WTF - Opening Credits of Thunderball on BR are Pillarboxed (1 Viewer)

[Bob-ATL]

Thank you Sanjay.

 

[Bob-ATL]

I also care about the names, but all the same the image should not be altered to account for overscan.

 

[Bob-ATL]

Exactly. In either case, it would be wrong.

 

[TravisR]

I knew there'd be something with the James Bond discs that fans would be pissed about.

 

[WadeM]

I did not know this. Thank you for the clarification.

Not speaking specifically of this film, but in general though, there should, in theory, be no reason for this on any Blu-ray disc then, unless it was originally designed that way. If someone has a Blu-ray disc, then they won't have an old-style TV.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Go into any Best Buy or Wal-mart and you'll see dozens of CRTs, some of them are even HD.

Doug

 

[Douglas Monce]

Many, even brand new, flat screen HDTVs still overscan. Probably not as much as a CRT will, but they still do it. When buying an HDTV you actually have to be careful to make sure the model you select will display every pixel, most will not.

Doug

 

[Bob-ATL]

Fans weren't happy about this when the UEs were released a couple years ago.

Not new to the Blu-Rays.

 

[TravisR]

^I know but I get the feeling that even if it wasn't this, it'd be something else.

 

[PaulDA]

Where I have said it is "too much to ask"? What I have said (and will continue to say when confronted with it) is that some sense of proportion needs to be maintained when making a complaint about something like this. What is being asked for is not unreasonable. HOW it is being described, by a few, is ridiculous--that is what I have an issue with. Some have recognized the hyperbole was excessive. That's a start. As for others, my little list of the "theatrical experience" is simply illustrating how exaggeration soon devalues an observation.

 

[Bob-ATL]

Actually in this case, we are paying attention to the movie.

If attention is focused on equipment we wouldn't have noticed the aspect ratio change.

 

[Stephen PI]

I projected the film in an Odeon theatre in the UK in January '66 and I recall quite clearly that some titles were very close to the edge of the screen, particularly the one displayed on post #33, and if your aperture / mask plates weren't cut properly you were in danger of cropping the edge of the credits. The IB Technicolor print that we ran was not pillarboxed on the credits. I recall we did open the screen masking on this film to compensate as we had a little extra picture on the sides to play with and we intended to leave it that way but several weeks later when we ran a Fox 'Scope film, I think it was "Stagecoach", we had to bring in the masking again because of a blue band that ran down the edge of the print between the picture and the perforations was clearly visible.

 

[Jimmy Nugent]

deleted- no need to wade into this fray...

 

[Will_B]

You're right - Best Buy sells four, count 'em, four tube televisions. And several dozen lcds.

Walmart sells six tube televisions.

 

[TravisR]

In all fairness though, there's still millions of CRTs that are already in people's houses and are going to stay there for years to come.

 

[Will_B]

...Or at least until Feb 2009, anyway!

 

[PaulDA]

My SD CRTs work perfectly fine and will remain in service well beyond Feb. 2009 (this would be true even if I still lived in the US as I've been using them with digital PVRs for years).

 

[Arild]

I'd wager few of those have Blu-Ray players hooked up to them.

 

[Brent Hutto]

Agreed on the silliness of comments like "punch in the face". But even though I'm past getting worked up over geeky stuff I understand perfectly how frustrating this is to some people. We've all bought DVD releases that were compromised under various least-common-denominator rationalizations but on balance it's nice to have cheap, accessible, good-quality versions of movies we love.

But now Blu-Ray comes along and we all dutifully upgrade our hardware and start buying movie releases that are in many cases double-dips of movies we previously bought and/or rented on DVD...and we find compromises away from the original theatrical presentation under various least-common-denominator rationalizations. You've either got to get mad as hell or just laugh at the Helleresque futility of it all. Somehow its worth remastering or in some cases even redigitizing these films but once more yet again the result just has to be Bowdlerized in some way or another every time you turn around.

Will it ever end? Apparently not.

 

[ChristopherDAC]

Modern displays are generally set up, from the factory, to employ a sizable amount of overscan. Why? To compensate for the poor quality of cable TV feeds in the period of the middle 1980s to middle 1990s!

Not being bound by "broadcast quality" requirements, cable was often run from 3/4" tape with poor or no time-base correction. The ragged edges & occasional exposure of the vertical interval at the top or bottom of the screen, on sets with minimal overscan, resulted in a lot of unnecessary service calls, & in complaints to the manufacturers. Before this, while older televisions with vacuum-tube electronics suffered from the size of the scanning raster varying with temperature, & so were normally adjusted with enough overscan to avoid exposing the (rather noisy with early cameras & synch equipment) edges of the picture as conditions changed, transistorized sets (which did not have this problem to such an extent) were normally adjusted for minimal overscan.

So, in other words, this windowboxing of the credits is a poorly-conceived response, hanging around long after it has outlived its usefulness, to a poorly-conceived response, hanging around long after it has outlived its usefulness, to a problem associated with insufficient care & low quality standards. It has no place in the High Definition environment, which has offered us an opportunity for a fresh start with high & consistent quality standards.