Odd thing - Batman Begins is cropped in vudu but not cinemanow - why?

12th Oct 2013 22:36 #1

Member

I've got Batman Begins on bluray and on ultraviolet. On my vudu account its cropped to a 1.85:1 approx ratio. But when I watch the same movie on cinemanow on the same device (both on a ps3 and a separate sony bluray player that has vudu - but not cinemanow yet - but vudu shows it cropped on the sony standalone bluray player) they show it in its oar of around 2.35:1.

Why is that?

Why crop any movie on a streaming service like Vudu that has great visual quality and a wide selection of movies that seem to all be oar?

could this be just one of those "live with it" deals?

I haven't contacted vudu about it yet. I'm sure somebody has brought it to their attention.

Oh and by the way I have dark knight on bluray and ultraviolet also and the ultraviolet is NOT multi-oar. That is it doesn't flip back and forth from 1.85:1 imax to 2.35 regular like the bluray does. And besides there weren't any imax sequences in Batman Begins so it would be completely 2.35:1 not the split like The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises has.

Anyway - has anyone else run into a similar circumstance on another movie with either vudu or cinemanow or perhaps amazon instant video? (I'm assumng netflix and hulu would be completely oar but I don't use either service).

Donatello - The Shredder? Michelangelo - Maybe all that hardware is for making coleslaw?

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13th Oct 2013 00:44 #2

Brad

Formerly 'vaporeon800'

This is actually the second Google result for "Vudu aspect ratio": https://forum.vudu.com/showthread.php?651411-Batman-Begins-wrong-aspect-ratio

Originally Posted by Jake of VUDU Engineering

In general Vudu's policy is to use the theatrical OAR whenever possible, but sometimes the studios have different groups mastering for BD vs digital distribution, etc. We will usually try to re-request a new format if it's the wrong one (though there is room for improvement on the encoding QC side in that regard...)

And this is the first result: https://forum.vudu.com/showthread.php?913191-The-quot-Incorrect-Aspect-Ratio-quot-Thread

Netflix also has its fair share of complaints about wrong aspect ratios. Some obscure movies seem to have been sourced from the LaserDisc/VHS masters with hardcoded letterbox bars in a 4:3 SD stream. They do seem to update things all the time. In one case I saw that they at least cropped the bars off of an old master a few months later.