I recently reactivated my HBO (so I could watch the new season of Flight of the Conchords) and was reminded again of how useless the network is. When most non-children oriented movies are sold on DVD as widescreen, why does HBO continue to show all its movies in full screen?
I guess this is a moot point for those with HD HBO, but surely it can’t be hard to change this for regular HBO, too? It seems like an anachronism in these days of DVDs to be missing a third of the movie.
I don’t quite understand how this is HBO’s fault. If you have an HD TV and an HD service you get widescreen. If you don’t, you get standard. If you have a problem with the broadcast get a widescreen HDTV and the HBO HD service. The vast majority of the rubes with old standard definition CRT sets really don’t want widescreen so thats what HBO provides.
I assume that the OP would prefer that the movies be shown in the “letterbox” format, rather than cutting off the ends of each frame.
Yes, this. I should have said letterbox, not widescreen. All the other movie channels like IFC, Sundance, etc. show their movies in letterbox, even for us rubes with CRT sets. Plus, most non-HD DVDs are in letterbox.
How is it not HBO’s fault? Is it someone else’s fault that they broadcast the movies in pan-and-scan rather than letterbox format? Sure, they might have decided that this is what their customers want, but it’s HBO that makes the decision.
Wow, you’re a real peach.
Much as all us “rubes” would love a 42" 1080p LCD, economics means that some of us can’t spare a grand or so right now, and have to make do with the old CRT we shelled out $300 for a few years ago. And yet, surprisingly enough, some of us are still cultured enough to prefer watching movies in widescreen format on our prehistoric televisions.
[nitpick]Most DVDs are widescreen–they just turn out letterboxed when fit to a 4:3 TV screen. Some really are letterboxed, but I’ve only seen it once myself, and the film has since been rereleased in widescreen.[/nitpick]
“Rubes”? Thanks. Yes, I’m still using a 12-year-old CRT (though I watch DVDs on my computer, which has a good widescreen LCD monitor).
TCM shows all its movies in their original aspect ratio; why doesn’t HBO do the same? Simple question.
The Rocketeer is like this, though it hasn’t been re-released since, worst luck. It needs to be, and considerably cleaned up, as it’s one of the coolest films of the 90s.
I think Fierce Creatures is hard to find as a letterbox edition, as well. I have no idea why.
Finally, someone who agrees with me/has seen The Rocketeer
FWIW, and just to help anyone who may not know with the terminology, widescreen DVDs which properly fill a 16:9 screen are said to be “anamorphic” (or “enhanced for 16:9 televisions” or some such verbiage).
Non-anamorphic letterboxed DVDs are particularly loathesome to me now that I use my DVD player’s HDMI output to my TV, because my TV will not allow me to override the aspect ration on HDMI input. Goddamn George Lucas finally put the original trilogy on DVD but wouldn’t make the video anamorphic, so I get my choice, watch it via s-video or watch it on approximately 40% of my screen.
How about using component cables and selecting 480 output from the DVD player? Your TV should be able to perform a zoom with that setup with reasonable quality.
My TV won’t allow any change in view to any progressive signal, as far as I can tell. I’ll double-check, though. My cable box is connected via component.
Just to clarify anamorphic means the image is compressed vertically on DVD and you player determines how it is shown. Letterbox format actually adds black bars to the top and bottom of the picture in production to create a 4x6 ration for televisions. Anamorphic lets your DVD put in the correct sized bars, as needed. On a wide screen display anamorphic may have no bars or small bars. A letter box format on a wide screen will have black bars on all four sides (the bottom ones are are part of the picture and the side ones are put there to let the 4x6 ratio picture fit on the 16x9 screen.
Jonathan