4:3 and the death of television

Post 00025 | November 21st

Pardon my lack of updates lately. I'm currently redecorating, which means most of my electronic doodads have been disconnected. I've bought a new telly and given the old one away. Thing is, the new telly weighs a ton and seeing it only came with a wall mounting bracket, I haven't actually been able to use it yet, meaning this is practically my current setup:

I can feel your eyes rolling. While I can't blame you for thinking your favourite 90's retro hipster would replace his modern telly with a CRT, I swear this is a stop gap solution. That said, I had kind of forgotten how nice a tube telly set can look. There's something fundamentally boring about modern TVs. It's a black slab. Like your mobile, but bigger. The tube telly is a lot shorter and narrower but it still seems more imposing.

"But I thought they'd turned off analogue transmission?" I hear you ask. They have, but it is still surprisingly simple making your pre-digital telly into something resembling a smart tv. All mainline Raspberry Pi models (not including the 400) offer composite out - The first generation had a dedicated composite port while later models has it hooked up through the mini-jack socket. Mini-jack to composite + stereo leads were pretty common with camcorders in the 00's. Apple also supported it on some of thier iPod models, but I believe they used a different pinout, meaning video would come out one of the audio plugs and vice versa (of course, you could just switch the ports around). Anyway, if your TV doesn't have phono sockets, you can use a SCART adapter or an RF modulator if your have a TV that predates SCART.

As for software for the Pi, I use Kodi as it plays well with Jellyfin, the software I use to manage and playback my media files. If you haven't heard about Jellyfin before it's basically like Plex but open source. It feels a bit snappier and it doesn't have any features locked behind a subscription service.

In any case, because of this setup, I've been watching a lot of old TV series lately. In a way it feels as if television as a medium lost something when it went widescreen. There's something about the 4:3 aspect ratio that just seems more intimate. While being able to see more of the scene can be nice, it ultimately makes you feel like you are further away from action.

I think you have been able to see a shift in television when widescreen was introduced. Modern shows seem a lot closer to cinema experiences in appearance, albeit often with a narrative that spans multiple episodes while older shows favoured shorter stories and a simpler setting - your family home or the apartment of a group of friends. Whatever drama there was would usually be concluded in the same episode. A two-part story would be a big deal, the one you that would be stuck in your mind for a week while you waited for the next episode.

Of course, this has become a thing of the past in the age of box sets and streaming services. These new methods of distribution also inarguably have had some influence in this shift in media. We've seen reboots of a lot of 4:3 era shows these past years but none of them have been able to live up to what they once were. Mostly I think this is because they are trying to appeal to people's nostalgia - It simultaneously needs to be what is was thirty years ago while being modern as the zeitgeist from back then has been and gone - but the medium itself has also changed too much since then as well. Your 85" UHD set and its surround bar is there to give you an experience greater than Hyacinth falling into Daisy and Onslow's bush. Which is a shame, because there really isn't a medium for content like that any more, and it is the perfect kind of television to wind down to.

Of course, the biggest irony of it all is that while widescreen TV is inching ever closer to the cinema experience, art house films such as The Artist, Grand Budapest Hotel and Ida have started to embrace the 4:3 format this past decade. They all look gorgeous and I really should watch them on my telly while I have it set up like this, but they are still films with big stories to tell, which is the exact opposite of what 4:3 television used to be able to provide: A relaxing flow of nothingness.

You should see Grand Budapest Hotel if you get the chance.