HD channels and fullscreen

[Thor]

Not sure if its the same across the board, but does anyone know why there are so many movies shown on HD channels that are not the original aspect ratio or 16x9 enchanced?

I'm only talking of the movies obviously available in widescreen, not the ones we can only get in 4x3.

Its just really painful that we have HD channels and yet we are still made to suffer the horrible indignity of 4x3 pan/scan butchery of films.

Btw I'm on Shaw, not sure if its a problem on bell or others.

[getbak]

What channels are you watching these on? As far as I know, the Movie Central HD channels and HDNet show all their movies in 16X9 HD. Also, the US networks and CTV usually have their primetime movies in HD.

I would think that any movie you're seeing that should be in widescreen but isn't probably hasn't been converted for HD broadcast yet, or the HD version hasn't been made available to the specific network.

The only place I've really ever noticed this is when CBC shows movies during late night. Likely, CBC paid the movie studio for the SD version of the movie and isn't willing to pay extra for the HD version, if it's available.

It should have nothing to do with being with Shaw over Bell because they just pass along the HD feeds that they're given by the originating station. They'd have no reason to make any change.



The thing that annoys me is when the National Geographic channel has a show that was shot in widescreen, but for some reason is being broadcast as 4x3 letterboxed, so it's shown with a thick black border around the whole screen. This only seems to be an issue with National Geographic.

[Thor]

CBC HD, Showcase HD, a few of the American HD channels, A&E HD.

I get the impression if that say CBC HD is broadcasting a movie, they do so in fullscreen because they broadcast to SD CBC as well, and HD is a secondary thought. I'm assuming they are mostly concerned with SD broadcast and would not broadcast widescreen to avoid the uneducated masses of 'oh i hate those black bars' crowd.

[Inferno]

It's a bit off topic but the thing that annoys me about the HD movie channels is it seems that alot of the time on Bell there will be an action or horror movie that would look good in HD but its stuck on the SD channel while they have some stupid love movie that doesnt really need to be shown in HD. And it seems like it happens alot to the movies they preview one weekend but dont premiere for another couple weeks.

[HotHotHeat]

It's a progression. You should have seen the amount of SD on HD channels 7 years ago. You'd be lucky to get a single show in HD on any given night. I remember when Jay Leno went to HD, man was I a giggly school girl.

Point is, there's a hell of a lot more HD movies, sports and sitcoms today than there was just a short time ago. It's coming, and it's always getting better (minus the damn microblocking or whatever it's called).

[Russic]

i believe letterboxing will still occur in hd if the movie was shot at a certain aspect ratio. Many bluray movies won't fill up the entire screen either. I believe anything over 1.85:1 will have black bars even on a widescreen TV.

Channels like A&E HD are something entirely different unfortunately. They seem to have letterboxed hd content and they just stretch the content so it fits 16:9 ... blasphemy. Drives me mad, kinda like how my father in law uses the zoom feature to get rid of the black bars on his hd screen. It fills up the whole space but looks like dead ass warmed over.

[onetwo_threefour]

I hate A&E HD, I don't think anything is true HD on there. OTOH with respect to zooming, I occasionally use the zoom if watching an SD channel on which a letterboxed movie is showing, i.e. there are black bars on the top bottom and both sides. Since it's only SD anyway, the zooming at least makes the picture fill the screen and very little is cut off the picture. This most commonly happens on channels 330 to 334 on Bell. IFC, Action, Scream... Which I watch a fair bit for the movies.

My biggest pet peeve is that there's no Spike HD yet or IFC, Scream, or Showcase Action HD.