Steven Soderbergh calls out the aspect ratio villains: HBO, AMC - We're talking about you
By Richard Lawler 
posted Aug 7th 2009 8:23PM
posted Aug 7th 2009 8:23PM
[Thanks, Chevelleman & Fortified Live for the image]
posted Aug 7th 2009 8:23PM
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
im all for keeping everything the way its meant to be but i really wish everything could be 16x9
right - aspect ratio matters so much eh?
so you mean to tell me you really do need 2.4:1 aspect ratio films? I don't like to turn my head in the theatre just to see brad pitt's face.
And it's so sad. I pay $1500 for a WIDESCREEN tv. I put on a sodoborg movie and I have 3 inch black bars on top and bottom. My tv is 52" wide but somehow I get less image and more black bars than I paid for.
There's no need to go more than 1.85:1.
You are all that is wrong with society.
Every time someone PaS's a movie god drowns a sack of puppies.
That's what you're wishing on the world.
bragging about $1500 TV and bragging about your ignorance towards Original Aspect Ratio? LOL!
If you hate black bars so much, get a front projection then you can go with Constant Image Height with no blackbars!
You think that just because you bought a 1500 dollar TV you have some "right" to demand that all content providers fill up every square inch of your screen? Who will enforce such a standard? The 16:9 Gestapo?
What about theater owners who spend tens of millions of dollars constructing multiplexes full of 2.4:1 aspect ratio screens? And the IMAX operators who have huge investments in gigantic 1.44:1 screens? Do they have the right to have their screens filled too?
The fact of the matter is that there will never be unified one aspect ratio for all entertainment as long there is artistic freedom and a free market (personally I think this is a good thing). So just leave the damn content the way it was made and use the zoom button if you have to have your screen filled that badly (surely your 1500 dollar TV has one of those, right?). The rest of us would like to have the choice.
Wouldn't it be great if all pictures were the same size? If all songs were the same length with the same tempo? If all monuments were built to the same specs? If all statues were the exact same height? If all movies were the same size? That would be just awesome. Then the theaters wouldn't need any curtains at all.
...if all footballs were the same size?
...if healthcare was all the same?
...if we all lived in identical homes?
...if we all wore the same clothes?
...if we all had the same hairstyle?
...if all food was prepared the same?
...yes that would be an awesome world
Someone needs to release a 1080p projector with a secondary anamorphic lens to stretch the picture horizontally that's paired with vertical digital stretch mode. Press a button and the lens is switched in and the vertical zoom is turned on and you're ready to watch The Fifth Element or some other 2.35:1 (or wider) movie.
Here you go. Its expensive though but cool no black bars any more.
http://www.runco.com/cinewide.html
@vanilla_sperm The black bars are great for wide screen movies. They give you the entire movie and not some stretched out mess. Here is the best demonstration that I've seen for explaining widescreen. Director/actor Leonard Nimoy did a great job with this. It really shows what you are missing from widescreen to pan and scan. http://widescreen.org/multimedia/nimoy.mov Check out widescreen.org for more information.
Right on Steven, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I feel just as passionate about you in regards to broadcasters retaining the original aspect ratios of film. But, in the end, it seems to be wishful thinking for these broadcasters to change their "aspect ratio chopping" ways.
"There's no need to go more than 1.85:1"
This comment just hurt my brain.
A bigger violation with AMC is tearing and ripping apart movies with commercials. I NEVER watch edited movies on a commercial cable channel unless they are originals of that network. Certainly not Hollywood productions.
I watch AMC for one show, and one show only, Breaking Bad.
TBS kills movies too. This article should have included that channel. They things they do to wreck hd is appalling at times.
All of the Turner networks are notoriously bad about it.
Sitruc,
Not Quite.
TCM (Turner Classic Movies) airs uncut and commercial free. Also, the original aspect ratio is kept as many of the films are 4x3 aspect ratio do to it being the standard of the time. Also, Those films that are wider than 4x3 are letterboxed on TCM.
wish people would give aspect ratios correctly, the is NOT supposed to be decimals in ratios. Its very confusing.
My 4:3 SDTV is great, I can watch my satellite tv without having to worry about all the useless crap on the sides of the screen
How the hell are they getting away with any of the crap they do? Stretch, on screen graphics and ads, fast and squeezed rolling credits. It's like the writers and creatives gave away everything in their last contract negotiations. What happened to the rights of the artists? They're completely gone now. There used to be a law against not showing the opening and ending credits. WTF! WHO IS THE UNION LAWYER THAT GAVE THAT AWAY!
Richard, I take issue with your characterization of TNT's distortion as "Stretch-o-vision." This is an insult to Stretch-o-vision.
Not only does TNT stretch horizontally, but they stretch vertically (at a different rate) and then crop. The result is a custom distortion that cannot be corrected by the user. Properly, this should be called "Distort-o-vision."
Lately, my Dish Network HD channels have been coming in as cropped 4:3. I can't find anywhere in my hardware settings that would cause this suddenly.
@ Robert. Should be the lower left button on your remote. The asterisk * button. It might say format if it's a newer remote.
One of the two local PBS stations, which has stopped using their analog transmitter, simply takes a very poor analog recording of This Old House and retransmits it over the ATC transmitter. This only highlights the analog distortions.
The other local PBS station airs a 4:3 chopped version of TOH during the morning and the full 16:9 version in the evening. Why they feel a need to offer a chopped version only in the mornings is crazy, but then again I am seeing it in other scenarios, too.
Even in cases where the screen appears to be a transmitted 16:9 the L/R edges still seems a little chopped off giving the appearance of a zoomed condition. Either these people are clueless in their jobs, apathetic to presenting something good, or agendized to giving you the very worse.
Almost all of the HD movie channels are also guilty of taking movies with narrower aspect ratios (2.35:1 etc) and cropping them to 1.78:1.
AMC does one thing right: Mad Men. Probably the best cable TV show I have ever seen. Either way, the Aspect Ratio war will never end. The fact of the matter is, we Engadget readers are a rare breed when compared to the millions with 16x9 televisions that wonder why those black bars are still there after they upgraded their TV sets. Those people get angry and yell at the cable stations. There are more of them than there are of us.
So, these companies would rather have a screaming minority than a screaming majority...thus, the pan-and-scan wonders of the HDTV era...
What kills me is "HD" channels showing older 4:3 SD content. Not only do they stretch the image to fill the screen, but they actually ADD letterbox black bars to the top and bottom to stretch it out even worse than it was before.
I don't think the problem is that they're trying to please the wrong people, the problem is that they honestly don't understand aspect ratio. It would be one thing if they were consciously trying to please their customers, but the choices they make are so inconsistent and bizarre that the only explanation is that they are every bit as confused as the HDTV owners you're talking about.
I think the absolute worst is IFC. EVERY movie they show on their supposed HD channel is 4 x 3 SD, then non-linearly stretched. So the center portion looks like the right AR, but on each side, images are stretched even more than an even horizontaL STRETCH. Watch 3 guys talking, the center one looks OK, but the guys on the side looks horrible.
Uh, use the film's original AR? NOT AT IFC!
It blows my mind that the people responsible for putting this content on the air clearly don't understand aspect ratio. How do you land a job like that if you don't understand an extremely basic concept like that?
I will never forget watching Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow on an HD cable channel (I think it was TNT) when they were showing it twice in a row. The first time was upscaled, stretched out, distorted SD completely butchered to look awful, then it started again one second after the first play ended for the second play-through and it was a pristine quality perfect widescreen HD movie.
How could they possibly be so bad at this that they clearly can't even TELL THE DIFFERENCE between the two? That's absolute madness.
you could buy this lcd -
http://www.engadgethd.com/2009/01/29/philips-56-inch-cinema-21-9-hdtv-gets-showcased-on-video/
if you lived in europe.
I can attest to idiots blaming it on the channel provider.
Just last month some moron flipped out on me because 2001: A Space Odyssey had those "Goddamn black bars still!" and that "I didn't know what HD is".
If I could have reached through the phone to choke him, I would have right there. I have a hard time thinking of a better movie to keep in it's original ratio than that.
Amen to that! 2001 is one of the reference Blu-rays I pull out to show off what great restoration and a real 1080p picture can do for a film.
I'm kind of glad I don't have cable or satellite anymore if this is the kind of shenanigans that are going on these days. I just rent everything I want to watch on Blu-ray or DVD from Netflix. Not only am I getting the best quality possible I'm also getting the film the way it was intended to be seen.