Windowboxing / Pictureboxing: Now with a shiny new petition!

[zedz]

Well, we all know why Criterion favours windowboxing (because its customers ought to see the whole image), and the big counterargument against it that was raised when the practice was first established (namely that HD widescreen televisions, which would become the new standard, did not overscan) turned out to be bullshit, so it's way past time people stopped whining about it.

And if people are going to avoid seeing brilliant films in what's probably the best image quality they'll ever enjoy on home video because of a theoretical, and incredibly marginal 'loss of image quality' (which, let us not forget, has never been substantiated despite six or seven years of people pissing and moaning about it), they're idiots. This is supposed to be a forum for people who like movies.

[domino harvey]

Are Criterion still windowboxing their 4:3-titles? even on Eclipse-titles? that would make me avoid this set.

This is probably the stupidest comment to be posted on the forum this year. And there's been some stiff competition!

And now it's the worst as well!

[mfunk9786]

Thank God, my computer overscans shitty posts

[TMDaines]

Here's a screengrab just taken of Germania anno zero. The pictureboxing is excessive and is actually a significant part of the image when calcuated. I don't understand the trend of catering for inferior equipment and giving those with superior equipment an inferior viewing experience. Those with overscan get the perfect image and those that don't have overscan get thick black bars around theirs. It makes no sense. Those who are seriously concerned about losing the edges of the frame will have, or should have, taken steps to ensure that they won't purchase equipment that may do this. Then of course there's also the likelihood that the director and cinematographer framed their filming with this in mind, as part of the viewing space is regularly not viewable due to lack of care from those who are projecting or transferring it.

It seems Criterion have stopped this practice anyway but, yeh, boycotting a release because of this is just cutting off your nose to spite your face ultimately.

---

I'm sure this will be moved to infighting but the trend of mfunk just posting snarky shit in every thread is getting kind of annoying. The forum has a rule, or indeed rules, against this kind of stuff. If you've got something to add or contribute then say it, but a quick view of your recent posts more than shows the trend of just adding one line of nonsense.

[knives]

You do know that many HD television sets still do overscan, correct?

[zedz]

Then of course there's also the likelihood that the director and cinematographer framed their filming with this in mind, as part of the viewing space is regularly not viewable due to lack of care from those who are projecting or transferring it.

If Criterion is diligent (and I'm sure they are), their framing should imitate the masking in good film projection, and not be too tight or loose (though of course there's always debate about this).

As for black space around the image, I'm pretty sure all directors and cinematographers allow for this when shooting their films. It's called a 'cinema.'

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever posted side-by-side comparisons of a letterboxed and non-letterboxed presentation of the same transfer in which there is a perceptible difference in quality (to the detriment of Criterion's letterboxed transfer - there are plenty of comparisons that show the opposite!), which would be the smoking gun of this whole palaver actually having any substance whatsoever.

[Hopscotch]

The English-friendly DVDs of Pearls of the Deep and The Joke were abominably bad

As was the release of Capricious Summer. Shaky, washed out image and garish subs that read like they'd been translated into a language other than English and then machine-translated. Very much looking forward to what will undoubtedly be a warmer and sharper presentation with intelligible subs. The comparisons to Partie de campagne are apt.

[MichaelB]

Of course all this discussion about windowboxing is hypothetical anyway - I've just had a look at my Eclipse discs of the Makavejev films, probably the closest equivalents to these in terms of age and source, and they're not windowboxed, not even the one in plain 4:3.

As was the release of Capricious Summer. Shaky, washed out image and garish subs that read like they'd been translated into a language other than English and then machine-translated. Very much looking forward to what will undoubtedly be a warmer and sharper presentation with intelligible subs. The comparisons to Partie de campagne are apt.

Well, in that case there was a Czech DVD with English subtitles, so I went for that instead - I imagine it's markedly better, but it's still not great: the analogue tape source was all too obvious.

[TMDaines]

You do know that many HD television sets still do overscan, correct?

Yes, I do and I never denied that. I just don't know why you would cater for inferior equipment and give the inferior experience to the superior equipment that doesn't overscan.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody has ever posted side-by-side comparisons of a letterboxed and non-letterboxed presentation of the same transfer in which there is a perceptible difference in quality (to the detriment of Criterion's letterboxed transfer - there are plenty of comparisons that show the opposite!), which would be the smoking gun of this whole palaver actually having any substance whatsoever.

It's not necessarily a loss of quality from the wasted space but the fact it is distracting and looks poor when displayed properly with no overscan. There's thick black space around all four sides of the image, and the frame of the picture is smaller as a result with a significant part of the display wasted. Even though this isn't my main point, it isn't even debatable that there won't be greater picture quality from a transfer with a greater resolution. Whether it is noticable to you on your display is another matter but, you're correct, for most people it won't be. That isn't the main bone of contention here though.

Thankfully, it seems that Criterion have now seen sense on the issue now.

[MichaelB]

I'm normally not bothered by windowboxing - the one time when it really did annoy me was with the Norman McLaren box set, because while I completely appreciate the NFB's laudable desire to ensure that everyone sees every square millimetre of McLaren's original frames, they were so excessively cautious about it that the black bars were unreasonably thick. I tried playing it on my parents' old tube TV which had what was hands down the worst overscan I've ever encountered (it used to cut subtitles off at the bottom!), and the bars were still very prominent.

Now that's something I'd buy again in a heartbeat if it was upgraded to Blu-ray.

[swo17]

I just don't know why you would cater for inferior equipment and give the inferior experience to the superior equipment that doesn't overscan.

But superior equipment (if it is truly superior) will also give you the ability to manually adjust the overscan so that the image itself can fit snugly on your screen without any black bars around it. So the only thing I can see that is left to complain about is the minor annoyance of having to take a few seconds to adjust your screen after popping in a windowboxed DVD.

[MichaelB]

Given the main subject of this thread (at least at the moment), wouldn't it be funny if the films turned out not to be windowboxed at all?

Which may well be the case.

[TMDaines]

I just don't know why you would cater for inferior equipment and give the inferior experience to the superior equipment that doesn't overscan.

But superior equipment (if it is truly superior) will also give you the ability to manually adjust the overscan so that the image itself can fit snugly on your screen without any black bars around it. So the only thing I can see that is left to complain about is the minor annoyance of having to take a few seconds to adjust your screen after popping in a windowboxed DVD.

Well not every display with zero overscan may let you incrementally crop the image. I can't do this on the TV at home but I can do it with VLC & MPC-HC on the PC (but not PowerDVD unfortunately). This doesn't even really become a desired, or much used, feature until you're having to deal with a transfer that has been designed for flawed equipment. Standard size crops to deal with non-anamorphic transfers people will get much use out of but there's not much use for an incremental crop other than with this issue.

[swo17]

But you can buy superior equipment that will allow you to incrementally crop the image. Why should Criterion cater to the consumers with inferior, flawed equipment that can't remove the overscan themselves?

[TMDaines]

Yeh, why should they care about people who can't reverse their malpractise. ^^

[swo17]

Yes, because windowboxing is ethically comparable to a doctor accidentally leaving scissors inside a guy.

[mfunk9786]

I did it as a goof!

[zedz]

How come we never had these discussions with highly principled doofi refusing to buy Criterion DVDs because they were NTSC and PAL offered better resolution?

[TMDaines]

How come we never had these discussions with highly principled doofi refusing to buy Criterion DVDs because they were NTSC and PAL offered better resolution?

Because if you had read what I and others have written, even several years ago when you were making the same point in this very thread, you'll see that resolution is only a small part of this and the bigger problem is the smaller image size and the unnecessary black bars all around said image spoiling the presentation.

I can't believe I'm humouring this trolling attempt but for what it's worth, we both know that NTSC is the standard for the US, with most American sets not even able to play PAL, and that PAL has issues of its own anyway.

[mfunk9786]

Black bars spoil the presentation? We're going there with this?

[TMDaines]

Black bars spoil the presentation? We're going there with this?

Maximum use of the display versus much of the display being used plus unnecessary black bars? Clearly someone at Criterion HQ thought it spoiled it too and reversed the windowboxing trend. Idiots.

[zedz]

Black bars spoil the presentation? We're going there with this?

Just drink the koolaid, mfunk, then everything will be all right.

[aox]

All this talk about black bars on MLK Day makes me feel uneasy at best.

[mfunk9786]

Black bars spoil the presentation? We're going there with this?

Maximum use of the display versus much of the display being used plus unnecessary black bars? Clearly someone at Criterion HQ thought it spoiled it too and reversed the windowboxing trend. Idiots.

The folks at Criterion are idiots. Ooh, what's this? The Criterion Forum? Sign me up!

[Zot!]

I don't understand why people are defending this practice, it does seem unnecessary today. If your TV is cutting something off, it would do so with blu-ray just the same. Regardless, it wouldn't cause me to not buy something I wanted, but it certainly is not a selling point.