Those TNT Jerks!

There is one ep of the X Files that I have never seen. It has Burt Reynolds for a guest star, and is called Improbable. It should be coming around in rotation on July 20, on TNTHD. But guess what? They are skipping that one ep! They continue with the rest of season 9, then start over with the pilot! As you might imagine, I am unhappy.

Just to show what idiots they are, what they do with 4x3 (standard) aspect ratio shows on their HD wide screen channel is incredibly annoying. For all 4x3 shows, they stretch them to fill the screen. They do it in such a way that the center, where faces often are, isn't stretched, but, moving out from the edge, the picture is progressively stretched more. So, if you have two people's faces in frame, the sides of their faces near each other will look fairly normal, but the sides towards the sides of the screen are stretched out! And, as they move from side to side, they stretch and compress. It looks something like a fun house mirror. They even do that on movies, showing a stretched 4x3, instead of showing the film in it's original aspect ratio. How dumb can you get?

They could run 4:3 material in the center of the frame and put "pillars" on each side of the screen, similar to the dreaded "black bars" of letterboxed films on 4:3 sets. And the same kind of people who bitch about letterboxed images not filling the big 4:3 conventional screen they paid for are going to bitch about their even more expensive 16:9 HD screens not being filled. (Which is one reason why those sets have a similar "stretch" mode for 4:3 material.) It is really a no-win for the HD networks.

Re: X-Files. Sometimes networks screw up, and that's damned annoying. In rare instances, though, an individual series episode will be left out of the syndication package for one reason or another. (Somebody screwed up in rights and clearances, usually. I know of one or two cases where plaigirism suits were filed after an episode's initial airing and it went into legal limbo as a result.) Not saying that's the case here, but it has been known to happen.

Anyway, bummer.

Regards,

Joe

They could run 4:3 material in the center of the frame and put "pillars" on each side of the screen, similar to the dreaded "black bars" of letterboxed films on 4:3 sets. And the same kind of people who bitch about letterboxed images not filling the big 4:3 conventional screen they paid for are going to bitch about their even more expensive 16:9 HD screens not being filled. (Which is one reason why those sets have a similar "stretch" mode for 4:3 material.) It is really a no-win for the HD networks.

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CBS uses gray "pillars," (my preference), and everyone else I've seen uses black ones. If they didn't distort the picture, those who must have the screen filled, could use that stretch mode you mention, and the rest could see it undistorted. My set will restore the aspect ratio but can't match the stretching pattern, so, it only looks a little better. Do some HD sets not have a stretch mode? Could that be why they do it? Or, do they think their viewers are too dumb to use the stretch mode? I guess they could be right about that. My set has several stretch modes for various situations. One makes something 1.86:1 letterboxed on a 4x3 screen fill the entire screen without stretching. One stretches 2.35:1 top to bottom, to fill the screen. There are others, whose particular uses I don't really know, nor care, since they distort things.

Maybe I should just be happy that TNT didn't just crop the top and bottom, like WBHV did to the first season DVDs of Kung Fu. Well, the X Files was the only thing I was watching on TNT. I guess I'll just have to try and rent the DVD to see that missed ep of X Files.

Stretching? Skipping episodes?... ugh.
Netflix + TV on DVD = couch potato heaven.

I figured someone would say that. I have considered dropping my premium channels, and subscribing to Netflix instead. The thing is, I have FREE access to over 4000 DVDs at the library where I work. But, they only have X Files through season four. Besides that, I have HD, and although DVDs look very nice that way, they don't compare to a good HD picture.

I didn't think TNT broadcasted in HD.

They do, but they shouldn't. My cable company recently added their HD service, which shows the same programming as the SD service. A real waste of a channel. I wish they had picked something else in HD to add.

Well TNT does show NBA basketball. I bet the playoffs looked cool in HD.

And, as we all know, "the drama of NASCAR*" is best viewed in HD...




*The phrase TNT uses to explain why they still show NASCAR among the actual TV drama programs they have in their lineup, instead of admitting that NASCAR makes them oodles of money and they don't want to lose that.

Normally, I would never watch basketball, or Nascar. But, I think I'll check them out for a few moments to see if TNT has their ridiculous shape-shifting distortion program on for them. It would be rather comical. And, if they don't, I'll wonder why?