Hypothetical question -

with the "not so great" press HD-DVD & BlueRay is getting, do you think the studios will start releasing HD discs with both widescreen & pan-n-scan features to drum up business from videophiles and joe-sixpack?

The reason I ask is that when DVD took off, I was excited that there was a format that 'appreciated' the directors vision and the 'original theatrical presentation' - but when DVD hit the big time a lot of movies I expected to see released in widescreen were released in p-n-s or 'open matte'.

So we know how the studios feel about widescreen releases, so do you think that they will give us 4:3 HD releases just to sell the newest "toy" on the block just to get more sales?

And will "PAN AND SCAN" releases actually ever disappear?

Some day down the line it will probably happen. I fairly certain most many of the studios have both OAR & 1.78 editions of their films that are wider than 1.85.

fitprod

No. There's no point. A 4x3 HD version would just be pillarboxed in a 1.78:1 frame, after all.

On the other hand, cropping 1.37:1 and 2.40:1 films to 1.78:1 is a distinct possibility. Disney has also talked about putting a 4x3 standard definition version on some of its Blu-ray releases along with the HD version.

I have no doubt we will see some movies being cropped to 1.78:1. Hell, Warner did it on the North By Northwest DVD, and that wasn't even an HD disc.

Isn't the OAR of North By Northwest 1.85:1? Virtually all 1.85:1 films are cropped to 1.78:1. And really, with overscan, you would be VERY hard pressed to ever notice the difference.

Going from 2.35:1 to 1.78:1 would be a travesty, IMO (like the original Lord of War release), but 1.85:1 to 1.78:1 is really unnoticible with the overscan issues of TVs.

I always used my Malata to eliminate overscan, so it made a difference to me.

But are not most 1.85:1 movies cropped to 1.78:1? It seems quite common from what I have seen, for whatever reason.

Is it just me or does Pan-and-Scan and HD/Blu seem like an oxymoron?

It's not just you. The only way this makes any sense is if he means cropping to 1.78:1.

Yeah, I think the OP confused Pan-and-Scan with Full Screen. Although poorly worded, I took the OP to ask whether we would see wider films (2.35:1, for example) cropped to 1.78:1 to fill the 16x9 screen.

If the OP really meant 1.33:1 Pan-and-Scan releases... well, there is no chance in hell of that happening. Considering everyone buying a player should have a 16x9 TV, that would be nuts.

It's like how HBO cuts down a lot of their HD movies.

Two things:

1.) What about those with 4:3 HDTVs? There are a lot of those circulating, and I realize that HD is natively 16:9, but couldn't there still be some conceivable advantage for a "J6P" (as much as I dislike that term) with a 4:3 HDTV to have a 4:3 pan-and-scan image? Wouldn't this show up as a windowboxed 4:3 image that they could zoom in on, similarly to how those with widescreen TVs zoom in on non-anamorphic widescreen movies? Or maybe it could be a 4:3 image stretched to fill a 16:9 window that the TV could then stretch out vertically?

2.) Pan-and-scan could still survive as a form of cropping 4:3 material, because these movies could be vertically panned and scanned, in effect changing the cropped section based on the importance of what is happening at the top or bottom of the screen. I don't know if this would technically be considered panning, since I usually think of panning as horizontal, but it is the same general concept.

I know others have already mentioned cropping 4:3 to fit in a 16:9 frame, but I'm not sure if they have meant a simple crop (cutting off the top and bottom equally throughout the movie), or vertical "pan-and-scan."

Both of these ideas may be a little far-fetched, but I am just hard-pressed to believe that the studios are going to completely give up on a process that has become so ingrained in home video.

They're not cropped. They're open matte by 11 pixels.


Oh my god, the travesty!

4x3 HDTVs letterbox HD content, so it's still 1.78:1.

How many 4:3 HDTVs are there? Like... 8?

We've already seeen numerous anamorphic transfers on SD-DVD (World's Fastest Indian, Lord of War) that are modified from 2.x : 1 down to 1.78 : 1, so I'm POSITIVE we'll be seeing "full screen" 1.78 : 1 transfers on Blu-Ray/HD-DVD.

As Suprmallet said, HBO-HD is already promoting this travesty by showing 2.35 : 1 movies in 1.78 : 1. A few examples are Batman Begins and Black Hawk Down.

There are a fair number of 27" and 36" 4x3 HDTVs. (My "other" HDTV is a 4x3 set, by the way. )

Cropping 2.35:1 films to 1.78:1 could still be considered pan and scan if they move the "focus" around (as opposed to just lopping off the sides equally throughout).

Never say never... Some things might actually have 4 X 3, 1.78 and OAR HD masters, you just never know.

fitprod

A 1.37:1 HD image makes absolutely no sense unless 1.37:1 is the OAR. Cropping/opening the mattes to 1.37:1 doesn't have any added value to people with widescreen displays. Cropping/opening the mattes to 1.37:1 doesn't have any added value to people with 4x3 HD displays. HD material is always in a 1.78:1 frame, so it'll be pillarboxed on widescreen sets and windowboxed (bars on all four sides) on 4x3 sets unless you use a crop/zoom mode.

Having a 1.37:1 standard definition version of a widescreen movie on an HD DVD or Blu-ray disc makes sense (although I'd prefer that they not waste the space), but a 1.37:1 HD version of a widescreen movie benefits no one.

I wonder when they will start releasing mono tracks for people that only hook one speaker up to a 5.1 setup.

I have one of them! I bought it in 2002. It's 56" diagonal 4x3, or about 51" diagonal 16x9. I like the flexibility of my 4x3 HDTV set, but know that I'll eventually have to migrate to a native 16x9 HDTV set.

I may be wrong, but doesn't the HD-A1 have a mode which pan and scans a widescreen HD DVD into 1.33:1 via encoded flags in the authoring? Maybe I just assumed that because of the 3 different screen modes in setup.

The native aspect ratio of HDTV is 16:9, and there are so few 4:3 HDTVs in existence that it would make no sense to provide such a feature. Someone would have to take the time to implement it in the player design and in the authoring of every disc, and every consumer would end up subsidizing it through the added cost of the players and discs.

it was terrible to note that the recent HBO HD airing of Michael Mann's The Last of the Mohicans had the credits at it's OAR but then switched over to 1.33 - ugh!