I just tuned in to sundance channel and i am very positively surprised to see that they are airing "election" in full 1:2.35 !!! wow ... (if they now add anamorphic , yeah !!)

so .. what other stations do that ? I guess i have seen that sci-fi does that from time to time

so .. who else ..

and then: i thought about putting a page together where people can find all addresses of stations where to address a "i want widescreen" letter ... even with sample letters ...

we need more widescreen !!!

P

I think ABC (or is it CBS? the one that does Monday Night Football) does occasionally.

Turner Classic Movies broadcasts all of its movies in their OAR.

I think TCM always does.

AMC does sometimes. Often they will play a movie twice in one day, once pan & scan and once widescreen.

FXM has a similar schedule to AMC.

SciFi does sometimes. I've seen the Star Wars, Indiana Jones, & I think some of the Star Trek movies in widescreen. Also The Thing (which is on tonight) & Zeiram.

TNT did it for a summer years ago, but I don't think they have since. ...I take that back. I think they show Hong Kong movies letterboxed. But I haven't noticed an airing of Heroic Trio or Wing Chun in some time.

Bravo does sometimes but they also edit & add commercials now.

I think Starz & maybe Encore do on VERY rare occasions.

I don't know why pay channels like HBO haven't gotten hip to this. Even 1 hyped night a month of letterboxed movies would be a cool experiment.

I'd say the most thrilling thing about the recent AFI special on CBS, 100 Years - 100 Thrills, was seeing so many widescreen clips on a major network.

HBO has been airing Sopranos simultaneously in widescreen and full screen.

Also, occassionally NBC shows ER in widescreen, too.

J

PBS, sometimes.

but for this you need a 16:9 TV ?

Showtime 2 had "Dead Man" in widescreen Wednesday (6/27) night.

IFC (Independent Film Channel), sometimes.

If you go to http://www.cheezmo.com/lbx.html you can generate a widescreen TV schedule for the channels that you receive - it's a big help in tracking down broadcasts in OAR.

If you have a digital receiver already for your tv, HBO is already broadcasting a digital channel with widescreen movies. As far as I know, it's only available via satellite: Directv has a combo receiver that gets both regular and hdtv signals. (I work at a tv station that is broadcasting digital: our station has a lot of the equipment for testing, and our engineer showed me the Directv setup.)

What he told me about channels broadcasting letterboxed programs/movies is that if you have a 16:9 tv you won't be able to stretch the image to your full tv size, because the black bars are part of the analog signal, so you'd get an image with black on the top & bottom and both sides. A *digital* widescreen signal would show the letterbox black bars on a 4:3 tv, but would be converted correctly to fit a 16:9 screen. He pulled up an analog signal for a letterboxed image on our 16:9 hdtv at work, and MAN did it look crappy.

I love letterboxed movies, but I'm looking forward to when digital is widely available. If you want more info: http://www.digitaltelevision.com/

this is the best link i got in a while !!! this is friggin awsome !!! thanks

I still can't figure out if we're talking about 16:9 widescreen TV or letterboxed movies

well .. in my question i basically just meant OAR .. so .. pretty much anything ..

but i wonder .. i saw recently "picnic on hanging rock" and yes, it had black bars, but they were really thin (about half of what i get from a 1:1.85) .. is that a really strange AR they used ?

P

FX has been showing Die hard in widescreen