No, you’re not. It drives me up the wall, but I try to be polite and explain that just because you have a widescreen television, it doesn’t mean you have to fill the entire frame with a distorted image.
Agreed. People are freaking dumb. My snobbish mind usually doesn’t let me watch movies at other people’s houses.
You could just offer to switch the aspect ratio for them. It takes 30 seconds, and it saves you 2 hours of being pissed off.
Then they say no and it pisses you off.
Friends don’t let friends watch in the wrong aspect ratio.
I offer to change it all the time. They get very defensive. One time I switched it to the proper setting (while they were in the bathroom of course) and they said it looked wrong.
Yep, it’s as if pillarboxing an image is somehow “wasteful.”
sometimes i like 2 distort the image 2 match my viewing preference (stretch the picture vertically 4 example)
and sometimes i turn a film into black and white because less (colour) is sometimes more
i am considering watching the oliver stone historical epic alexander (which everybody seems 2 dislike) in black and white :O)
Ahhh. At first I thought you just were not being assertive, but if they’re aware of aspect ratios and still ignorant, I wholeheartedly endorse this rant. Most of my friends like stuff like Jennifer’s Body, so this situation doesn’t come up very often. Incorrect aspect ratio or not, most of the movies we end up watching as a group are going to be crap :(
Kyle E. Ball
Have you ever been at someones house (who is not a cinephile), you start watching a movie and you notice the aspect ratio on there television is set wrong? And to make things worse, you mention the problem and nobody understands what your talking about?
I was watching Psycho at my friends house. She has a widscreen tevlevision and for some stupid reason a movie thats supposed to be 1.85:1 was wider than 2.35:1 cinemascope. This happens at my other friends house all the time too.
One time we were all watching a 2:35:1 aspect ratio movie. It looked more like the 4.00 : 1 (Triptych sequence) in Able Gances Napoleon.
It drives me bonkers. Please tell me Im not the only one.