Windowboxing / Pictureboxing: Now with a shiny new petition!

[MichaelB]

Given the main subject of this thread (at least at the moment), wouldn't it be funny if the films turned out not to be windowboxed at all?

Which may well be the case.

[TMDaines]

I just don't know why you would cater for inferior equipment and give the inferior experience to the superior equipment that doesn't overscan.

But superior equipment (if it is truly superior) will also give you the ability to manually adjust the overscan so that the image itself can fit snugly on your screen without any black bars around it. So the only thing I can see that is left to complain about is the minor annoyance of having to take a few seconds to adjust your screen after popping in a windowboxed DVD.

Well not every display with zero overscan may let you incrementally crop the image. I can't do this on the TV at home but I can do it with VLC & MPC-HC on the PC (but not PowerDVD unfortunately). This doesn't even really become a desired, or much used, feature until you're having to deal with a transfer that has been designed for flawed equipment. Standard size crops to deal with non-anamorphic transfers people will get much use out of but there's not much use for an incremental crop other than with this issue.

[swo17]

But you can buy superior equipment that will allow you to incrementally crop the image. Why should Criterion cater to the consumers with inferior, flawed equipment that can't remove the overscan themselves?

[TMDaines]

Yeh, why should they care about people who can't reverse their malpractise. ^^

[swo17]

Yes, because windowboxing is ethically comparable to a doctor accidentally leaving scissors inside a guy.

[mfunk9786]

I did it as a goof!

[zedz]

How come we never had these discussions with highly principled doofi refusing to buy Criterion DVDs because they were NTSC and PAL offered better resolution?

[TMDaines]

How come we never had these discussions with highly principled doofi refusing to buy Criterion DVDs because they were NTSC and PAL offered better resolution?

Because if you had read what I and others have written, even several years ago when you were making the same point in this very thread, you'll see that resolution is only a small part of this and the bigger problem is the smaller image size and the unnecessary black bars all around said image spoiling the presentation.

I can't believe I'm humouring this trolling attempt but for what it's worth, we both know that NTSC is the standard for the US, with most American sets not even able to play PAL, and that PAL has issues of its own anyway.

[mfunk9786]

Black bars spoil the presentation? We're going there with this?

[TMDaines]

Black bars spoil the presentation? We're going there with this?

Maximum use of the display versus much of the display being used plus unnecessary black bars? Clearly someone at Criterion HQ thought it spoiled it too and reversed the windowboxing trend. Idiots.

[zedz]

Black bars spoil the presentation? We're going there with this?

Just drink the koolaid, mfunk, then everything will be all right.

[aox]

All this talk about black bars on MLK Day makes me feel uneasy at best.

[mfunk9786]

Black bars spoil the presentation? We're going there with this?

Maximum use of the display versus much of the display being used plus unnecessary black bars? Clearly someone at Criterion HQ thought it spoiled it too and reversed the windowboxing trend. Idiots.

The folks at Criterion are idiots. Ooh, what's this? The Criterion Forum? Sign me up!

[Zot!]

I don't understand why people are defending this practice, it does seem unnecessary today. If your TV is cutting something off, it would do so with blu-ray just the same. Regardless, it wouldn't cause me to not buy something I wanted, but it certainly is not a selling point.

[TMDaines]

Black bars spoil the presentation? We're going there with this?

Maximum use of the display versus much of the display being used plus unnecessary black bars? Clearly someone at Criterion HQ thought it spoiled it too and reversed the windowboxing trend. Idiots.

The folks at Criterion are idiots. Ooh, what's this? The Criterion Forum? Sign me up!

Turn your sarcasm dectector on. You're the one defending the practice. I'm applauding them for ending the practice. It seems they agreed that it unnecessarily spoiled the presentation. We must both be wrong.

You're the one either (a) just picking a fight, or, (b) arguing against their current practise. Not me.

[swo17]

If Criterion really has abandoned the practice (and I'm not sure that they have--the only new CC DVDs I still watch are Eclipses, but I've read reports that most of their 1.33:1 DVDs still use windowboxing) this is surely some feat for a company run by idiots!

[manicsounds]

With the new dual format releases like the 1.33:1 ratio "Tokyo Story", is the DVD edition getting the windowboxed treatment?

[cdnchris]

I'm realizing I didn't pay attention when looking at the DVD on Tokyo Story but I'm sure I would have noticed it. City Lights isn't. In the World Cinema set Touki Bouki is slightly (but the Blu-ray also shows the same thin black bars at the top and bottom) but the other films in the set aren't.