Babette's Feast and Camille Claudel: Are the Subtitles Visible on 16x9? (1 Viewer)

[Bill McCamy]

MGM released "Jean de Florette" and "Manon of the Spring" with terrible transfers. Worse, the subtitles cannot be read on a 16x9 display with these non-anamorphic transfers.

"Camille Claudel" and "Babette's Feast" were released at the same time. Neither is anamorphic; BF is 1.66:1, while CC is 2.35:1. Are the subtitles to both movies hidden on a 16x9 display? And are the transfers as bad as Jean and Manon?

 

[Brian McHale]

I can't answer your questions directly, but I did at least discover a way to watch subtitles on non-anamorphic 2.35:1 discs on my Toshiba 16x9 set. In Theaterwide 2 mode, the best mode for non-anamorphic widescreen, you can scroll the picture up so that the top black bar disappears. The subtitles can then be seen in the now much larger bottom black bar. Unfortunately, this would result in cutting off quite a bit of the top of a 1.85:1 or 1.66:1 movie.

The only other work-around for these discs that I know of is to get a DVD player that scales non-anamorphic movies. I don't have one yet, but this feature is high on my list for my next player (I'm thinking about the Malata region-free player, which apparently has all kinds of scaling features).

 

[DeeF]

I bought Babette's Feast only about a month ago, and watched it, on my 16:9 HighDef plasma screen, with subtitles. The subtitles appear right in the picture, as they would in the theater.

I have not seen Camille Claudel, so I can't comment on it.

 

[DaViD Boulet]

Dee,

did you zoom the 1.66:1 image to fill the screen (cropping the top/bottom slightly) when you viewed it? Were the subtitles still 100% visible?

thanks!

 

[DeeF]

David,

Yes, that's exactly what I did. Zoom mode (which is the way I watch all non-anamorphic widescreen movies).

David, er, I mean, Dee

 

[Lew Crippen]

What DeeF wrote. Except my display was an HD 16:9 CRT.