OAR in Cinema 10, do you want to tell VOOM how you want it?

[Sean Mota]

I know right now we are all getting a freeby but once the bills starts coming wouldn't it be better if we tell VOOM that it's imperative that they keep the OAR of their movies. That is, if a movie was filmed with black bars top and bottom when it is transfered to HD, it should keep the black bars top and bottom.

For example, Tank Girl -- in the beginning keeps the OAR (through the introductory credits) but once it starts the movie is zoomed to fill the entire screen. If you compare the quality of the film before it was zoomed you find that the PQ of the film in OAR is much better than zoomed. At least I can see a difference in my 60" display.

This poll is for eveyone who has Voom or who would get Voom if Voom starts showing movies in their OAR in Cinema 10 and all their movie channels including Epics & Monsters.

 

[Acerone]

I hate black bars but then again I want my picture to look it's best. The picture on my tv looks good either way.

 

[compson]

It's bad enough that they show 21 movies in 169, but they're showing old black & white 43 movies in 169. How could anyone possibly be for that? I hope the policy, particularly as it applies to old movies, is reconsidered and changed immediately.

 

[Sean Mota]

Source

Some people tend to think letterboxing makes their little TV sets seem even smaller, and they hate it for that. That's why almost all widescreen movies are also available in format that fills the whole old, 4:3 TV screen.

A simple way to make an anamorphic film fit on a TV set is to just leave the anamorphic lense out, and everything in the original picture is stored on video. Unfortunately, all people become thin and distorted, which makes this unpopular and nowadays rarely-seen.

Another way is to focus the video camera on the center of the film screen, and show you the centre of the movie. This is called cropping, and it isn't such a great idea, because you'll miss everything happening in the side ends of the picture. There may be scenes where an empty table talks by itself because the people around the table have been cropped off.

The mostly common way to solve the problem of anamorphic films is the so-called panning and scanning method. The person responsible for film to video transfer is able to show you any part of the screen. This way he may let you concentrate on the action he thought was most important. Of course you won't see anything that person has thought was unnecessary. Be aware, that with a movie shot in 2.35:1 and shown pan & scan full screen, you'll lose over 40% of the original picture area.

 

[Trevor]

Messing with AR's of movies is the only thing I can see that make me hesitate about getting Voom. I can understand them not having control of the feeds from the HD channels that are sourced from other companies but Voom should do their best to keep their "exclusive" content in their original aspect ratio.

Whatever manager that made the decision to pan, scan, and/or crop their movies for "astethic" reasons obviously doesn't understand the HD fans they're trying to win over.