The Jungle Book - diamond edition

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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Barbossa »

Sotiris wrote:The Australian trailer is out. There the film will also have a limited theatrical release.

Would love to see it on the big screen again. When it was re-released to theaters in the early 80s, it was the very first movie I saw in a theater when I was a kid. :up:
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by drfsupercenter »

I would pay anything to get a proper transfer in Academy ratio.

But what are the odds of that happening? Disney doesn't really seem to care about their fans, they just cater to the "widescreen is always better, no exceptions!" crowd :angry:
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Mollyzkoubou »

inb4 they crop to 1.85 and lowry the damn thing.

Seriously, it's NOT a good thing to make it so clean that it looks like it just came out of Toon Boom yesterday! :@
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Scamander »

drfsupercenter wrote:I would pay anything to get a proper transfer in Academy ratio.
But what are the odds of that happening? Disney doesn't really seem to care about their fans, they just cater to the "widescreen is always better, no exceptions!" crowd :angry:
1,75:1 is the Original Aspect Ratio. So, unless you also complain, when a company doesn't release its black-and-white-films colorized, it would be nice to respect that.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by drfsupercenter »

No, it's not.

All Disney films up until the 80s were animated in Academy ratio (1.37:1, very close to "full screen"). Because most theaters had already converted to widescreen by then, they would just chop 1/3 of the picture off to show them in theaters.

Now think about it this way. If you were an artist, would you want 1/3 of your art gone forever? The fact that they bothered to animate the entire frame, when they could have very well just done the widescreen portions and leave the rest out, should be proof enough that it was intended to be seen in that ratio. Which is why for all the VHS, laserdisc, etc releases, it was kept matted like that. Compared to something like Sleeping Beauty, which actually WAS widescreen, and thus cropped for VHS.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Mollyzkoubou »

The Jungle Book was animated to be seen in both aspect ratios - they knew it would be seen more often in 1.37:1 after the initial release, and animated for it.

To me, the ideal ratio is the one that shows the most of what was intended to be seen, and the least of what was not; for JB, to me that is 1.37:1.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

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drfsupercenter wrote:No, it's not.

All Disney films up until the 80s were animated in Academy ratio (1.37:1, very close to "full screen"). Because most theaters had already converted to widescreen by then, they would just chop 1/3 of the picture off to show them in theaters.
That's wrong. They didn't chop anything off, they opened the picture for those theaters, that hadn't any widescreen equipment. That doesn't change the fact, that the artists intended 1.75:1 as original aspect ratio and animated the Jungle Book to fit this ratio.

And why would they even chop anything off, instead of showing everywhere the 1.37:1 version, if that was the version they preferred? It doesn't make any sense. 1.75:1 doesn't even use the full screen!
Now think about it this way. If you were an artist, would you want 1/3 of your art gone forever?
We are talking about backgrounds most of the time, and those backgrounds had to be huge anyway, because there is camera movement. It was an artistic decision to go for 1.75:1, which should be respected. Don't speak for the artists, if you don't know that.
The fact that they bothered to animate the entire frame, when they could have very well just done the widescreen portions and leave the rest out, should be proof enough that it was intended to be seen in that ratio.


I addressed this above, but this statement alone is proof enough for me, that you don't have any clue, how cel-based, non-digital animation worked back then.
Which is why for all the VHS, laserdisc, etc releases, it was kept matted like that.


Yeah, right, because it was totally unusual to release widescreen-films in 1.33:1 on VHS and it had nothing to do with the ignorance of their audience, who just didn't want to see black bars on their TVs. Let's fight to get the 1.33:1 version of Sleeping Beauty back, because it was on VHS and has to be right. Right??
Compared to something like Sleeping Beauty, which actually WAS widescreen, and thus cropped for VHS.
Just because the VHS-picture of the Jungle Book wasn't cropped, doesn't mean the 1.37:1 version is the right one. In live action it's still normal business to film first in 1.37:1 and crop the picture later, to get whatever ratio you want. And that's just the same way Disney worked back then for some of their animated features- with the side-effect that they could also produce a 1.37:1-version for use in cinemas, which were not ready for widescreen.
As a matter of fact, there isn't even any film format they could have used to film directly in 1.75:1, so they HAD to film more than they needed.

Also, my last question for you to think about:
Why would Disney even release this film (or Robin Hood and others who were shown originally in widescreen) in 1:75:1 (or 1.78:1) for Blu-ray, if this wasn't its intended aspect ratio in the first place? They had no problem to release all the other films from the pre-widescreen-era in their original 1,37:1 aspect ratios.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Mollyzkoubou »

Because some people are blinded by the leet and think something's wrong if the picture doesn't take all or nearly all of their widescreen TV, just as in the CRT era the same people thought something was wrong if the picture didn't fill their 4:3 radiation box.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Scamander »

Mollyzkoubou wrote:Because some people are blinded by the leet and think something's wrong if the picture doesn't take all or nearly all of their widescreen TV, just as in the CRT era the same people thought something was wrong if the picture didn't fill their 4:3 radiation box.
Then Disney would release all of their films (new and old) in 1.78:1 on Blu-ray, which -as a matter of fact- they don't. They release all of their films in their original aspect ratios, with only small adjustments, if the OAR fills nearly the whole screen. And that's btw how the whole industry does it by now.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Escapay »

I would highly recommend that people check out this post by AlwaysOAR (circa March 2011) which lists exhibition instructions on the aspect ratio of MANY Disney films from the 1950s to the 1980s, including animated titles. All this information is authentic, taken from actual exhibitor's press books from the era (as well as from re-releases). I'd rather trust historical fact than a personal preference misconstrued as such. To save time for any "tl;dr" folks, the list basically shows that pretty much anything from that era was exhibited in 1.75:1 except for 'Scope films and early widescreen with a flexible matte (where theatres could choose between 1.37:1 and 1.75:1). In some cases, films were sent to theatres hard-matted already, so adjustments weren't necessary by the projectionist. The disputed animated films of the era (One Hundred and One Dalmations through The Fox and the Hound) are all 1.75:1 except for Dalmatians, whose pressbook is the only post-Peter Pan film to mention that it should be projected in Academy.

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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

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That's wrong. They didn't chop anything off, they opened the picture for those theaters, that hadn't any widescreen equipment.
Um, what? Yes, they did chop the picture off. It was animated Academy ratio, the only way to make it widescreen is by cutting part of the picture off. No ifs, ands, or buts. Something like Finding Nemo is a different story, where they re-framed it for the fullscreen transfer after the movie had already come out - granted that's quite a bit easier when it's a computer-animated movie and you can just expand the render area.
And why would they even chop anything off, instead of showing everywhere the 1.37:1 version, if that was the version they preferred? It doesn't make any sense. 1.75:1 doesn't even use the full screen!
You clearly don't understand how cinemas work. And by the time Jungle Book came out, most theaters had adapted their equipment to widescreen, which is why they cropped it for those theaters. Usually the height of the screen is standard (since, I mean, you can't exactly raise the ceiling), but depending on how wide the movie is, they will move the curtains on either side to compensate. I have seen this done even today with digital projection, when I walk in earlier and the theater workers are adjusting the ratio of the screen.
Unlike Sleeping Beauty or Lady and the Tramp, which were special presentations which had special equipment just for those films, the theater would have been able to adjust their matting to make a 1.75:1 film appear on the screen properly so that nobody would see any bars.

So yes, it WOULD use the full screen. The reason that most people got the false illusion that "widescreen has more picture" is because of what I said - you can't make the screen any taller once the theater has already been built, but you can use more room on the sides of the screen to show more picture. Mathematically speaking, the most picture you can ever have is a square (1:1 ratio), which Academy is much closer to.
We are talking about backgrounds most of the time, and those backgrounds had to be huge anyway, because there is camera movement. It was an artistic decision to go for 1.75:1, which should be respected. Don't speak for the artists, if you don't know that.
But do YOU know that? I don't think anybody *who actually worked on the film* has addressed what the proper ratio should be. Sure, someone at Walt Disney Home Entertainment who wasn't even ALIVE when the movie came out could say "oh, it's meant to be widescreen" and most people would eat that up and consider it an official statement.
Yeah, right, because it was totally unusual to release widescreen-films in 1.33:1 on VHS and it had nothing to do with the ignorance of their audience, who just didn't want to see black bars on their TVs.
I have bolded the relevant statement here. This is why Jungle Book was widescreen on the newer DVD master. I remember there being discussion here of 101 Dalmatians also being in widescreen (as the preview showed), but obviously enough people complained and they kept it 4:3!

Also, it's worth mentioning - take the first Harry Potter film as an example. Someone told me that it was filmed open-matte because the studio made it on a budget (and anamorphic cameras cost more, even around the turn of the century). However, compare the widescreen and fullscreen DVD transfers and you'll see that the fullscreen version is pan-and-scanned from the widescreen one. That would be a clear example that they DON'T want you to see the matted areas, since they were not artistically meant to be in the movie. Disney could have done the same, like they did with Sleeping Beauty, and cropped these films from 1.75:1 if the expanded frame was really not meant to be seen.
As a matter of fact, there isn't even any film format they could have used to film directly in 1.75:1, so they HAD to film more than they needed.
This I am aware of. But the fact of the matter is that they did take the time and effort to animate the full picture (whether for outdated theaters or not is irrelevant), and in my opinion that deserves to be seen. It doesn't look sloppy at all like it could have.
Why would Disney even release this film (or Robin Hood and others who were shown originally in widescreen) in 1:75:1 (or 1.78:1) for Blu-ray, if this wasn't its intended aspect ratio in the first place? They had no problem to release all the other films from the pre-widescreen-era in their original 1,37:1 aspect ratios.
I will just refer to what you said earlier about the ignorance of their audience, and what Mollyzkoubou (who is in full agreement with me on the fact that Jungle Book's intended OAR is 1.37:1) said.

Movies like Snow White and Pinocchio are more regarded as timeless classics, and Disney wouldn't hear the end of it if they tilt-scanned those films. They probably figured there wouldn't be as big of a reaction if they cropped The Jungle Book, but judging by this forum's userbase we can clearly see that this isn't true. :D

Like I also mentioned earlier in this post, look at 101 Dalmatians - the preview for that was in widescreen, but they decided to leave it alone for the DVD releases, probably because people complained about the cropping like they did after Jungle Book was released.

One last example I will use is The Sword In the Stone. That's from the same era, and Amazon lists that the upcoming Blu-Ray will be in widescreen. (There were also rumors of the anniversary DVD being widescreen too, which ended up not being true). But then look at iTunes and Xbox Live - both of those are offering the film in high-definition in fullscreen ratio! Disney obviously gave them the fullscreen masters, but I won't be surprised if the Blu-Ray is cropped due to ignorance.
Let's fight to get the 1.33:1 version of Sleeping Beauty back, because it was on VHS and has to be right. Right??
See, the difference here is that I can re-crop a movie if I wanted to, using a computer. It's not hard to do. But you can't add picture that was removed back in. You guys could just as easily take a fullscreen transfer of The Jungle Book and chop the top and bottom off to get the "widescreen version" if it bothers you so much.
This is why getting the Academy laserdisc of Lady and the Tramp was such a big deal, because it WASN'T just cropped - it was actually drawn differently.

--Edit--

Looks like Scamander replied faster than I could, so let me comment on this too.
Then Disney would release all of their films (new and old) in 1.78:1 on Blu-ray, which -as a matter of fact- they don't. They release all of their films in their original aspect ratios, with only small adjustments, if the OAR fills nearly the whole screen.
OH REALLY NOW?

Let's take a look at most of the 60s-80s films on Blu-Ray (and/or the newest DVD releases if no BD exists).

Starting after Sleeping Beauty (as that one was super-wide):
101 Dalmatians - Preview was widescreen and likely only kept fullscreen due to complaints
The Sword In the Stone - as I mentioned, this is 4:3 on iTunes and Xbox Live but the Blu-Ray is said to be WIDESCREEN
The Jungle Book - WIDESCREEN
The Aristocats - WIDESCREEN
Robin Hood - WIDESCREEN
Winnie the Pooh - I would be willing to bet that the only reason they plan on keeping this 4:3 is because it was essentially just four shorts (made earlier) re-compositioned for a movie.
The Rescuers - WIDESCREEN
The Fox and the Hound - WIDESCREEN

And that wraps up the list of intermediary films, as The Black Cauldron was once again super-wide and then they started using widescreen natively starting with The Great Mouse Detective*
*However, rumor has it that GMD is also meant to be Academy ratio, since it wasn't CAPS yet like the following films were.

So as you can see, all the "modern classics" with the exception of 101 Dalmatians are, in fact, cropped to widescreen for their newest releases. Also, considering that the first-ever DVD ever released (Twister) was ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN, there was no practical reason for Disney to release open matte versions on DVD unless they were meant to be viewed that way. Otherwise they would have done a pan-and-scan job on early Limited Issue releases such as Hercules, Little Mermaid, etc.

They aren't all 1.75:1 but they're all in some form of widescreen one way or another... we'll have to see what happens when The Sword In the Stone and Winnie the Pooh are out for real.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by drfsupercenter »

Oh, one last thing - people seem to find letterboxing of super-wide (2.35:1 or whatnot) more acceptable for HDTV formats than pillar-boxing. So therefore they would have no real reason to crop the wider films down to 16:9, only cropping 4:3 ones down to fit 16:9.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Mollyzkoubou »

drfsupercenter wrote:But do YOU know that? I don't think anybody *who actually worked on the film* has addressed what the proper ratio should be. Sure, someone at Walt Disney Home Entertainment who wasn't even ALIVE when the movie came out could say "oh, it's meant to be widescreen" and most people would eat that up and consider it an official statement.
Actually, wasn't there a scan of some document that came with the 35s, saying to matte JB to 1.75?
As a matter of fact, there isn't even any film format they could have used to film directly in 1.75:1, so they HAD to film more than they needed.
This I am aware of. But the fact of the matter is that they did take the time and effort to animate the full picture (whether for outdated theaters or not is irrelevant), and in my opinion that deserves to be seen. It doesn't look sloppy at all like it could have.
I have actually seen films (Sailor Moon R: The Movie is a good example; matter of fact all three Sailor Moon films) where the animation is frequently incomplete outside the intended viewing area.

For the Disney movies in question the animation is complete up to the full frame.
Movies like Snow White and Pinocchio are more regarded as timeless classics, and Disney wouldn't hear the end of it if they tilt-scanned those films.
Believe me, they've tried.
See, the difference here is that I can re-crop a movie if I wanted to, using a computer. It's not hard to do. But you can't add picture that was removed back in. You guys could just as easily take a fullscreen transfer of The Jungle Book and chop the top and bottom off to get the "widescreen version" if it bothers you so much.
This is why getting the Academy laserdisc of Lady and the Tramp was such a big deal, because it WASN'T just cropped - it was actually drawn differently.
THIS.

BTW, Winnie the Pooh is 3 shorts, not 4. The fourth short wasn't made until 1983.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Escapay »

*sigh*

Since it was missed and ignored...
Escapay wrote:I would highly recommend that people check out this post by AlwaysOAR (circa March 2011) which lists exhibition instructions on the aspect ratio of MANY Disney films from the 1950s to the 1980s, including animated titles. All this information is authentic, taken from actual exhibitor's press books from the era (as well as from re-releases). I'd rather trust historical fact than a personal preference misconstrued as such. To save time for any "tl;dr" folks, the list basically shows that pretty much anything from that era was exhibited in 1.75:1 except for 'Scope films and early widescreen with a flexible matte (where theatres could choose between 1.37:1 and 1.75:1). In some cases, films were sent to theatres hard-matted already, so adjustments weren't necessary by the projectionist. The disputed animated films of the era (One Hundred and One Dalmations through The Fox and the Hound) are all 1.75:1 except for Dalmatians, whose pressbook is the only post-Peter Pan film to mention that it should be projected in Academy.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by drfsupercenter »

I saw that post, and while I don't doubt that they are authentic theatrical booklets (I forget the actual name for those), there are some obvious idiotic tendencies:
"The Many Adventures Of Winnie The Pooh" 1977 Premiere Release Information:
"To pooh-ject a pooh-rific picture on your screen THE ASPECT RATIO IS 1.75 to 1"
The shorts were in Academy, why would they intentionally want to crop them?
"The Fox And The Hound" 1981 Premiere Release Information:
"THE ASPECT RATIO FOR A SPARKLING IMAGE IS 1:75 TO 1"
(NOTE: While the original theatrical framing for this film was 1.75:1, the DVD releases are Pan & Scanned at 1.33:1.)
Those are open matte, and not pan and scan. And while it seems that Disney liked 1.75:1, most of their animated movies that were released are NOT 1.75, but in fact some other thing. Fox and the Hound and Rescuers were released as 1.66:1, for example. You can't tell me that those are proper, it's clearly just some idiotic cropping on Disney's part.

Also, while we're on the subject of press booklets, I have a contact who has the original one from Pete's Dragon - and while it says the film is 134 minutes long on the front (which Wikipedia suggests), the inside mentions that it is 128 minutes, which is consistent with every video release we have. So clearly those are often rushed and have mistakes on them.


Anyway, look at the bottom part, I think that answers most of those questions. They even mention cropping Snow White to 1.75:1!! Disney clearly wanted to "widescreen-ify" everything. So does it really come as any surprise that they would be cropping these films for their DVD/Blu-Ray releases?

I look at it like this - there is no way you can dispute that the original ANIMATED ratio of these films is Academy. And therefore, logically that's what deserves to be seen on the screen. If Disney wants to undermine their artists and crop their work, that's their problem, but people like Mollyzkoubou and I have every right to complain when they do.

(I'm willing to bet that they just made the framing decisions without the consent of the animators... obviously from re-releases of Snow White, Peter Pan and so on they did that, so why not the newer ones?)

Then of course you have things that are possibly goofs, like Condorman saying it should be 1.75:1 when it mentions being filmed in Cinemascope...
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

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Personally, I'd prefer if both versions were included (Academy and Matted) for the films in question. Satisfy both camps and call it a day. Then I wouldn't have to read some of the petty, ill-informed, inaccurate, and frankly, juvenile posts from some of the more entitled Disney fans out there.

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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Jules »

OMG YOU ARE ALL WRONG!!!

Everybody knows the correct asspect raytcho for The Jungle Book is √1.4596 : (789 × 10⁷) ÷ ⅞

:roll: Amateurs ...
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by DancingCrab »

Escapay wrote:Personally, I'd prefer if both versions were included (Academy and Matted) for the films in question. Satisfy both camps and call it a day. Then I wouldn't have to read some of the petty, ill-informed, inaccurate, and frankly, juvenile posts from some of the more entitled Disney fans out there.

:milkbuds:

Albert
They don't even need to do that, as you don't really lose any image quality with blu-ray when you set your TV to zoom (Unless maybe you have an 80" TV). I think they should just put the Acadamy ratio versions on there and tell people, if you REALLY want to see it cropped then hit the damn zoom button on your HD TV to fill up the screen.
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by disneyboy20022 »

Jules wrote:OMG YOU ARE ALL WRONG!!!

Everybody knows the correct asspect raytcho for The Jungle Book is √1.4596 : (789 × 10⁷) ÷ ⅞

:roll: Amateurs ...
That's going on the WIST list

I've really not understood all the time about the ratio thing, I just grew up learning one thing. That Widescreen is KING


To stay on Topic, I wonder if any thing like the live action Jungle Book or Jungle Cubs will be released to conicide with this release. I could see Jungle Cubs through Disney Movie Club, but the live action Jungle Book with Jason Scott lee will probably come out when Disney's New Live action Jungle Book comes out
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Re: The Jungle Book - diamond edition

Post by Escapay »

DancingCrab wrote:They don't even need to do that, as you don't really lose any image quality with blu-ray when you set your TV to zoom (Unless maybe you have an 80" TV). I think they should just put the Acadamy ratio versions on there and tell people, if you REALLY want to see it cropped then hit the damn zoom button on your HD TV to fill up the screen.
Actually, image quality would be lost. A fully-encoded 16:9 image would look better than a pillarboxed 16:9 image zoomed in.

I don't have any The Jungle Book screen caps on my hard drive right now, but let's take this one from The Sword in the Stone. To save bandwidth, all but the first image use a constant frame height of 360 rather than Blu-Ray's 1080. Plus, Disney's digital scans will likely be much higher resolutions anyway (4K), they get downrezzed to 1920x1080 for Blu-Ray.

Here is The Sword in the Stone in Academy (640x480), from the 2001 DVD:
Image

When cropped for 16:9 projection, it would look like this:
Image

When The Sword in the Stone hits Blu-Ray in August, it will not be "anamorphic" the way that DVDs were. All Blu-Ray images are hard-encoded to 1920x1080, which means any pillarboxed/letterboxed films actually have the black bars encoded with the picture. So the above would be a scaled-down representation of what a 1.78:1 version of The Sword in the Stone would look like (a few degrees off from its 1.75:1 theatrical ratio).

If they were to offer an Academy version on the Blu-Ray, it would be encoded as 16:9 with pillarboxes hard-encoded into the 1.33:1 image. So, The Sword in the Stone in Academy on Blu-Ray would look like this:

Image

The resolution of the image is reduced since black bars are part of the image. Both this image and the original 16:9 measure the same (640x360 - though on the Blu-Ray, they would naturally be 1920x1080). The actual resolution of the pillarboxed image if we did not include the black bars would measure 480x360.

If we were to zoom in on this reduced-1.33:1 image in order to "fill up" the 16:9 television, it would look like this. For comparison, the 1.78:1 image from earlier is repeated below the zoomed version:

1.78:1 (Zoomed from 1.33:1):
Image

1.78:1 (Encoded Natively)
Image

The image becomes softer, the definition is lost. You're looking at a smaller picture under a proverbially-larger lens, so rather than gain clarity, you lose it. No thanks. I'd rather have a true 16:9 image encoded on the disc than have to zoom in to a pillarboxed image that comes at a reduced resolution.

On small televisions, it may be fine. Anything less than 52 inches, I'd say. But if you're watching on anything larger, then any "zoomed-in" viewing becomes problematic.

This is why I'd rather have both versions provided on the disc.

Albert
WIST #60:
AwallaceUNC: Would you prefer Substi-Blu-tiary Locomotion? :p

WIST #61:
TheSequelOfDisney: Damn, did Lin-Manuel Miranda go and murder all your families?
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