HDDVD Stupid question time... (1 Viewer)

[DeathStar1]

With all the Widescreen Television sets
being bought now, here's something that I've been wondering about. Will the HDDVD and Blue Ray camp cater initially to the home theater group and release everything in it's original aspect ratio, as it did in the glory days of DVD, untill the general public comes along? Or will there be no full frame releases at all?

Thanks

 

[Jack Briggs]

Neil, "fullframe" in HD means 1.78:1. It is conceivable that maybe some studios might crop wider films into that aspect ratio (after all, HBO does so with its HD film broadcasts). On the other hand, given that the early adopters will be loudmouthed home theater purists (read: us), it's kind of doubtful.

 

[Ed St. Clair]

Pan & Scan?
Is that what you meant to say?
The "wondering" is that some widescreen releases may be cropped to 16:9. So as to have no black bars on the top & bottom of the screen, as P&S cropped the frame to eliminate the black bars, top & bottom, as well on a 4:3 display. Some movies on cable are already experiencing this, therefore showing less side information (P&S also lost sided info).
And then there is that original 4:3 sources will be cropped to 16:9 as well. Such as the first season box set of "Kung Fu". Losing top & bottom information.
So you thread is correct, in that OAR may still be a problem in the "HD Disc World".

 

[Shane Martin]

I noticed that one option on HD DVD players is a P&S type feature. I hope they only make 1 OAR release and force the rest to just zoom. Alot of people hate the zooming so they either quit buying 2.35 movies(laughable at what they will be missing) or deal with it and it becomes not an issue anymore.

Making more than 1 sku of HD titles for these formats is crazy.

 

[BrettGallman]

Yeah, I hate that HBO already does this because some pretty good movies are on in HD pretty often. HD Net movies doesn't do this, but there's rarely anything of interest on there, to me anyway.