Robin Hood on TCM squeezed and cropped (1 Viewer)

[RolandL]

The bottom of the picture is missing and its squeezed but still 1.33;1

 

[Everett S.]

The bottom of the picture is missing and its squeezed but still 1.33;1

That still happens early in the morning. I recorded a lot of Anthony Newlys early films on TCM all showed @ the wrong aspect ratio. Overnight.

 

[Peter Apruzzese]

Usually a local cable co. mistake where they didn't read the flag correctly. It happens.

 

[Stan]

Surprising. I've never noticed a problem with them, one of my favorite go-to channels, but I guess everybody screws up once in a while.

A tad off topic, but it's scary that some of what they're showing as "classics" are films from my '20s, even sneaking into my '30s. I'm only 56, these films haven't passed into classic territory yet.

 

[Garysb]

I assume you were watching TCM HD. I DVRed The Adventures of Robin Hood Sunday from TCM SD and did not see a squeezed or cropped image . I did however watch a recent movie on TCM SD and it was window boxed with a small square in the middle of my screen.

Since I have Verizon Fios I am still not privileged to get TCM HD. Fios recently added the HD feed of FXM which shows classic Fox movies in the mornings. How they could choose that station over TCM for HD is beyond me. As always Fios makes no announcement when they add an HD feed for a channel that was previously only available in SD. Its just there one day and you have to notice it. This is the reason I don't filter my channel selections by Favorites. End of rant.

The Adventures of Robin Hood is also available on Watch TCM on the TCM website until 12/25 and it does not appear squeezed or cropped. It includes the intro by Ben Markowitz from Sunday.

 

[Stan]

I do get TCM HD. I'll have to watch for this in the future and see if I can find a difference. Will also checkout the Watch TCM site, but that will have to go through my laptop, so not sure how accurate the picture will be.

TCM HD is usually very good with OAR. Occasionally also get HBO showing films 2.35:1. Rare, but it happens. Figure there are probably to many Joe Six Packs who complain that the picture doesn't fill their screen, rather than realize they're actually losing part of the picture, the companies just give up and crop films to fit the basic widescreen.

It's a never ending battle. I used to help friends with DVDs and widescreen VHS when they first started appearing, but everybody whined "What are those black bars", "Where did the picture go, it's not filling the screen". Hopeless.

Remember even setting my mother's widescreen to "squish mode", before HD broadcasts really kicked in. People would be short, fat and distorted, made her happy and drove me crazy

Just because they can go to Wally World and get a cheap widescreen, doesn't mean they know what they're doing.

Another one of my "opposite opinions". I filter all my channels to the HD versions. I can't stand the pillow boxed (is that the same as window-boxed?) look. I've got an old 1983 Sony in my bedroom, surprisingly still works, but I have a choice of letterbox or normal. Normal crops off a lot of the picture, even with older shows like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" or "The Bob Newhart Show" that has been running recently. On my HDTV they look great, actually seem to be bigger than the old 4:3 ratio.

Sorry for rambling on so long, I tend to do it once in a while

 

[Matt Hough]

Windowboxed means bars on all four sides. Pillar-boxed (don't know where a pillow enters into it) are the bars on the sides for showing 4:3 material on a widescreen TV.

 

[Garysb]

Windowboxed means bars on all four sides. Pillar-boxed (don't know where a pillow enters into it) are the bars on the sides for showing 4:3 material on a widescreen TV.

Sorry I used the wrong term. I corrected my post above.

 

[KPmusmag]

I noticed just recently that MeTV has started cropping the top and bottom of 1.33 shows like Mary Tyler Moore to about 1.66, I suppose to satisfy those who feel their screens must be filled at all times.

 

[Garysb]

TCM crops "The Way We Were" to 1:77 when it is a 2:35 film. I guess its the way the film comes from Sony. It has run on Sony Movie Channel and HDNet also at 1:77. Only place to see it uncropped on blu ray and DVD.

 

[Tony Bensley]

Matt Hough said: ↑
Windowboxed means bars on all four sides. Pillar-boxed (don't know where a pillow enters into it) are the bars on the sides for showing 4:3 material on a widescreen TV.

Sorry I used the wrong term. I corrected my post above.

Hi Stan!

I hate to be "that guy!" but it still says "pillow boxed" in the second last paragraph of your #6 post. Your attempted correction must not have took, for some unknown reason. It happens!

CHEERS!

 

[Angelo Colombus]

I have not seen Robert Osborne lately on TCM so i hope he is doing well.

 

[Tony Bensley]

I have not seen Robert Osborne lately on TCM so i hope he is doing well.

Before we cancelled TCM about 5 years ago, I remember that Robert Osborne took a needed break from his hosting duties in the summer of 2011. Unfortunately, I didn't get to catch his return later that fall. Hopefully, this is just another one of those needed breaks and nothing more, but Mr. Osborne is 84! I do hope that he's doing well, in any case!

CHEERS!

 

[Stan]

Matt Hough said: ↑
Windowboxed means bars on all four sides. Pillar-boxed (don't know where a pillow enters into it) are the bars on the sides for showing 4:3 material on a widescreen TV.



Hi Stan!

I hate to be "that guy!" but it still says "pillow boxed" in the second last paragraph of your #6 post. Your attempted correction must not have took, for some unknown reason. It happens!

CHEERS!

Ugh.... You guys are driving me crazy

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Letterboxed - full widescreen OAR, top and bottom of TV screen blacked out, full picture, but this is what Joe Six Pack whines about most "why is the picture so skinny???" They'd prefer to have the sides chopped off so the screen is filled.

Pillow/Pillar? boxed - black or gray bars, whatever your TV does on the side, but nothing missing, you see the full original picture. Never actually heard that description before. Think this applies mainly to older TV shows like MTM and others.

Window-boxed - A small picture with black/grey bars around both sides, top and bottom. I can't seem to replicate it, seems to mostly show up on late night infomercials.

My old 1983 Sony only allows me to change from "letterbox" to "normal", but for its age has a surprisingly decent picture, the only reason I've kept it.

My main HDTV seems normal, some movies are shown in OAR, most recently "The Martian" on HBO, so black bars top and bottom, but no cropping of the sides. IFC and Sundance will also show OAR occasionally, but of course you have to deal with commercials.

16:9 seems to be the standard so people complain when they get the full 2.35:1 CinemaScope viewing that some channels are doing now, not realizing they're losing part of the picture with 16:9. I've given up trying to explain this to friends and relatives.

Quite sure I've screwed something up, so please let me know.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Letterboxed = horizontal bars on the top and bottom of the screen (so named after old fashioned wide mail boxes)

Pillarboxed = vertical bars on the left/right of the screen (so named after pillars, a type of vertical column in architecture)

Windowboxed = bars on all four sides of the screen (so named because it almost appears that you are looking through a window)

Technically, a movie could be presented with one of those attributes but still not be OAR. But these methods used properly can be a way to present OAR when the shape of the movie differs from the shape of the screen.

 

[RichMurphy]

Let me join in the fun.

Window-boxing is also used for viewing opening credits on older films, so that all of the text appears in the "safe" area. The window-boxing effect is also apparent when you watch a letterboxed broadcast of a low definition/standard TV station (4:3 aspect ratio) on a high definition TV set (16:9 ratio).

Some stations letterbox their now-standard widescreen images onto their legacy older channels, which is preferable to those stations that simply lop off the sides of the image. (The latter is particularly amusing when the local news does its weather reports. The weather person goes off to the side as usual to show the map, but thanks to cropping, it looks like Thing from the Addams Family is doing the weather report.)

 

[Stan]

Some stations letterbox their now-standard widescreen images onto their legacy older channels, which is preferable to those stations that simply lop off the sides of the image. (The latter is particularly amusing when the local news does its weather reports. The weather person goes off to the side as usual to show the map, but thanks to cropping, it looks like Thing from the Addams Family is doing the weather report.)

One thing I keep seeing more and more is stations will letterbox opening credits, so you think, "Wow, they're actually going to show the complete picture". But like you stated, they lop off the sides eventually.

Always fun to watch where they do it, sometimes very subtle, just a slow, gradual zoom-in until the picture fills the screen. Other times a nice letterboxed picture, cut to the next scene and boom, full screen and you just lost 40% of the picture. With both scenarios, that's where I hit the delete button and stop watching.

Speaking of news stations, we've got a local one that constantly screws up. The cute girl doing the weather report against a green screen. It's hilarious, but the techies totally mess it up and she's standing there, pointing at nothing, just a big green screen, apparently seeing something the rest of us aren't. Someday they'll catch on.

 

[Garysb]

One thing I keep seeing more and more is stations will letterbox opening credits, so you think, "Wow, they're actually going to show the complete picture". But like you stated, they lop off the sides eventually.

.

In the days before widescreen TVs, stations would show the credits of Cinemascope films stretched vertically so that the text wouldn't be cut off on the sides of the full screen 4:3 presentation. FXM seems to show most Cinemascope films with the sides cut to fit the current wide screen TV 1:77. Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea was shown today in that format. I wonder if the titles were redone or would they always have fit in 1:77. I didn't notice any text being cut off the cropped picture. I just can't see them spending any money on redoing the credits to fit the TV screen.

 

[Stan]

In the days before widescreen TVs, stations would show the credits of Cinemascope films stretched vertically so that the text wouldn't be cut off on the sides of the full screen 4:3 presentation. FXM seems to show most Cinemascope films with the sides cut to fit the current wide screen TV 1:77. Voyage To The Bottom of The Sea was shown today in that format. I wonder if the titles were redone or would they always have fit in 1:77. I didn't notice any text being cut off the cropped picture. I just can't see them spending any money on redoing the credits to fit the TV screen.

Loved "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea". Still being shown, but currently not on any of the channels I get, but it will show up again eventually. Really enjoyed the special effects, definitely on the "cheesy" side, but pretty good considering they're as old as me

Did a quick look-up, never realized Irwin Allen (Mr. Disaster Flick) was involved. Really looking forward to it now, it's been at least ten years since I've seen it.

Every time I've come across it was always widescreen letterboxed, but like I said, it's been a while. Maybe they were cropping, doing the "formatted to fit your screen" thing, before I began noticing and got much more cynical.

 

[RolandL]

Always fun to watch where they do it, sometimes very subtle, just a slow, gradual zoom-in until the picture fills the screen. Other times a nice letterboxed picture, cut to the next scene and boom, full screen and you just lost 40% of the picture. With both scenarios, that's where I hit the delete button and stop watching.
.

When a 2.35 movie is cropped to 1.85 or 1.78 on a TV broadcast, you are missing about 20 to 25%.