cinemaman

A classic 4:3 TV show is being cropped to 16:9 to enable the new "full screen" for wide TVs.

http://www.tvcentury21.com/index.php...dvds&Itemid=85

If this is a trend, I will stick with SD....

Horrible news to fans....

Maxflier

That is such bullshit. If there are people that are so insane that they HAVE to have their screen filled then let them stretch the damn thing instead of punishing the rest of us by fucking up a release like this.

Logic 7

Wasnt Thunderbirds shot on 35mm film?

DVD Polizei

Why is there 10 miles of white blank space at the top.

Also, why not include both aspect ratio versions on Blu-ray.

emachine12

I remember a few years ago when HDNet announced they would air Hogan's Heroes but modify the episodes to fit widescreen TVs. People were upset over it and now they have gone with the compromise AR of 1.66. Basically, they put the 1.66 picture inside a 1.78 frame. Its cropped but not as much as 1.78 or 1.85 would do. Discovery Channel does this now with stuff that was not widescreen to begin with.

whotony

Is this about a U.S. release.

emachine12

The story is about the UK release by iTV.

Drexl

That doesn't determine the aspect ratio. In this case, the image was intended to be 4:3.

Jay G.

Standard 35mm film has an aspect ratio of 1.37:1. Widescreen theatrical films either have to crop (matte) the frame to WS, or use anamorphic lenses to squeeze the WS image onto the (approximately) 4:3 frame.

With a TV show like Thunderbirds, it's most likely that the producers shot using the full film frame for 4:3 TV. The only way to get a 16:9 image in this instance is to crop the originally televised image.

cinemaman

my concern is that 16:9 is the new full screen for the HDTV generation. Having any native 4:3 show/movie cropped to 16:9 is losing a major portion of the film (top/bottom), and in many ways is no different than widescreen films being cropped to 4:3 (losing sides).

I suppose philosophically this is all "modifying the film to fit your TV"....GRRRRRRRRR

and yes, this is a UK specific release.. but if it can happen there......

Drexl

It already has happened here. The BDs of Dragon's Lair and Roy Orbison: A Black and White Night are cropped, and people don't seem to mind for some reason.

The IMAX films are also cropped, but there is some debate/rationalization about those.