- What is upconverting?
- Can 4K TVs make 'regular' HD content look better?
- Beyond basic TV settings
- What's the best picture mode?
- Overscan: You're not seeing the whole picture on your TV
Some people are so annoyed by the black bars that they use the aspect ratio controls on their TV to crop and zoom in on the image.
This is a bad idea, for several reasons. We'll skip the "director's intent" argument because in all my years talking about the benefits of the correct aspect ratio, pleading "this is what the director wanted!" has convinced exactly zero people.
Here's why: it makes your TV look worse. WAY worse.
It's that simple. Zooming in on an image makes it look worse, namely softer and fuzzier, despite what TV shows and movies lead you to believe about the "magic" of zooming on an image (Suuuuure you can read that license plate from a security camera a mile away in the dark).
For an example, let's take a 2.40:1 movie on Blu-ray. The image's resolution is 1,920 by 800 (1,920/2.4=800). That's 26 percent less resolution than a standard 16x9 HD image to start with, and you're only selecting part of it when you zoom/expand to fill the screen. You're essentially taking a 1,420x800 image (the 16x9 portion of the wider image), and blowing it up to fill a 1,920x1,080 screen. That's 45 percent less resolution that your TV has to create, often poorly.
Enlarge ImageOriginal (top) vs upconverted or "scaled" (bottom). Click for a larger image. I exaggerated it a bit so you could see the difference in lower resolution. This example image was created to show what Blu-ray looks like on 4K TVs, but the overall effect for cropping/zooming is similar (albeit less pronounced).
By zooming in on this lower resolution image, there can be multiple issues depending on your TV. As mentioned, it's always going to be softer than if you didn't zoom in. That's because no matter how good scaling has gotten, it still can't work magic and make lower resolution images look like HD.
The second is the likeliness of "jaggies" or jagged diagonal lines. For more on that, and more examples of the effects of zooming in on an image, check out What is upconverting? and Can 4K TVs make "regular" content look better.
4K, 21:9, 16x10 and more
So far we've covered what most of you have, namely a standard HDTV. Ultra HD "4K" displays are the same aspect ratio, and will have the same issues when you zoom in, only worse. Scaling a Blu-ray image to look good on a 4K TV is one thing, but scaling a lower resolution image gets progressively harder, and will look progressively worse.
The Vizio CinemaWide XVT3D0CM was a 21x9 TV.
Every few years we see a manufacturer tout a wide-aspect ratio TV. Philips has marketed a few, and the Vizio CinemaWide XVT3D0CM was the last we reviewed at CNET. These had screen in a 21x9, or 2.33:1 ratio (though many were 2560x1080 resolution, which is usually 2.37:1). Like 16x9 TVs, this matched exactly no movie aspect ratios. However, they were close, and also offered the ability to have a full 16x9 image and something else (like a Web page) on screen at the same time. Don't expect these to become mainstream.
Many computer monitors have a slightly taller aspect than TVs, with a 16:10 ratio.
Bottom line
Hey, it's your TV, enjoy. But for the best picture quality, leave it in the original aspect ratio. Make sure your DVD, Blu-ray, or cable box is set to output 16x9, and make sure your TV is set for "native," or something similar, in it's aspect ratio settings (it's usually the same control that helps you solve this problem).
The image may be smaller with letterbox bars, but by cropping and zooming, you'll lose detail and potentially miss out on what's on the sides of the image.
There is no end solution for this - either you have a little bit of black bars at the bottom or you have a bit of video cut out on the sides. The Lumia 920 does not have a 16:9 display hence why there are black bars; if you had an HTC 8X there wouldn't be any as it has a resolution of 1280x720 in 16:9 whereas the Lumia 920 has a resolution of 1280x768
The Last Witch Hunter is a visually stunning film with intense action sequences and impressive special effects. It combines elements of fantasy, horror, and adventure to create an engaging and thrilling story. Vin Diesel delivers a solid performance as the stoic and determined Kaulder, while the supporting cast also shines in their respective roles. The film received mixed reviews from critics, with some praising its visual effects and world-building, while others criticized its clichéd plot and predictable storyline. Despite the mixed reception,The Last Witch Hunter has gained a cult following and is often considered an enjoyable popcorn flick. If you want to watch The Last Witch Hunter online, it is available for streaming on various platforms, such as Amazon Prime Video, Netflix, and Hulu. Additionally, you can rent or purchase the film on platforms like Google Play and iTunes. Overall, The Last Witch Hunter is an entertaining film that offers an enjoyable mix of action, fantasy, and adventure. While it may not be a groundbreaking masterpiece, it is a solid choice for fans of the genre. So, if you are in the mood for a fun and thrilling ride, go ahead and watch The Last Witch Hunter online..
Reviews for "Stream The Last Witch Hunter: A Visual Spectacle You Won't Want to Miss"
1. Rachel - 2/5 stars - "I was really excited to watch 'Last Witch Hunter' online, but I was rather disappointed with the movie. The story was predictable and the characters felt one-dimensional. It lacked depth and failed to hold my interest throughout the film. Additionally, the special effects were underwhelming and did not add any excitement to the overall experience. Overall, I found it to be a rather generic and uninspiring movie."
2. Michael - 1/5 stars - "I found 'Last Witch Hunter' to be a complete waste of time. The acting was subpar and the dialogue felt cheesy and unconvincing. The plot was convoluted and lacked coherence, making it difficult to follow. I was expecting an exciting and captivating fantasy film, but instead, I was left feeling bored and unengaged. I would not recommend wasting your time on this movie."
3. Sarah - 2/5 stars - "I had high hopes for 'Last Witch Hunter' as I typically enjoy fantasy movies, but this one fell flat. The story felt disjointed and the pacing was off, making it difficult to become invested in the plot. The characters were not well-developed, which made it hard for me to empathize with them. Additionally, the CGI effects felt overdone and took away from the immersive experience. Overall, I was left underwhelmed and disappointed by this film."
4. Alex - 2/5 stars - "I found 'Last Witch Hunter' to be a mediocre movie at best. The concept had potential, but the execution was lacking. The story felt rushed and unoriginal, offering nothing new to the genre. The performances were lackluster, and Vin Diesel's character lacked any real depth. The action sequences were over-the-top and lacked cohesion, leaving me feeling disengaged rather than excited. Overall, I was left unimpressed by this film and would not recommend it."