I was just about to buy this.........

[Big Vern]

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/4093/alice_1951.html

Its Disney's "Alice in Wonderland: 60th Anniversary Edition".

Look at the AR "Aspect Ratio 1.33:1" Thats not widescreen, is it?

I'm NOT too clever on these things, but was widescreen not about in them days?

Is there a way of converting this to widescreen, or is it too much hassle?

There are a few other Disney anniversary discs about that are not widescreen either, damn shame really.

Thanks.

[2Bdecided]

Is there a way of converting this to widescreenOf course - they could chop the top and bottom of the 4x3 picture off to make it 16x9 - would you like that?

Alternatively, they could draw in some extra bits at the sides to make the 4x3 picture 16x9.
is it too much hassle?er, yes.

Cheers,
David.

[TinTime]

I'm NOT too clever on these things, but was widescreen not about in them days?

Widescreen in all its various flavours was introduced in the cinema (at least partly) to combat the menace of those new fangled TVs.

So plenty of older movies will be 4x3 or thereabouts.

[Ghitulescu]

http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/4093/alice_1951.html

Its Disney's "Alice in Wonderland: 60th Anniversary Edition".

Look at the AR "Aspect Ratio 1.33:1" Thats not widescreen, is it?

I'm NOT too clever on these things, but was widescreen not about in them days?

Is there a way of converting this to widescreen, or is it too much hassle?

There are a few other Disney anniversary discs about that are not widescreen either, damn shame really.

Thanks.

So was the Wizzard of Oz, too. Ie, 4:3 with black margins (Pillarbox).

[Big Vern]

Of course - they could chop the top and bottom of the 4x3 picture off to make it 16x9 - would you like that?

Alternatively, they could draw in some extra bits at the sides to make the 4x3 picture 16x9.
er, yes.

Cheers,
David.

I would have liked a less sarky answer mate, hence the comment "I'm not clever on these things" :rolleyes:

[laserfan]

I would have liked a less sarky answer mate, hence the comment "I'm not clever on these things" :rolleyes:
Well, it-is-what-it-is therefore you either crop the thing to fit a widescreen TV (and lop-off good portions of the images) or a much better alternative is to try your TV's various stretch modes. Mostly those suck but maybe you'll like one.

The best thing to do is to leave it alone--and just allow yourself to get sucked-in to the program whereby the side bars (and the world around you) fade-away... :)

[setarip_old]

I'd speculate that, as with the "Special Anniversary Edition" of "Pinocchio" and other similar recent Disney re-re-re-releases, they will have added colorful designs to the left and right pillars to create the illusion of widescreen video...

[Video Dude]

I'm glad Disney is releasing their animated classics on Blu-ray in the proper 4:3 aspect ratio in which they were originally made. They really did a chop job when they re-released Robin Hood on DVD as a widescreen title.

[CWR03]

I'm NOT too clever on these things, but was widescreen not about in them days?
Widescreen was around then, but not all movies were made in that format.

Is there a way of converting this to widescreen, or is it too much hassle?
Seriously, would you like it if they simply cropped away part of the image to make it widescreen? Or would you expect them to spend probably millions of dollars to computer-generate imagery to fill the screen, or pull out the original cels and backgrounds and re-photograph them?

I swear, some people are such babies about having every square millimeter of their TV filled with picture.

[Big Vern]

Widescreen was around then, but not all movies were made in that format.


Seriously, would you like it if they simply cropped away part of the image to make it widescreen? Or would you expect them to spend probably millions of dollars to computer-generate imagery to fill the screen, or pull out the original cels and backgrounds and re-photograph them?

I swear, some people are such babies about having every square millimeter of their TV filled with picture.

Whos crying mate? I asked a simple question about if it could be converted to widescreen and you go off on one. This place has some right anal retarded people who are so full of themselves, its unreal.

[Ghitulescu]

I swear, some people are such babies about having every square millimetre of their TV filled with picture.

Not always, see below the images from VHS and DVD transfers (well, as soon as someone validates them :))

It's a phenomenon discovered some 3000 years ago in the ancient Greece, better known as Horror vacui.

[CWR03]

Whos crying mate? I asked a simple question about if it could be converted to widescreen and you go off on one. This place has some right anal retarded people who are so full of themselves, its unreal.
As I asked before, where do you expect the extra picture to come from? The choices you have are to chop away parts of the original image or stretch it to fill the screen and distort it. I would find either choice retarded, and I think it's anal of someone to be so concerned that the entire screen isn't fully utilized.

[Ghitulescu]

I don't find it anymore, but I had once the MrBean disaster movie sold in Eastern Europe in 4:3 format and the same sold in Germany as 16:9. I definitely remember that the German version (16:9) was actually cropped to look 16:9. Most people think that 4:3 movies are generally pan-n-scanned versions of 16:9, but no, not always.

I also posted some years ago snapshots from 2.35:1 movies that have been artificially cropped from 4:3 (1.66:1) to look "wide". The only way of obtaining true wide pictures on 35mm is to use anamorphic lenses (there's another method, true, but this is not compatible with theater projectors). The alternative is to use mattes.

EDIT: just one more thing. As some movies present Make ofs or restoration procedures, it is sometimes clear to see that the original movie is extremely close to 4:3 than to wide. A good director creatively arranges the scene and the lenses to accommodate both 4:3 and 16:9 (or 2.35:1 or maybe 1001:1 ;)) formats (the cut off parts should contain unimportant things).

[2Bdecided]

Well, it-is-what-it-is therefore you either crop the thing to fit a widescreen TV (and lop-off good portions of the images) or a much better alternative is to try your TV's various stretch modes. Mostly those suck but maybe you'll like one.Some TVs don't let you apply these to the HDMI input.

You see lots of people getting upset who were used to stretching 4x3 content to fill 16x9 - when they get BluRay or real HD broadcasts, and 4x3 content is hard pillarboxed to 16x9 before it reaches their TV, they get very upset that the 4x3 content they've been watching s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d for 10 years isn't "widescreen" any more.


Personally I think it's great that BluRays usually offer the proper original aspect ratio, complete with whatever black bars are needed to make it up to 16x9 - no more cropping to 4x3 or cropping to 16x9 just to light up all the screen.

btw...
1.85:1 isn't quite 16x9.
1.37:1 isn't quite 4x3.
I think it's great when BluRays preserve even these small differences by scanning the entirety of the original film and presenting it all as-is.

Less good when a release crops a 16x9 transfer to 1.85:1 to apparently give the "original aspect ratio" but less of the actual picture!

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

EDIT: just one more thing. As some movies present Make ofs or restoration procedures, it is sometimes clear to see that the original movie is extremely close to 4:3 than to wide. A good director creatively arranges the scene and the lenses to accommodate both 4:3 and 16:9 (or 2.35:1 or maybe 1001:1 ;)) formats (the cut off parts should contain unimportant things).Yeah, there are big debates about that. Sometimes it's clear the 1.85:1 area is all that was ever supposed to be seen (there's junk above and below it in the larger "full frame") - but other times the full frame was shot with 4x3 home video release in mind, while the framing worked for cropped 1.85:1 in the cinema.

Not much debate about cartoons drawn and projected in the Academy ratio though!

FWIW an interesting example is Finding Nemo - the 4x3 DVD is a specially rendered version which isn't just a crop or expand from the 16x9 version, but (in places) entirely re-created to fit the characters nicely in a 4x3 space.

Cheers,
David.