If your tv is default widescreen, and you play splitscreen, you'll have to live with a 4:3 aspect ratio.

First time I've ever had to post a negative comment on B.Net. I love this game. I know what they were trying to do and I fully understand the explanation. I don't think there is a grand conspiracy to sell Xboxes, Bungie simply made a choice, to them, the quality of the split screen visuals was more important than the size of those visuals. I think we have identified that a large part of the community disagrees with this choice. For what it's worth, I agree with asking Bungie to let people make the choice for themselves. I, like most others would choose to be able to use more of the screen. This is a big issue for the large group of social offline players. Give me back my screen real-estate Bungie!

i hope they patch the split screen mode.

Okay, people who keep saying that Bungie reduced the size to maintain the 16:9 aspect ratio and that bars are logical need to use their brains and figure out this is not the problem, screw the aspect ratios, that doesnt matter. the problem is that there is wasted space. you can kjeep it as horozontal split they should just make it wider, and im not saying stretch it, just render it wider! that is possible! its not like a fixed image that cant be changed. think about what your saying people.

People are saying that the black bars go away in 480P? That's the highest resolution for my plasma tv and the black bars are still there

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] minion13 you r all fools!lol, incase yu neevr played the halo 3 beta, thats how splitscreen is gonna be, asfar as i kno yu cant change it, but if yu think about it this way its not bad becuz it makes it so yu both have an accurately proprotioned widescreen screen. its just smaller.[/quote] you know... that is just barely possible to read

Regardless of what I said before, I do to a small level agree that Bungie should let the user choose. I know they are going for the "best experience for every player" idealogy, but someone pointed out something I missed the first time around. Having this proper 16:9 experience does come at a cost (possible burn in for all the black bars). There should be a choice. There also should have been sufficient documentation in the manual citing this phenomenon. With that said, Bungie is not the only group following this scheme. To my knowledge, no widescreen movie published is in an actual 16:9 ratio and every one of them have black bars on the top and bottom (unless you of course watch the non-widescreen edition of the movie, where almost 50% of the original frame is cut out of the scene). Movies are not filmed at a 16:9 aspect ratio. The point I make is, the entertainment industry as a whole follows what Bungie is doing here. What makes you think Bungie is any different than anyone else? Granted, they have the capability of using 100% of your screen, but it's their [b]right as an artist[/b] to have their works displayed in the manner they've intended. For anyone interested, I'm linking a site that has some pretty good information on widescreen formats, aspect ratios, artists rights, etc. [url]http://www.widescreen.org[/url]

My biggest complaint is that there was no warning, so I too spent about half an hour trying to fix what looked to me like a problem. At the very least, there should have been a message explaining how split screen worked right in the UI so people whouldn't have had to waste so much time and gotten so stressed out. I can kind of buy into the idea that it makes the three and four player experience more balanced. I will also admid that I almost get used to it. Until I put in Gears of War. Then I feel jipped. As someone who [b]has[/b] finished the fight, I can say that the squashed splitscreen thing is the only disapointment about the game. It was everything I could have hoped for in every other way. It would mean a lot to me if the option for [b]full[/b] two player split screen could be patched in somehow.

I agree, athough its not THAT bad, it is very annoying. Pls patch this very soon with an option.

Well i read all of the thread and me too when i got home after midnight here in Mexico i set up my home theater my sharp aquos 32 tv and everything i expect all the glory sign up my sister and then first mission arrival all ok yeaaaaaaaaaah great design, great visuals everything so good the game starts and damn... 4:3 i look and try to setup everything fixing it because i think i got it wrong and then nouuu i had to turn down to 480p to see the whole image... ok there are opinions about fov and stretch and everything... im sure we all have halo ce (1) ok set your xbox to 720p and run the game you see how the black bars appear? and on xbox.com they said halo doesnt have 16:9 support... put your halo 3 disc and see how the same space you see in halo 1 is for halo 3... so i have the proper aspect ratio to 16:9 when i play halo 1 on 720p??? according to some responses in the thread before about keeping proper aspect ratio and getting two 16:9 in one... on other side halo wasnt develop for widescreen so there fore they found the solution for halo 3 so many years ago? ... i cant imagine how that fits exactly into a solution or design for the game .. we all see movies with letterbox even with widescreen hdtvs... but hey some movies are widescreen and take advantage of the tv... some movies are encoded with more fov.. and so again letter box.. now try this. put side by side a 32 inc widescreen and a 32 inch 4:3 the letterbox on the 4:3 is bigger and takes more space of the screen... we all get widescreen so we can see more image so we can have a truly "cinema" experience... [i] "we want our game to look like a movie" [/i] marcus letho.... so make it widescreen.... another one... when you lower your resolution to 480p your whole screen gets filled... is that a disadvantage? everything looks so wrong? and bad? you cant play because of more field of view or something? or just get a little streched and you dont barely notice..?? despite the fact you loose quality because is 480p the game doesnt break or loose its "thats the way we wanted you to play!".... i highly expect a fix for this because its very very odd and strange that a game next gen uses a 4:3 ratio then im not asking this in matchmaking but i do on coop offline because we all love halo halo2 and halo 3 for coop offline because of the "30 seconds of fun".... in halo 2 they dangerously cut the time to 20 seconds of fun because of the gameplay design now they got the 30 again but you only see 25 because of the black bars..... on the aa problem... i think halo 3 does use aa ... the problem is not halo 3 but the xbox360... i read on an xbox forum that some xbox are having troubles with aa since spring update and that all of the games loose aa... mine is with that problem and im waiting to see if fall update will fix it if not ill call customer service... [Edited on 09.30.2007 4:02 AM PDT]

You can argue all you want about how right it is and such but it's not fair to ask people to harm their hdtv's in order to play the game as bungie thinks you should. If someone wants to put themselves at a disadvantage, give them the choice to do. There are many many people who would prefer being at a disadvantage instead of risking harm to their tv's and there are many who would prefer it even if it could cause no harm to the tv. Personally, I'd be just fine playing in a 16:4.5 mode or an 8:9 mode over a 16x9 with black bars. I absolutely love the game overall but it has simply killed local co-op for me and it used to be my favorite part of the game. I'd rather play with a real friend than a bunch of random friends over live but that isn't really a realistic option anymore. I will remember this game fondly for years to come but I guarantee I'll never again be interested in a local co-op mode made by bungie. Thanks for not giving us choices and telling us we should screw up our tv's to play it the way you intended bungie. If Bungie didn't make such amazing games, I'd say I would avoid their games; but they do, so I'll just whine about it and continue to play other aspects of the game. Local co-op is dead to me, god rest its' amazing soul.

[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] Gen Chicken To everyone that has come to this thread to say, more or less, 'quit -blam!-ing...': Stop. A lot of people have purchased this game with the hope of filling up their (sometimes purchased exactly for THIS game) HDTV. How would you feel if you dropped around a grand for a TV, 60-120ish for a game only to boot it up after standing on line for a couple of hours and finding that you and your friend/family member have been reduced to 4:3. I don't watch much television, I don't even play too many video games. Why did I buy this gigundus tv? For [i]Halo 3[/i]. [/quote] It really amazes me how so many people think the split screen aspect ratio is 4:3 simply because their splits screens don't utilize the entire screen. Can we say simple geometry? Halo 2 didn't even use 4:3 (or 16:9 for that matter) when using splitscreen. There is no way to split a 16:9 screen in such a way that it uses all available screenspace whilst maintaining 2 or more 16:9 screens. Think about this in simple elementary math. Take a rectangle that is 16 units of length long, and 9 units high. Split it vertically. You now have two 8:9 screens. Split it horizontally and you get two 16:4.5 screens. Granted Halo2 did the vertical split, but it totally killed your field of view giving you a disadvantage against someone playing solo on their own TV. Bungie now splits the screen whilst maintaining proper 16:9 aspect ratios for all screens involved. While this does kind of suck that your entire screen isn't utilized, Bungie did this correctly. One of the major pushes for Halo 3 was to even out the playing field for everyone playing. Weapons were modified. Vehicles were modified. And now the screen was modified. All of this was to provide the BEST balanced environment anyone could have, whether it be them playing by themselves or with multiple people on one TV. If you want 100% of your screen utilized, use additional TVs with one person per TV or play a game that doesn't care about even playing fields for all involved.

you can make the FOV bigger in an fps too. like pdz or graw. there are ways to do this, but bungie thinks they aren't good, instead of listening to theire consumer.... i am very dissapointed in bungie... [Edited on 09.30.2007 12:25 AM PDT]

GoW was over the shoulder, Halo3 is FPS. With over the shoulder, you can just extend field of vision.

Well said Malice514, well said. Reading this forum and all the others it is now apparent that if you're a fan of split-screen co-op you are spit out of luck. I personally haven't touched the game since the night I got it home and saw the co-op "pillar box" black bars. I am absolutely speechless and dumbfounded that a game that is so perfect in every other area would have such a glaring inadequecy as this. Who the hell makes such a descision? Somewhere, somehow a person was paid to decide this? If you feel so inclined Malice go back a few pages and read my previous posts about how and why I think this happened and tell me what you think. Sad part is what do Bungie care? It's a moot point -- they already have our money for the game. For all they care we can use it as a freaking coaster.

Can someone tell me what the hell is going on? I bought a Samung 26" Wide-Screen to play on Halo 3. I have so far been EXTREMELY IMPRESSED with how Halo 3 came out. Halo 3 seems like what they were trying to do with Halo 2, but failed. They pulled out all the stops and created a game with the best elements of Halo CE and Halo 2 and best of all it looks great on HDTV. Then, not twenty minutes ago, I try to play split-screen with my roommate and I get Halo 3 with black bars. "What the -blam!-? It must be because you are signed into first player, the setting must be wrong." So It try and it is the same way, "there must be a way to fix this," I say. I come online to Bungie and from the looks of it there is no way to change this, and it even appears that they designed it this way... ARE YOU -blam!- KIDDING ME? This is ridiculous, every part of the game was optimized (storyline, graphics, weapons, physics, maps, xbox live) and then I try the game on split-screen, one of the most integral parts of the game, and I get this bullshiz. What were you thinking Bungie? I am not going to risk burning an image into my screen to play this stupid game on split-screen and furthermore, I think it EXTREMELY NEGLIGENT OF YOU TO DO THIS. Where is the formal page that tells me how to mess with my settings to get it in widescreen? I also don't know why it would be so hard to just have made the game with split-screen-wide-screen. Halo 3 fully supports wide-screen gameplay (like how your your reticle is completely circular and not oval) so why can't I stack another screen on top of mine when I play or even have the option to go vertical-split-screen? WHAT THE FUDGE! I was even going to deem this "the best and most well done game I have ever played" until I found this out. I am pissed Bungie, I am PISSED!

it's not that much of an advantage, if anything. you're still playing on a smaller screen, and you're vertical is more limited. either way split screen has less of an advantage. but when you take my 56" screen and turn it into a 32" box it's pretty damn annoying. not to mention it makes everything tiny. it's dumb and needs to fill the whole screen with a horizontal split.

No More Bars Please,

lol...its only because if you play with 3 player on one screen now everybody has the same size window... in halo 2 player one has the full half of the tv and the other 2 had to share the other half, now it more fair and everybody got the same size window.\ (maybe somebody gave this awser already... i didn't took time to read all 13 pages.) [Edited on 09.29.2007 8:01 AM PDT]

that's an extremely unsatisfying answer from Bungie. A central aspect of the Halo experience is split screen, and they're killing it. The screen being cut off really affects the experience for the worst. Give me an option to change it, just do anything to give me my screen space figure it out! When there's a will there's a way.

To everyone that has come to this thread to say, more or less, 'quit -blam!-ing...': Stop. A lot of people have purchased this game with the hope of filling up their (sometimes purchased exactly for THIS game) HDTV. How would you feel if you dropped around a grand for a TV, 60-120ish for a game only to boot it up after standing on line for a couple of hours and finding that you and your friend/family member have been reduced to 4:3. I don't watch much television, I don't even play too many video games. Why did I buy this gigundus tv? For [i]Halo 3[/i]. Now I recognize that the folks at Bungie have probably been blasted off of their faces over the last weekish. They successfully launched one of the largest entertainment titles in history, they deserve to celebrate before they get down to brass tax. To Bungie: After you guys recuperate from your celebrations and try every hangover cure in the book (water, water, water, your body is dehydrated), please have a nice little pow-wow over this issue. You guys may not deem it too important, but your supporting community does. We love Bungie, so show us some more love as we, effectively, bought all of your celebration booze. Give us the choice.

Indeed. I rly hope that they could at least give us the option... It's like everything in halo starts to feel forced especially the new multiplayer lobby. What happened to the good old server search list? Anyway it's off the topic so I ain’t about to go there xD lol

I would like to get another response from bungie? We played Halo last night with like 6 friends over and everybody was bummed about the black bars. I might just set it back to 480p. Anyway, I understood that this black bar thing is caused by the fact that the game is running in 640p. Ive come to appreciate the game even more, but im highly disappointed with the unfinished feel it gives me now, its halo 2 all over :P Hope you fix them with patches though.

why is this post still here?!?! its been stated why its like that and why it souldent be changed. it is to correct the problem with stretched screens. because nobody wants a oval motion sensor.

Organ Thief You hit the nail on the head with the "less sales" theory. I hope this gets resolved. It amazes me that bungie/microsoft, with how far the technology is, would not give their customers a product that uses up all their screen. IF you would have told me this couple of a months ago,i'd call you crazy. Guess the joke is on us

i hope this is resolved.