Old TV Shows, Concerts, Documentaries with 1.33 OAR on Blu-ray™ Disc

[ben7ben3]

Originally Posted by aiman04

Sorry if this has been discussed before, the search didn't find anything.

I’m already building my Blu-ray Disc collection, which all of them originally shot in widescreen format (1.78:1, 1.85:1, 2.35:1 and 2.40:1). Latest TV series, documentaries and concerts are shot in Hi-Def with the 16x9 aspect ratio, so that’s good.

But I’m starting to think about replacing my old concerts and TV series DVDs like “The X-Files” with BDs. I know there are not many being released on BD yet, but when they do release them, how are they going to handle the AR? Would they just do pan & scan and crop to get the 1.78:1 ratio?

Me, I’m crazy with widescreen format, I’m willing to have the video cropped instead of stretched. And watching in 1.33:1 AR on your widescreen TV is not advisable, because there’s a risk of burning your screen pixels at the edge of the 1.33:1 frame if you do that too long.

The movie business has practically been cropping their movies anyway, to get the theatrical widescreen format with movies shot in Super 35. One example is “The Shining”

What do you guys think? How do you prefer?

well the biggest benefit in releasing tv shows such as seinfeld, raymond, scrubs, friends, fresh prince, etc...on blu ray would be that they could potentially fit all the episodes on 1-2 discs. imo, high definition for these movies would not be 'true' hd, but would rather look like upscaled dvds. however, if eventaully blu ray becomes the standard, there would be nothing wrong with seeing a complete seinfeld collection, for example, on 10 discs or so.

as far as the 4:3 thing, that is fine, and how it should be. cropping takes away so much of the picture, and stretching ruins the picture in my opinion. i don't mine a combination of the two, but would still rather have the 4:3 look.

tv screens don't get ruined by that. they may see some burn in but that will go away. and it doesn't happen on lcds at all i believe, but more found on plasma. but again, i am under the assumption that that goes away, but it shouldnt be an issue anyway.