My wife bless her heart got me a DVD player for an early Christmas present. Well I put in T2 and was freaked out to see the picture wasn’t adjusted for my tv. Are all DVD movies like this?
Oh a comment on the Movie they should have left the smile part in between the terminator and John Conner.
Some DVDs have two sides, one widescreen and one fit to the TV (letterbox?). Other DVDs only have the widescreen. Unfortunately, T2 is one of them. I personally like the widescreen better, but I need a bigger TV now because of it.
I think they do this because DVD was made so that you could enjoy the movie in theatre quality (full picture and sound), and to differentiate it from watching the movie on VHS.
I assume you are talking about the picture being letterboxed. That is it appears as though the bottom and top of the picture are “cut off.” In reality there is nothing missing. The ratio of a wide movie screen is different than that of a television.
You are used to a picture that has either been created for the screen size of your television (i.e. television shows) and movies that have been modified to fill the TV screen. This modification takes away a huge amount of the picture. The worst modification is when they just cut off the sides and give you the middle. At best they will make some judgment as to what to show and may be taking more off of one side than the other. Nothing irritated me more than when I would rent a movie and the “This film has been modified from its original format…” message would appear. Most video stores do not carry many letterboxed titles so you were stuck with the chopped up version. This is one of the main reasons I wanted a DVD player.
Now Bill, if you don’t want to see all of the picture many DVDs have as an option the modified version that will fill the TV screen. I would suggest you watch your favorite movie both ways before you give up on letterbox.
BTW, letterbox == widescreen.
Wildest Bill: are you honestly saying that you’ve never heard of widescreen/letterbox before?!?!!?
Wildest Bill: are you honestly saying that you’ve never heard of widescreen/letterbox before?!?!!? And are you actually saying that you PREFER the ones that chop off the sides of the screen so the height fits your tv?!?
Its not that impossible, my wife of five years never heard of it either until we bought a DVD player two months ago. At first she hated it but now she only buys the letterbox editions. I cna’t stand anything other than letterbox.
I don’t know if this is what Bill is getting at, but my DVD player (I patch my laptop’s DVD drive through my VCR) does strange things with non-letterboxed films.
Some non-letterboxed DVDs do the ordinary “pan-and-scan” that VHS tapes have traditionally done. However, a few of the DVDs I’ve bought or rented display the film in original anamorphic ratios, which fills the 1.85:1 rectangular window on the computer’s DVD display, but wind up appearing “fisheyed” on the TV (the TV display also crops the sides of the picture.)
I don’t know if this is what Wildest is talking about, but I’ve always wondered why some DVD films are pressed that way, and that way only. I can understand people with re-sizeable displays (like people using their computer to watch it) or purists with fancy rectangular TVs wanting the film in its original aspect ratio, but for the majority of the public who will watch the DVD on an ordinary almost-square TV, the picture winds up distorted and cropped.
If costs permit pressing only one version of the film, wouldn’t the best idea be to press the one that the majority of people will be able to watch? Or is this just DVD manufacturers realizing that cinephiles are the ones who are buying them right now, and that the original aspect ratio is what is getting them off the shelves so the rest of the world can just lump it?
Well, the letterboxing certainly works well for epic-type movies (Braveheart and the Patriot, for example) because they are so wide and sweeping that to clip the sides to fill the screen tends to kill the grandiose scope that the director was aiming for! However, for a typical Hollywood action flick, is that letterbox really necessary? I mean, T2 isn’t certainly an epic so I would think that there has to be a full-screen version somewhere.
c_goat: They also have widescreen on VHS as well, so that differentiates nothing 
RugbyMan,
Maybe I’m a purist but I don’t think the subject of the movie matters much. For example if you watch the modified version of The Graduate you can’t even see Mrs. Robinson’s leg in the famous scene with Dustin Hoffman nervously talking to her while being seduced. It absolutely ruins the scene.
Most DVD players have an option in the setup that allows you to change the format from widescreen to standard TV (in this case the setup is part of the DVD player’s internal functioning…not part of the DVD movie itself). Unfortunately, if you do this and the movie was recorded in the widescreen format, you get a picture where everything is smushed together…i.e. everything will look taller and thinner. For most people this is unacceptable and so they live with the widescreen format.
Some DVD’s themselves have both formats recorded on the DVD but since this costs the person creating the DVD more to produce and since sometimes space restrictions preclude this from happening you don’t always see it as an option. When buying DVD’s it should say on the packaging what you’re getting (IIRC 16:9 ratio is the widescreen format and 4:1(?) is normal TV).
All of that said let me put a plug in for widescreen format. It surprises me how many people hate letterboxed movies on their TV. In fact, the letterbox version is how the movie was meant to be seen and exactly what you saw if you went to a movie theater. The rectangle you see on the TV screen conforms to the same shape as a movie screen (your TV is more square than rectangle).
Many movie producers these days have a little box in the camera’s viewfinder when filming a movie that tells them where a TV’s screen fits in the picture. Sometimes the producer/director will make certain that all the pertinent parts of the movie fall in this box so they can make a transition to video easier. Some movies, however, the producer/director uses the entire movie screen for the action (especially in movies like Star Wars). When they transition to TV they use a technique called Pan and Scan. Basically, someone watches the movie and moves the square TV viewing area back and forth to catch the most relevant parts of the movie. Sometimes it is worse though. In a film class we watched Casablanca in widescreen format and TV format. There was a part where Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman were talking to each other. In the widescreen format you could see both characters at once and catch their immediate reactions as the other spoke. In the TV format version they would cut to a headshot from one to the next and back again. The widescreen version had a noticeably better impact on the viewer since you could see everything that was happening at once. Much much much better.
So, while you may feel jipped having pieces of your TV screen chopped off I promise that in most cases you are better off watching the movie that way. It may not matter so much for a movie like Clueless but when watching Casablanca, Star Wars or T2 I guarantee a better experience. Letterbox format is how the creators of the film meant it to be seen.
Of course, for several thousand $$$ you can buy a new TV that conforms to the 16:9 format of a TV screen. Wait a few years and I’m sure the prices will come down on those but they are pricey today (Sony Vega TV’s do this format and start around $1,200).
I’d like to posit an alternative hypothesis. Most DVD players let you tell it whether you have a widescreen or a normal TV. If you have a normal TV and you tell it you have a widescreen, the picture will be vertically stretched and everyone will look tall and skinny. If that’s the symptom, you just have to change that setting.
I despise the letterbox format. To me, it will only become useful when the television itself is the same shape as a movie screen. (I know those TVs are out there, but they’re terribly expensive right now.) For the standard square-shaped TV, it’s more annoying than helpful.
Yes, you get to see more of the movie. Yes, that’s a good thing, usually (unless it’s a crappy movie!). But if I am watching my TV from across the room, the screen is now SMALLER since the top and bottom aren’t there. Sure, it’s mostly an optical illusion. What they’ve done is stretched the screen horizontally to resemble a movie screen. Well newsflash, TV-makers! I don’t HAVE a movie screen! If I sit closely enough, it’s a good movie, but since I’ve been trained to see the entire screen filled up (greedy, I know), then when I see parts of it missing I’m not gonna be happy - and you can try to assuage me all you want by telling me I’m seeing “the big picture” (pun intended), but it’s not gonna fly with me until I get a movie-screen-shaped TV.
Correction…I believe normal TV has a 4:3 ratio…not a 4:1. HDTV and movie screens have a 16:9 ratio.
[nitpick]
There is not “a” widescreen format. The majority of movies are probably filmed in 1.85:1 (your TV is 1.33:1), but several other aspect ratios are used. CinemaScope is probably the next most common, at 2.35:1, but you’ll see others as well–1.66:1, 1.75:1, etc. Among current movies, for example, “The Grinch” is 1.85:1, while “Cast Away” is 2.35:1
[/nitpick]
Jeff_42, if you’re watching Casablanca in letterbox and seeing differences, you’re getting the wool pulled over your eyes. Movies weren’t filmed in cinematic aspect ratios until the mid-50s, to compete with television. Casablanca was filmed in 1.37:1, close enough to TV’s ratio that it doesn’t matter. This caused quite a furor for some people in regards to a re-release of Gone With The Wind several years ago.
If anyone wants to see a truly reprehensible example of pan-and-scan, watch A League Of Their Own. It’s practically vertigo-inducing, the way they leap around the frame. Whoever edited that film for 1.33:1 should be shot. It was shown in theaters at 2.35:1.
Also, the
Yes, opalcat I know of the “letterbox” screen is. I never heard of that term before but I know what it is. But Dantheman summed up the way I feel about it perfectly. It look to small to me compared to full screen. Now like others have said if they made the TV that way(reasonably priced) I could deal with it easier.
Oops–please replace “CinemaScope” with “Panavision” in my post above. Most movies shot at 2.35:1 are filmed and projected with Panavision lenses now.
There is, BTW, a good explanation of the various aspect ratios here.
Bill, did your wife get you the T2 DVD from Artisan that comes in the metal case and contains two discs? If so, it has three different cuts of the movie on it–theatrical cut, director’s cut (which contains the scene you mention), and a third cut containing an unused ending. You have to go into the menu and choose the version you want to watch.
[quote]
pldennison wrote:
if you’re watching Casablanca in letterbox and seeing differences, you’re getting the wool pulled over your eyes.*
Quite possible. I wouldn’t be surprised if the hippy teaching assistant who taught my film class had some kind of agenda on her own.
That said I know what I saw and assuming pldennison is correct I can think of two possibilities for this:
Someone went to a lot of trouble to create the two versions of Casablanca I saw in the interests of trashing TV’s Pan-n-Scan (maybe that’s all it was meant to be was an example of what can happen).
The 1.37:1 ratio may be very close to TV’s ratio but it isn’t exact. Perhaps that particular scene was filmed right at the limits of the 1.37:1 ratio and merely chopping off a little edge of the screen would have meant slicing through Bergman or Bogart’s head in a fashion that was unnacceptable so they Pan-n-Scanned that scene.
I dunno but even if the whole thing was some sort of hoax it did illustrate nicely what you can lose by chopping up the screen for TV viewing.
*Originally posted by pldennison *
I don’t know PL for sure. I rented it from a rental place. I watched the version that had some scenes I have never seen before. Now on the other disc they had 3 different “makings of” take that back one of they is why they decided to cut some of the scenes out of the released movie.
Any way I guess I watched the directors cut you mentioned. To be honest I was still trying to figure out how to work the thing and my daughters come on dad messing with it and lets just watch the movie. And not wanting to be like my dad was(a tinkerer from heck I decided to let the movie play as is ).
shoot meant to say “my daughters said, come on Dad and stop messing with it.” sorry.