Reformatting Rant
July 03, 2010 21:04 Filed in: MovieTech
I went to an Asian restaurant recently, you know the kind of place, the ones that have a large widescreen flatpanel permanently mounted just above the diners' heads, tuned to cable and playing non-stop throughout your meal, with the sound loud enough that it is impossible to ignore. Fluorescent lighting, as well. Got the picture?
I went to an Asian restaurant recently, you know the kind of place, the ones that have a large widescreen flatpanel permanently mounted just above the diners' heads, tuned to cable and playing non-stop throughout your meal, with the sound loud enough that it is impossible to ignore. Fluorescent lighting, as well. Got the picture? Good.
Now, depending on the proprietor's channel selection, this may have been a minor annoyance, or possibly even gently additive to my dining experience, but the host had decided we should all watch the surgery channel(!) whilst eating. So, we all were presented with the full-color, gory glory of open-heart surgery along with our plates of chow mein.. Yowza. But you know what actually riled me up more? This little tidbit: the owners had set up their flat-panel to take all incoming standard definition cable signals (in original 4:3 aspect ratio) and force them to fill the 16:9 screen, stretching the picture just to make it fit the shape of their shiny new display box. Sheesh. Some people have no class.. C'mon, at least TRY to respect the creator's efforts, ok? People are out there working hard, staying up late and sweating blood over these productions. It's not just "content" to be distorted to accommodate the current shape of your display.
I'll get around to complaining about how sound is treated later.
Now, depending on the proprietor's channel selection, this may have been a minor annoyance, or possibly even gently additive to my dining experience, but the host had decided we should all watch the surgery channel(!) whilst eating. So, we all were presented with the full-color, gory glory of open-heart surgery along with our plates of chow mein.. Yowza. But you know what actually riled me up more? This little tidbit: the owners had set up their flat-panel to take all incoming standard definition cable signals (in original 4:3 aspect ratio) and force them to fill the 16:9 screen, stretching the picture just to make it fit the shape of their shiny new display box. Sheesh. Some people have no class.. C'mon, at least TRY to respect the creator's efforts, ok? People are out there working hard, staying up late and sweating blood over these productions. It's not just "content" to be distorted to accommodate the current shape of your display.
I'll get around to complaining about how sound is treated later.