Buck Turgidson

This is kind of an in-between forums post. It seems, to me personally, to fit a little better here than in TV, but if the mods want to move it, I won't complain...

Does it seem to anybody else that this combined service might be moving, at least somewhat, in this direction? It sure seems to me like they run most trailers for upcoming films in letterbox, and (of course) they've also done so w/ several of their original series. I think if they move in this manner, they might split up the showings into OAR and P&S, or possibly use one of the secondary and tertiary networks as the experimantal playground to show films in OAR, (kind of like they did The Sopranos and Band of Brothers.

I haven't heard anything about this, and really it's just (as Johnnie Cochran would say) rank speculation. But it seems like a possibility to me.

Any info?

marty888

Unfortunately, I don't think I've ever seen a movie shown letterbox on either HBO or Cinemax. This may change down the road as more and more homes get widescreen TV's - but that's not about to happen for several years.
Showtime, on the other hand, has shown some films letterbox, mostly on their extra channels, and usually foreign films - which leads me to believe that it is more because of the subtitling than any respect for OAR.
Both Sundance and IFC regularly show letterbox, and of course we love Turner and Fox Movie Channel because they have consistently respected OAR.
...but not HBO, not Cinemax.

wendersfan

I've never seen a movie shown in letterbox format on HBO. They seem to be the most flagrant OAR violator among all the movie channels. The ironic thing of course is that so many of their original shows are shown in widescreen format!

Buck Turgidson

HBO continues to run promos in 1.85:1 (even for 2.35:1 films, so...that might not necessarily mean anything...) and Cinemax ran Lumumba recently in it's OAR (1.85, although it was dubbed, alas...)

But in better news, I saw Aliens on Encore a few weeks ago in OAR (and yes, I'm sure it wasn't on FMC. I doublechecked...) and last night, Starz! aired Cherish in it's OAR.

I'm telling you, folks...things are starting to change, ever so slightly.

DGibFen

HBO's HDTV channel runs quite a bit of content in it's OAR. Otherwise, good luck. I only watch movies on HBO/Showtime if it's something I don't want to waste money on.

smw

hd-hbo only runs it in oar if the oar is around a 16x9 ratio, Take AOTC for instance which is 2.35:1 OAR and they are showing it at 16x9

Mittman

Royal Tenenbaums was in widescreen the other night on Starz.

Buck Turgidson

Starz! ran the extended cut of LOTR:The Fellowship Of The Ring in 2.35:1 last night.

Mondo Kane

And they did it again today!

I've also seen 2.35:1 presentations for Master of the Flying Guillotine,Electra Glide in Blue, & Branded to Kill on the Showtime- Extreme and Sundance channels.

Spiderbite

This is something that seems like a recent change. I have had HBO-HD for around 9 months. They used to show 2.35:1 in that format. Now it seems they are running everything at 1.85:1 (or is it 1.78:1) to fit the widescreen screens.

Now we have a new version of pan & scan and I am afraid it is only going to become more prevalent. I tried to watch The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (don't ask...I only made it thru a half-hour) and noticed that it seemed like it was panning and scanning and other shot just looked off. I looked up the specs on the IMDB and sure enough, it was released 2.35:1.

I do not like the looks of this!

Buck Turgidson

Sundance is like IFC, Fox Movie Channel and TCM.

They run almost all of their stuff in OAR, whatever it is.