Anamorphic or 4:3 Bonus Features: Make up your minds!
 

The Batman Begins Bonus Disc is a freakin' mess. The menu/comic is anamorphic while all of the features are 4:3 letterboxed, with the occasional clip from the film which is also anamorphic. This is about the worst case of this I've seen.

There have been other cases of this on anamorphic transfers, but here you have to switch back and forth so many times it makes for an unpleasant viewing experience. Why couldn't they have just made the 4:3 letterboxed features anamorphic as well? What were they thinking?

Actually, I don't see why this is a problem. You should not be required to change the zoom mode on your DVD Player repetitously to view the special features every time the program change ratios. Some documentaries, or other special features are filmed in both wide, and full screen when inserts from the movie are shown in wide, and transfer back to full screen during the interviews from the cast, crew, etc. That's normal, and typical when documentaries, or short interviews are filmed for DVDs. Switching the zoom mode back and forth on your DVD Player should not be necessary.

Do you have a 16x9 TV? Because I can't picture anyone with one not thinking this is a problem. You're stuck either watching all of the 4:3 letterboxed material in a very small window in the center of your screen... or zooming in to fill the screen properly (but having an incorrect ratio once it switches to anamorphic for the film clips)... or switching back + forth as needed.

None of those are reasonable.

Yes I have a 16x9 set. I generally don't buy DVDs for the special features. I buy DVDs for the movie. As long the movie is not defective, and plays flawlessly without a problem, I'm satisfied. All of those other specials features, and such, are meaningless, and doesn't matter to me. Personally, I'm not that anal about DVDs...To each it's own I guess.

I keep reading these posts, especially the first one, and I can't figure out what they mean or what they have to do with the topic. You seem to either not understand the problem being discussed, or just don't care. And if you just don't care because you don't watch special features, anyway, then why bother telling us?

DJ

That does get annoying, but I don't mind if the features are fullscreen 4:3. My player pillarboxes on the fly, so it's not a big deal. Letterboxed 4:3 can be a pain in the ass. I usually just leave it be if it's a special feature instead of zooming.

The SAW Uncut features are a mis-mash of 16x9 and 4:3 ltbx. Agreed makes for very annoying watching. The BTS, trailers and Saw 2 previews are 4:3 LTBX. While the galleries and the mocumentary are 16:9.

Do you perpetually need to read these posts to suddenly receive an epiphany to comprehend their definition? and if so, why bother telling us?

The awesome contributions to the thead keep on comin'! :thumbsup: Keep on rockin' with another response!!

DJ

This really bugged me about the Peter Grabriel video collection (Play > The Videos). Some are 4:3, some are 16:9. I have an older 4:3 and have to manually switch to 16:9 mode, so this kind of thing bugs the heck out of me. For Peter Grabriel, I usually end up resetting the DVD player for letterbox mode and let it do the bars on the widescreen videos.

-AC

I'm not getting why everthing can't be shot the same way? The extras on Batman Begins were annoying on two fronts. The first being the 4x3 format they were presented in and the second being those annoying menus. I find no joy in hunting around screens looking for hidden access ports to view this material. Just lay the stuff out obviously for me for pete's sake!

Yes, that was another addition to the frustration of the BB extras disc. At times it would force you to go back to the beginning of the "comic" and go through the whole thing again to get to the next page. The "menu" command does nothing, the only way to get to one is to go through the entire comic.

What a freakin' mess. The only thing I can figure is that whoever designed it didn't take the time to actually use it.

I had this same annoyance with the first two Batman movies in the Anthology set... all the menus are 16x9 but the features are all 4x3. Not a huge deal, but it seems like they would have just made the whole thing 4x3 at least.

This is still a major problem, but I doubt we'll see much improvment until HD-DVD or Blu-Ray settles in. For what it's worth, I do my best when writing reviews to note if the extras are presented in letterbox or anamorphic widescreen---and if it's the latter, I'll give the disc "bonus points". :D

As a sidenote, I really wish that menus and extras would be presented in the same aspect ratio as the film itself (if possible, of course). But then, of course, I suppose that would make too much sense. ;)

I agree....... but why on earth do they put anamorphic menus on the 4:3 TV DVD sets?????

go to the last page of the comic, and there is an index of all of the video based featurettes.

Yes? I thought I said that. Look at the last line in the first paragraph.

Still no excuse, forcing us to go through the entire comic to get to an index.

My old Malata 996 automatically changes to the proper aspect ratio; so this isn't a problem for me. I have a 16x9 set and when a 4x3 or non anamorphic letterboxed material is displayed the player generates black bars on the sides or bars around the pic when it is non anamorphic; which gives me the proper aspect ratio. However, I am looking for another player that does the same thing. Is there any other brand or model that does this?

As the Star Trek 2-disc movie editions were being produced, I was glad to see Star Trek II, III, and IV with anamorphic widescreen featurettes.

However, I never understand why for the releases beyond Star Trek IV, Paramount essentially went “backwards” by producing extras in 4:3. What makes this even more puzzling is that much of the new interview footage on the later Star Trek releases is a letterboxed 4:3 image.

I was happy to see Paramount “get it right” for films II, III & IV. Why would they not do the same for V – X?

I just recently got a Panasonic S-97S, which does all of the above and more! VERY happy with it!

Thanks for the info. I'll check it out. Is it possible to make it region free?