Raghuvir wrote:
Sanjay wrote:
I am not sure what you mean by "proper widescreen DVD". But as far as why the idiots in Bollywood are choosing to crop the top & bottom of the picture to create an artificial 'wide' aspect ratio, it is simply a marketing ploy. Unfortunately there are enough ignorant customers/viewers who are more interested in filling up their screens, rather than watching the movie as intended by the director. The irony is, earlier they were cropping 2.35:1 & 1.78:1 movies from the sides to fill up older 1.33:1 (4x3) aspect ratio SD TVs. Now with the predominance of 16:9 HD TVs, they are cropping older 1.33:1 movies from the top & bottom to fill the screens. While continuing to crop 2.35:1 movies, albeit slightly less than before, to fill up 16:9 screens. Bottom line is, until consumers insist on only original aspect ratios, this nonsense will continue and in fact will become even more common.
Mughal-E-Azam restorers have cropped the original 1.33:1 ratio to produce an artificial 16X9 ratio. But in spite of this the Shemaroo and Eros DVDs have an aspect ratio of 4X3. What was the point of cropping the portions? -- That is what I meant! I meant that they do not produce anamorphic widescreen DVDs of Mughal-E-Azam.
Since the cropping of Mughal-e-Azam was done by it's idiotic restorers, Shamearoo or Eros cannot be held responsible for it. But you are absolutely right that they should have encoded the DVD so as to at least preserve the cropped 16:9 aspect ratio. But then again, to expect Shamearoo or zEros to do anything that conforms to logic is expecting a bit too much.
Raghuvir wrote:
Similarly, Shemaroo had shamelessly cropped off the side portions of the widescreen film Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam producing a fake, annoying and pathetic 4X3 aspect ratio. Can't thay preserve the original aspect ratio? What is the problem?
The problem is that they have idiots, with zero technical expertise making technical decisions at these companies. More importantly, companies like Shameraoo take their customers for granted and therefore feel no need to do what the consumer wants. But then again, majority of the customers too are ignorant and they demand that their screen be filled, to hell with the actual picture.
Raghuvir wrote:
Is Naya Daur colour on Shemaroo cropped??
Sorry I don't know the answer to this. Hopefully someone else will chime in and answer the query. But if I were to guess, I'd think they will have cropped it. Although on second thoughts, since the colorized 'Naya Daur' was a straight to DVD release, it's quite possible that they may have stuck to the original aspect ratio.