Netflix crops aspect ratio.. without telling viewers (1 Viewer)

mattCR · Jul 18, 2013

http://flavorwire.com/404511/why-is-netflix-secretly-cropping-movies

The Tumblr What Netflix Does is drawing attention to the company’s practice of showing wider-screen movies — films shot in the “Scope” formats, in the neighborhood of 2.39:1 instead of the standard widescreen ratio of 1.85:1. To put it simply, at risk of being boring: most movies and TV shows fill your 16:9 widescreen TV, while others, usually epics and big action movies and the like, shoot in the wider “Scope” format, which thus requires the black bars on even a widescreen TV, so you can see the entire frame (just as the bars were required to see standard widescreen movies on a square TV). But Netflix has quietly, without any notation or indication of alteration, been doing stuff like this:

This has been something most of us are aware of and have been for a while. But this is good timing for media sources to draw attention to the aspect-ratio switcharoo.

Towergrove · Jul 18, 2013

One of the reasons I no longer use Netflix. They are the "Section 8" of home video. I dont expect much for $8 a month though.

Ejanss · Jul 19, 2013

Yeah, and I can remember when TV cropped everything to 4:3--
That's the difference between watching a movie on TV and watching a movie on disk.

What the "Popularity of streaming?" arguments fail to take into account is that Netflix isn't meant to "replace" our dedicated disk viewing, it's to replace our casual cable/broadcast viewing.
We've already got the permanent copy in its pristine form, and if we don't, we can get it. Here, it's just about watching something at hand, like channel surfing in a more controlled environment, and like local stations, it's the standard expected trade-off of "What do you expect for nothing?"
(High grade neoprene bakery products?)

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