Sky Movies HD2 not anamorphic?

mattclarkie

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I have yet to watch a film on Sky Movies HD 2 that is anamorphic. I have checked the inter-tubes and the films were shot with an anamorphic print, but Sky are only showing the full screen versions.

I just wondered if anyone had found a film on HD2 that isn't full screen, especially as this is an HD channel I don't think Sky should be mucking around with the Aspect Ratios.
 
I have yet to watch a film on Sky Movies HD 2 that is anamorphic. I have checked the inter-tubes and the films were shot with an anamorphic print, but Sky are only showing the full screen versions.

I just wondered if anyone had found a film on HD2 that isn't full screen, especially as this is an HD channel I don't think Sky should be mucking around with the Aspect Ratios.

there are plenty of movies shown on the sky movie channels in their proper 2/35/1 widescreen ratio, however their have been a couple such as v for vendetta shown which was cropped to 1/85/1 on the hd channel whereas as it was shown in its true 2/35/1 ratio on the standard channel. I think this was because warners didnt supply the proper aspect ratio of the hd version to sky and they kept that for their hddvd version. If sky can get the the proper aspect ratio of the hd movie they will show it, but if the studio only gives them the cropped version there i nothing sky can do.
 
It seems to happen alot on HD2, I have yet to find a film shown 2:35:1, whereas the Premiere and other movie channels will show it as that.

We will have to wait a while to see if films shown on Premiere HD in 2:35:1 are shown on the HD1 and 2 in the same format as I haven't seen any Premiere HD films on HD1 or 2.

If someone has seen a Premiere HD film on HD1 or HD2 I would be interested to know what aspect ratio it had.
 
This is nothing to do with anamorphic though... you are just saying that sometimes that are broadcasting in 2.35:1 widescreen and sometimes in 16:9 widescreen.

Anamorphic is when a widescreen picture is squashed into a 4:3 signal for transmission, then the TV pulls it back out into a widescreen picture. The HD channels are transmitted in true widescreen, so no need for this.
 
This is nothing to do with anamorphic though... you are just saying that sometimes that are broadcasting in 2.35:1 widescreen and sometimes in 16:9 widescreen.

Anamorphic is when a widescreen picture is squashed into a 4:3 signal for transmission, then the TV pulls it back out into a widescreen picture. The HD channels are transmitted in true widescreen, so no need for this.

Indeed no such thing as anamorphic in HD.

We need to introduce the acronym OAR - Original Aspect Ratio . unfortunately Sky can only show what they are given and sometimes the HD masters supplied to broadcasters are cropped to fit a widescreen TV rather than being provided in the OAR.

However their are many films that are what they call open matte, where the film was shot in 16:9 with a 2.35:1 safe zone which is what is cropped when shown in the cinema's. for HDTV and sometimes DVD you will get a full screen picture with bit's of the picture that where not seen in the Cinema. Oceans 11, Shaun Of the Dead are good examples of this.
 
I think the OP was using anamorphic to describe the original shooting technique - where an anamorphic Cinemascope lens was used to shoot widescreen onto less wide film stock.

However not all 2.35:1 or similar movies are shot using anamorphic techniques, it is possible to shoot a taller camera negative and crop vertically to achieve the same image width using conventional lenses (albeit with reduced resolution potentially) In fact I believe anamorphic shooting is increasingly rare - you often used to see the tell tale signs of eliptical lens flares on anamorphic content, whereas cropped widescreen stuff has circular flares.

Of course HD broadcasting doesn't have to use anamorphic techniques - and in fact Sky don't. The standard HD interconnects are based on square pixel image formats - 1920x1080 and 1280x720 - and Sky use 1920x1080 H264 for broadcast.

HOWEVER - BBC HD and C4 HD ARE using anamorphic techniques in their broadcasting - as they use 1440x1080 H264 encoding for their services, with non-square pixels. This is hidden in the H264 domain though - the playout areas work in 1920x1080, and the HDMI outputs from a receiver tuned to BBC HD will be 1920x1080 (or 1280x720 if so configured) with the receiver doing the 1440 to 1920 resampling internally.

Of course the OP's real question is - why don't Sky Movies HD2 show movies in the original aspect ratio. The answer is probably that the studios aren't supplying them with OAR HD masters.
 

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