How The West Was Won cropped and recomposed for showing on AMC (1 Viewer)

[RolandL]

Did anyone catch the showing of How The West Was Won on AMC recently? For some reason they recomposed some of the scenes for TV.
AMC showing:

Blu-ray:

 

[Johnny Angell]

Since HTWWW is über widescreen, perhaps they thought the image would be to small in its OAR. I didn't see the telecast.

 

[Doctorossi]

Sad. I'd imagined AMC to have more integrity than that. *sigh*

 

[Walter Kittel]

Happens all of the time, unfortunately. A recent broadcast of Open Range (where is the frickin' Blu-ray?) was shown in 1.85:1 on AMC.
- Walter.

 

[JamesNelson]

Wow! I guess Cinerama lends a whole new option to formatting for television. Instead of merely panning and scanning, one can also omit the entire middle panel. Unbelievable.

 

[Charles Smith]

AMC gave up the last of its integrity more than a decade ago. There is literally nothing they could do that would surprise me. Bottom of the barrel in "movie channel" film presentation.

 

[TonyD]

As Charles mentioned this would have been news 10-12 years ago. They have been cropping and chopping movies and adding commercials for a long time now.
I have nt watched anything buttv shows on there for almost 15 years now.

 

[jseabough]

I only watch AMC for WALKING DEAD, THE KILLING and MAD MEN. Thankful we have TCM.. Hope it never goes the way of American Movie Classics.

 

[ahollis]

Originally Posted by RolandL /t/322125/how-the-west-was-won-cropped-and-recomposed-for-showing-on-amc#post_3946487
Did anyone catch the showing of How The West Was Won on AMC recently? For some reason they recomposed some of the scenes for TV.

I was there for about 2 seconds them got my Blu-ray out. I was going to watch it on AMC only to have it playing in the background while doing some work and planned to catch a few scenes. When I saw it was not the real thing, I watched the Blu and still need to do the work.

 

[Mark-P]

Wow. That just shows you how far we've come in the computer age in that TV networks can now afford to use CGI to recompose imagery to suit their own needs. I suppose it's no better (or worse) than pan-and-scan.

 

[Rob W]

You guys don't seriously think that AMC did this themselves, do you ? For whatever reason, the master came from Turner's tv division, presumably created for hi-def channels that won't accept letterboxed masters.

 

[Matt Hough]

I don't think I've watched a movie on AMC in more than a decade. If they didn't have some original series, I'd never turn to the channel at all.

And at one time, it was my favorite channel. Very sad.

 

[TonyD]

You guys don't seriously think that AMC did this themselves, do you ? For whatever reason, the master came from Turner's tv division, presumably created for hi-def channels that won't accept letterboxed masters.

AMC doing it themselves isn't the issue. The point is they air it this way on purpose. They choose to air cropped and chopped and edited versions of movies.
Also this entire discussion is pointless and has taken place 12 years ago already.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

When channel flipping, I have seen films on AMC-HD that are both panned & scanned to 4x3 and then stretched to fill the 16x9 frame! The channel is terrible when it comes to presenting films, and has been for many years.

 

[David_B_K]

I don't think I've watched a movie on AMC in more than a decade. If they didn't have some original series, I'd never turn to the channel at all.
And at one time, it was my favorite channel. Very sad.

I remember telling my wife we had to get cable; because there was this channel called American Movie Classics that aired tons of classic movies commercial free. The night we got hooked up, they were showing The Uninvited. For years, that was my main go-to channel for movies. They were one of the first to show letter-boxed versions of widescreen films (though they would alternate those showings with the P&S versions).
Somewhere along the line, they started adding commercials and changed their name to AMC. I have not watched them for years. I don't even have the channel as a choice in any of my custom DISH Network grids. The Bravo channel suffered a similar decline. Maybe they are owned by the same people?

 

[Lord Dalek]

AMC used to be owned by Cablevision but last year it was cut loose (along with the rest of Cablevision's paytv channels) and went fully independent.

Bravo was for many years part of the same family but sold to NBC in 2002, who proceeded to ruin it as they would later do with Sci-Fi and USA. In fact, one could argue that the success of Queer Eye For the Straight Guy the following year is what has accelerated this slow erosion of cable television into vapid lifestyle-oriented schlock.

 

[RolandL]

The original DVD for A Bug's Life also did some recomposing for the full screen version.

 

[Johnny Angell]

In the case of Bug's Life, at least that was done by Pixar. Apparently they didn't think too much of the idea since, to my knowledge, they didn't repeat it for following releases.

 

[RolandL]

In the case of Bug's Life, at least that was done by Pixar. Apparently they didn't think too much of the idea since, to my knowledge, they didn't repeat it for following releases.

That was back in 2001 when most people had 1.33:1 TV's. Now that you can only buy 16 x 9 TV's it's not needed.