Am I a philistine for doing this? (1 Viewer)

[Elphaba]

OK, so I'm somewhat of a purist when it comes to watching movies at home. I want them as close as possible to the look of the theatrical versions. No colorization, no edge enhancement, blacks a little more gray than for broadcast TV shows.

And most of all, original aspect ratio, or at least as close as possible.

There are exceptions, of course, instances where I don't mind a 4:3 cut of a movie shown in widescreen, such as with Disney's 70s movies which were framed in 4:3 in anticipation of being shown on their TV show and matted down to 1:66:1 for the theatrical release, or other open matte films that were framed when filmed for both TV and the theater. I still prefer the theatrical AR, but I can tolerate an open matte intentionally framed and shot for both the theater and TV.

Mostly, though, I want widescreen for my widescreen movies and I want it anamorphic.

Which leads me to a very slight dilemma I have with some of my BDs. My TV has two basic options for 1080p material over HDMI, "widescreen", which is the standard playback format that uses the entire width of the screen, and "unscaled", which displays the information 1:1 with zero overscan.

This is all peachy keen with 2:35:1 material, as it gets rid of the small percent of overscan, resulting in a picture with zero picture information lost at the sides. Wonderful.

But. There's always a but, isn't there?

I think maybe I'm being just a slight bit hypocritical regarding my standards on 1:85 material. Again, I don't mind black bars at all, either at the top and bottom for widescreen or on the sides for 4:3. I actually prefer them, because I know that this indicates I'm getting more picture information. I used to get the rare widescreen VHS versions and watch them on my 20 inch CRT a generation ago. Lawrence of Arabia was tiny, but by golly I got the whole picture.

I look down with scorn on those who either don't understand that you get more with the black bars or who whine about any picture that doesn't fill their screen completely.

So with the 1:85 material, I have just a tiny problem. It displays at 1:85. The screen is 1.78. In "unscaled" mode, this means black bars. I don't minde black bars. Usually. But these are teeny tiny little black bars, perhaps four or five pixels wide, and for some reason, these miniscule bars act as a small irritant. The bigger ones I tend to just disregard after a few seconds, but my eye keeps getting drawn to these tiny ones. They're not even bars, really, but strips. Very thin strips.

So I switch to "widescreen". This applies a very slight bit of overscan, which eliminates the top and bottom bars, losing a miniscule amount of picture information on the top and bottom and a small amount on the sides. It's still very close to the original composition, and no elements are lost, but . . . I'm still deliberately losing a little picture info to fill up my screen.

I am an awful, awful person, engaging in behavior that borders on Jane Six Pack level behavior.

But I can't stop myself. The teeny baby bars must be eliminated.

 

[Don Solosan]

Sooner or later, this will catch up with you, and you will regret it.

 

[DanMel]

Of course there are movies that use the black bar on the top and bottom that cut out the top and bottom of a 4:3 picture. A recent purchase of Run Silent Run Deep 1958 had a wide screen and full screen movie on a two sided disc. I started watching the widescreen side and the picture didn't look right. So I compared both versions on my computer side by side and the full screen had a picture on the top and bottom of the screen that the wide screen was not showing. It was cropped off of the widescreen version. I have no idea what the original aspect ratio for this movie was but they did have on the full screen side that the picture was modified to fit the TV. This message should have been on the widescreen version at the beginning that the picture was modified to fit a wide screen TV.

So you can't always trust the black bars on the top or bottom to signify that you are in fact watching the most complete picture of a movie. I am sure that there will be some people eventually that don't like the black bars on the sides on their HD TV's that will start complaining to the movie companies to crop off all the 4:3 pictures in order to make them fit their HD TV's but I won't be one of them. I prefer to watch the movie exactly as it was filmed in ALL cases. It is my opinion that cropping the top and bottom of a picture is even worse than taking out the sides as often you cut off tops of heads in close up shots and it is quite disturbing to see movie companies doing this.

 

[JohnRice]

Dan, you can't assume more picture is correct. I don't know about the particular title you mention, but a lot of movies have been shot "open matte" or roughly a 4:3 frame, with the intention to be masked to 1.85:1 or 1.66:1 for theatrical presentation.

 

[Elphaba]

I get this and I generally agree, with only a few exceptions.

One obvious one is Disney's live action movies in the 70's, usually those starring Kurt Russel or Don Knotts. Disney's TV show was a big moneymaker at the time, so many of these movies were designed for a quick theatrical release before being shown on TV a few months later, which was unheard of at the time. They were framed and shot to work at 1.66:1 for the theater and 4:3 for TV. They masked out part of the top and bottom for the theatrical run, then ran the full frame for the TV show.

Stanley Kubrick also shot several of his later movies in this way, anticipating a transfer to video.

In such cases, both ratios are "correct" as they were both designed by the filmmakers to be seen in that way.

 

[Mark B]

Begin here:
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/wide.../apertures.htm

to understand matted widescreen and post 1953 theatrical films.

 

[Don Solosan]

"In such cases, both ratios are "correct" as they were both designed by the filmmakers to be seen in that way."

But most people here, I think, prefer the OAR of the theatrical presentation. Just because the full frame has been protected doesn't automatically mean that the director wanted you to see that part of the image. In most cases, I imagine, they don't get to approve the transfers used for TV, and are probably protecting themselves against stupid decisions (see Pee Wee's Big Adventure full frame).

 

[Will_B]

1:1.78 will probably replace 1:1.85 soon enough, anyway, making the matter moot.

 

[ScottHM]

If you had a completely black television and watched in a mostly darkened room you'd probably never have noticed.

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[Kyle_D]

There's likely to be a greater variance in aspect ratio at your local movie theater depending on how the aperture plate is aligned. Because of this, and because of overscan, almost all directors allow for some wiggle room in their framings. Aspect ratio isn't as precise as some people out here make it seem - there is no "exact," merely close approximations.

 

[Stephen_J_H]

FTR, almost all Disney live-action features post-1953 were shot to be projected @ 1.75:1, so watching these @ 1.78:1 creates a negligible difference, nigh unnoticeable. They were also shot "protected" for future TV broadcast @ 1.33:1. I will not get into the hornets' nest that is Disney animated features shot flat post-1953.