HDTV = Tops/Bottoms cut-off the Classics???

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I hope this is not the new trend for HDTV. Take all the "square"
formatted tv shows (and movies) from the past, and cut off the
top-and-bottom to make them fit the rectangle screen. I know TCM/tv
Land will respect the original "square" format of old movies like Gone
with the Wind, or shows like Leave It To Beaver, but it's doubtful
other channels like TNT or USA will. They'll "matte" it to be
rectangle-shaped. :-(

Bob (but not THAT Bob)...

Worse that that, I fear they'll stretch everything to fit 16:9, because
people are getting used to stretch modes on HDTVs.

If that's what broadcast HDTV's future will become, a bunch of classic
shows/movies with the tops/bottoms of pictures cut-off, thereby ruining
the artistic integrity of the original director's and cinematographer's
vision...

Bill Steele...

The artistic integrity of every movie filmed before around 1950 has been
ruined for the last 50 years, because almost all film transfers chop off
not only the tops and bottoms but also the sides. Half the movies on TCM
feature cut off heads and sometimes people who appear in the scene only
as hands and arms.

Anim8rFSK...

Um, well, no. That's likely more your TV than the transfer.

videonovels...

Yes. TCM respects films. They show the full image even if that means
shrinking it down to a tiny postage stamp (superwide Ben Hur).

Bill Steele...

Next time they show "I Married a Witch," try to find the top of Frederic
March's head (he's a lot taller than Veronica Lake). Some of that is
probably the TV, but I think some of it is also deliberate (or just
lazy) overscan in the telecine. TCM has started to run a few old movies
with a black border, and I can see the black border just fine.

jayembee...

Prior to the advent of widescreen processes (as a regular thing)
in 1953, almost all films were shot in Academy Ratio, which is
1.37:1. TV is 1.33:1, so there's going to be some slight part of
the image cropped off. That's just a fact of life. And more of
the image gets cropped by overscan on the TV.

When you see a black border on all four sides of an older film,
it's because they are trying to compensate for both of those
factors.

But the thing a lot of people don't realize is that sometimes,
people's heads get "cut off" because that's the way the director
and Director of Photography composed it. I've had to explain
this countless times to people who complain about widescreen
transfers "cutting off people's heads". I would show them a
full-screen transfer of the same scene, and they'd be surprised
to see that the heads are still cut off, except that it's by
the top of the TV screen, not the upper black bar. *Because*
it's by the top of the TV screen, the viewer subconciously
doesn't expect there to be any more image. When they see the
black bar, though, they figure it's covering up something they
are supposed to see.

Anim8rFSK...

Hmm. That is annoying then.

Sandsquish...

Unfortunately, it's not just broadcasters who are cropping 4:3 films. I
just bought, and couldn't return because of the retailer's policy, the
1991 version of "Dark Shadows." It had been cropped to 16:9. I guess
I'll have to be very careful before buying any more DVDs.

Anim8rFSK...

Oh, that was AWFUL. But they didn't crop the titles, so you can see
just how wrong it was, as it pops back and forth between aspect ratios.

And the HD broadcasts don't look too good right now whether they've
been cropped or not. I've seen a football game broadcast in HDTV and it
was like looking at a bad JPEG in motion. The compression artifacts
were obvious and very distracting. HD has a long way to go before I'll
buy into it.

Lord Vader III...

Although its not a classic, TNT has been doing this with Charmed for a
while. I remember switching over to Charmed on TNT and was wondering
why it was widescreen because I knew they were originally broadcasted
that way. I pulled out the DVD of the episode that was airing and sure
enough, TNT was zooming the image so it will fill the screen on HD.

moviePig...

Once upon a time, there was released to theaters a "widescreen" version
of GONE WITH THE WIND, whose inconvenient image-borders were indeed...
well... gone with the wind.

Similarly, there was once a widescreen release of FANTASIA, but with
all original art intact. I.e., they uniformly squashed the
picture...so, e.g., Mickey's sorcerer hat rather resembled the Tin
Man's funnel. (I'm sure no one noticed...)

Greg Bryant...

They did the same thing with a re-release of Cinderella, circa 1988. I
noticed that the tops of heads were being cut off.

Don't know if that was in the print, or if that was the way the
projectionist was framing the projection.

Anim8rFSK...

It was in the print. They did that with a couple films.

Greg Bryant...

About ten years ago, went to a local film club showing of "Sugarland
Express." They rented 16mm prints, thatąs all that they could afford. I
noticed the the full 35mm image had been printed to 16mm print, with some
letterboxing on the top and bottom to preserve the original aspect ratio.

moviePig...

Fwiw, my examples, both earlier, were advertised as "Widescreen!!!".
By '88, I'd figure audience enlightenment would've set in, but you
never know...

Greg Bryant...

Not necessarily. I really didn't become aware of the difference between pan
& scan and letterboxing until Siskel & Ebert ran a special on it in early
1990's.

Forget HD.

cloud dreamer...

You don't watch football, do you?

Obveeus...

Without HD you can't even see the cleats puncture the guys head. ;-)

cloud dreamer...

Or their jockstraps....

Obveeus...

Cleats puncturing jockstraps? Ouch! ;-)
I guess when enough people switch to HDTV, the NFL will have to carry one of
those parental advisory warnings.

..

MMVIII

***This post has been certified insult free***

I'll boycott it the way I boycotted colorization.

Lincoln Spector...

It's a trend, but it's not going to be the only option. The people who now
insist that every show fill every pixel of their 4x3 set will, as soon as
they buy an HD set, insist that they fill every pixel of the new screen
shape.

But just as people who insisted on the original AR eventually won their
niche in DVD (my local video store doesn't even carry the fullscreen
versions) and cable, we'll win our niche with HDTV, too. And it will come
sooner because we're established as a major part of the market.

FWIW, Warners recently announced that Adventures of Robin Hood will be their
first pre-widescreen movie to get an HD-DVD release (or maybe Bluray, I
don't remember which). And it will be columnboxed.

Anim8rFSK...

But Star Trek Desecrated, er, Enhanced, is doing 2 versions of their
cheezy low end effects; 4:3 and 16:9. The only reason I can see them
doing THAT is that their HD release is going to stretch and/or crop the
original footage, and then they're gonna stick in ugly CGI as well.

Lincoln Spector...

We're talking about the original show, correct?

Anim8rFSK...

yes

Since they're doing two versions, I'd imagine they'll do two for HD, as
well, so we'll have the original original.

Anim8rFSK...

the intent seems to be to do a 4:3 and a 16:9 version, but both ruined.

Frankly, I don't see the point of an HD transfer of a '60s TV show. These
programs were never intended to look hi-res. Sure, they were shot in 35mm,
but they look really cheap when you project them that way.

Howard Brazee...

Sort of watching "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" part of Fantasia 2000 at
the Imax.

Warchild...

Actually since Star Trek TOS episodes were *filmed*, they could look
good in HD. But - and its a big 'But', they would need to be mastered by
someone with an eye towards how film should look. What we get instead
is movies and TV shows mastered for maximum clarity. Well most classic
films and TV shows were produced to be shown under adverse conditions,
low powered projectors and low resolution TV screens. When mastered for
clarity, the adjustments made during filming to improve the result end
up looking bad. One example of this is the Star Trek episodes. Another
example is the re-mastered version of George Pal's 'War of the Worlds',
in which the big cables holding up the Martian war machines were very
noticeable, to distraction.

seapig...

Once everyone has bought a HDTV, they'll use this as an excuse to start
selling us "tall-screen" TVs - "see television the way it was MEANT to
be seen!"