Cable TV Movies

Most films are produced in widescreen. If you have one of the older, square types of TV screens, and a widescreen film is played, you will have the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen.

For many years, films on TV were "formatted to fit your screen". When they do that, you lose a lot of the picture, especially in outdoor, panoramic shots.

If you have been to a store that sells TVs lately, you will see that most of the screens being sold are much larger in the width than the height. More and more shows are being televised in widescreen, and eventually, the square TV screen will become obsolete. Obviously, Turner is a purist, and broadcasts his films in the way that they were originally produced.

This will give a more technical explanation:

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/video-format1.htm

http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen.shtml

To take this a little bit further Phoenix I bought a widescreen TV a few months ago and the credits are still off the screen to either the left or the right side, and I still have black bands at the top and bottom of the screen with some movies.

What the **** did I pay all this money for?

You are seeing the movie as it was meant to be seen. movie screens are rectangles. movies shown on tv that are full screen always leave part of the scene out. They used a technique called pan and scan. I can't explain it, hopefully someone else will be able to. All I know is that a lot of films that i have seen on TV since I was a kid would have a scene or two where a person would be talking to someone, they would be facing either left or right and they would be answered by someone off screen. When I finally saw the film in wide screen both people would be in the frame and you could see the other person's facial expressions and reactions. It could change the whole meaning of the scene. So give me wide-screen everytime!

thiefoflight- It's funny. I have a regular 50" screen TV. At first I was very annoyed when the widescreen format was used, because apparently, I was getting "less picture". When I understood the concept, I began to accept the widescreen as superior.

Anyhow, when we buy a new set, which will be widescreen, I suppose that we would want to go to 62" to make up for the loss of size in the height.

We bought a digital telly while back with a few free channels.

It takes about half an hour to change channel, it goes all clitchy at times and there are mostly crud repeats on teh extra channels.Give me an old tv anyday!!

Even on 16:9 screens, a Panavision, Super Panavision and the older Ultra Panavision will still be letterboxed. One can fill the screen using the adjustment on one's remote but it will slightly stretch the image up-and-down which will make some heavy set actors look thinner. The 16:9 ratio screen seemed pragmatic for the TV manufacturers and most Panavision and Super Panavision were photographed so that most of action took place within a 16:9. Consequently, when a Panavision image is reformatted to fit a 16:9 ratio screen, some of the left and right image is lost.