Have you ever noticed how, when viewing TV prints of various cartoon shorts (including many Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Popeye entries), the title and credit sequences appear zoomed out and placed in a set of black or colored borders? I could never really figure out why that was done. Also, when did this become a trend? I've seen some really early TV syndication prints of some shorts that were later given the windowbox treatment for their respective titles (Fresh Hare, The Bowling Alley-Cat, Kitty Foiled, just to name a few examples) particularly in the Turner prints. Are said borders really necessary?

the reason why they were windowboxed is so the titles could safely fit in the safe areas for overscan. just about all of these were done back when tube tvs were still common in households.

the reason why they were windowboxed is so the titles could safely fit in the safe areas for overscan. just about all of these were done back when tube tvs were still common in households.

...Which I find rather strange, because the Turner prints for a handful of shorts appear without any windowboxing on their titles. The ones I can think of right off the bat are Wabbit Twouble, Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid, Sufferin' Cats!, Tee for Two, and many others.