# Technical Question about a few HD Movie Channels



## groove93 (Jun 10, 2008)

I know this is a DVD technology but are movies shown on MGM HD, Universal HD, and HD Theater shown in an Anamorphic Presentation? Any film these channels show that are 2.35:1 will display black bars of course, but not to the exteme of which you can see on Turner Classic Movies, and Fox Movie Network (Standard Def on Direct TV).

The films that are 1.85:1 will not display back bars, but on TCM and FMC you will see them but a much bigger screen image compared to 2.25:1.


My DVD player is set to 16X9 and the dimensions of Anamorphic 2.35 films are identical to that of MGM HD, Universal HD, and HDnet Movies, and the same goes with movies that are 1.85 where the black bars are not displayed.


I've searched all over the place for information about this but it's no where to be found.

Jus curious


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

First a slight correction... Anamorphic doesn't have anything directly to do with a 2.35:1 movie, but rather how the content is stored on the DVD. Before Anamorphic storage, ALL 16x9, 2.35:1, and basically any other than 4:3 ratio movie had to be stored with fixed black bars ("letterbox") to display in proper aspect. This wasn't a big problem with 4:3 TVs, but when 16x9 TVs started showing up this resulted in the "postage stamp" effect with lots of wasted space on the screen since the image was still fixed inside a 4:3 area.

Now for anamorphic... this method of storage of the movie results in the ability to stretch the image to fit the width of your 16x9 TV to more accurately fit it... so 16x9 will fill the screen and 2.35:1 will fill the width and only leave top/bottom bars. Better display for larger and widescreen displays results from DVDs in anamorphic format.

All that said... I'm not aware of any broadcast anamorphic, though people have asked. Broadcast tends to be either widescreen or not. Within that widescreen, however, some channels do a better job than others at showing OAR.

HDNet/HDNet Movies is one of the consistently best channels about showing movies in OAR. I'm pretty sure I have seen some proper 2.35:1 on MGMHD as well. UniversalHD is more hit and miss. Recently they showed a couple of Star Trek movies in 2.35:1 but they consistently show Timecop as a zoom/crop 1.78:1... so your mileage will vary.


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## groove93 (Jun 10, 2008)

Thanks for the clarification.

What you've described is exactly what I'm seeing when I view movies on either TCM/FMC, or MGM HD, Universal HD, HDnet Movies.


With the HD Movie Channels, the Screen Portions are to the point where the image is stretched to fill up as much of the screen as possible, while at the same time, not loosing any quality in the overall film presentation. As with DVD players properly set to 16x9 for that particular display, 2.35:1 will display black bars, 1.85:1 will not.

The Postal Stamp image is found on TCM and Fox Movie Networks although my TV's input is set to Normal and my HR21 is set to "Pillar Box Mode" so that when viewing 4x3 images, the black bars appear on the sides of the display. Any cropping or zooming of this image will infact distort the picture. Again, only for Fox and Turner Classics.


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

You're welcome.. Sometimes a channel like SciFiHD broadcasts some of the "postage stamp" type, Doctor Who for example, and I use the Zoom mode on my Dish receiver to fill my screen. This particular mode does a pretty much 1:1 zoom and the only stuff that gets cutoff is when there is a 4:3 commercial or an actual 16x9 HD commercial, neither of which do I care about.

Most of the time I just don't watch the postage-stamp channels anymore... but for my weekly Dr Who fix I deal with it.


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## groove93 (Jun 10, 2008)

HDMe said:


> You're welcome.. Sometimes a channel like SciFiHD broadcasts some of the "postage stamp" type, Doctor Who for example, and I use the Zoom mode on my Dish receiver to fill my screen. This particular mode does a pretty much 1:1 zoom and the only stuff that gets cutoff is when there is a 4:3 commercial or an actual 16x9 HD commercial, neither of which do I care about.
> 
> Most of the time I just don't watch the postage-stamp channels anymore... but for my weekly Dr Who fix I deal with it.


Could it simply be just the way HD channels are formatted as compared to their Digital and Non-HD counterparts?


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## Stewart Vernon (Jan 7, 2005)

groove93 said:


> Could it simply be just the way HD channels are formatted as compared to their Digital and Non-HD counterparts?


Naah.. just an extension of what was being done for SD (either analog or digital) in broadcast. While DVDs evolved to having anamorphic versions of widescreen movies, the broadcast channels never really went there. Probably lots of reasons that make sense but not being in the business I've never fully understood why myself.


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