05-13-2008, 03:51 PM
Can or should we legislate culture and taste? No. But if we did, everyone who buys a widescreen TV should be required to read that article.
The money quote:
I don't subscribe to HD sat or cable, so I wasn't aware that there has been a regression back to delivering a "full screen" by them cropping to 16:9 or un-matting the original shot. I'd be pissed. I suppose that when the major networks, broadcasting movies OTA in HD, would be tempted to similarly butcher the content in lieu of educating customers.
What I don't understand is why a broadcast would tend to not be true to the movie's original aspect ratio, but that a disc version (DVD or Blu-Ray) would likely be. Are these two different customers? People watching broadcasts prefer a stretched the image but when they go to buy or rent a movie, suddenly they prefer the correct ratio? Makes no sense.
The money quote:
If you have a frame that's too big for a photo, you use mattes to hold the picture in place and fill the empty space around it. That's exactly what the black bars do, no more and no less. In the final analysis, it comes down to a decision of which is more important, the picture or the frame.
I don't subscribe to HD sat or cable, so I wasn't aware that there has been a regression back to delivering a "full screen" by them cropping to 16:9 or un-matting the original shot. I'd be pissed. I suppose that when the major networks, broadcasting movies OTA in HD, would be tempted to similarly butcher the content in lieu of educating customers.
What I don't understand is why a broadcast would tend to not be true to the movie's original aspect ratio, but that a disc version (DVD or Blu-Ray) would likely be. Are these two different customers? People watching broadcasts prefer a stretched the image but when they go to buy or rent a movie, suddenly they prefer the correct ratio? Makes no sense.