HD Advisor Flashback!

[Attebery]

Maybe one too many trips to see 2001 under "special circumstances." Our Advisor is having a flashback this week!

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/sh...Flashback/3387

[Bouncy X]

that was funny. lol

and hey i didn't know original letterbox movies had gray bars. all the letterbox VHS movies my dad owned had black bars so there ya go, to quote Attack of the Show:

"you've just been learned" :P

[lateralis]

/golfclap

that was glorious.

[Attebery]

that was funny. lol

and hey i didn't know original letterbox movies had gray bars. all the letterbox VHS movies my dad owned had black bars so there ya go, to quote Attack of the Show:

"you've just been learned" :P

My VHS copy of 'Manhattan' had the gray bars. Very bizarre.

[Lee Stewart]

Allen wanted to preserve Willis's compositions and insisted that the aspect ratio be preserved when the film was released on video (an unusual request in a time when widescreen films were normally panned and scanned for TV and video release). As a result, all copies of the movie on video (and most television broadcasts) were letterboxed, originally with a gray border.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhatt...lm)#Home_video

Early use of the letterbox format
The first use of letterbox appeared with the RCA videodisc (CED) format. Initially, letterboxing was limited to several key sequences of a film (e.g., opening and closing credits), but later it was used for the entire film. The first full letterboxed CED release was Amarcord in 1984, and several others followed. Each disc contained a label noting the use of "RCA's innovative wide-screen mastering technique."[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterb...tterbox_format

[Bouncy X]

"Initially, letterboxing was limited to several key sequences of a film (e.g., opening and closing credits)"

that's something i recall seeing a lot, even when movies played on cable or network tv. the funny thing is i had gotten so used to seeing that happen to certain movies that when i bought them on dvd i was expecting the bars to disappear after the opening credits and they never did. lol

[mondayshift]

had to google SelectaVision.

[crazzeto]

lolz, that was awesome!

[dbacksfan]

Great column, Josh!! Really brought me back...

(Sadly, I still vividly remember when my dad brought home our first VCR. I was about 15 and the individual VHS tapes were like $29.99 apiece!! Yikes!!)

[pazuzu]

Q: We recently had cable TV installed. I can't believe how many channels there are to watch. We have over 30!

LOL... I do remember when that was a good number. Now I have over 300sd and 100hd channels and i wish 30 of them were good.

[CharlieL]

I really enjoyed the flashback, but 'fess up . . . you doctored the questions!

Between the "totally rad", the $800 CD player and the refrence to Swatches I definitely smelled a little nostalgic revision going on here. Fun though!

[scarabaeus]

You just made my day! (Well, you and BOFH...) Took me back to when I was making mixtapes of MTV video clips with two VHS decks. 8-)

[RBBrittain]

I really enjoyed the flashback, but 'fess up . . . you doctored the questions!

Between the "totally rad", the $800 CD player and the refrence to Swatches I definitely smelled a little nostalgic revision going on here. Fun though!

Not to mention corded remotes. The only corded TV remotes I've ever seen were on hospital beds! Ultrasonic remotes would have been better; that's what the few TVs with remotes back then would have had. (IR remote technology was still being developed in 1985.)

I do remember when the opening & closing credits of movies were sometimes letterboxed for TV broadcast, even before home video came along. However, in those days they had a stylized pattern at top & bottom--before even gray bars, much less black bars.

[damonous]

Not to mention corded remotes. The only corded TV remotes I've ever seen were on hospital beds! Ultrasonic remotes would have been better; that's what the few TVs with remotes back then would have had. (IR remote technology was still being developed in 1985.)

I do remember when the opening & closing credits of movies were sometimes letterboxed for TV broadcast, even before home video came along. However, in those days they had a stylized pattern at top & bottom--before even gray bars, much less black bars.

There's definitely no "doctoring" going on there. My Dad owned an original (behemoth) Betamax top-loader in the late Seventies. It had a corded remote. My Uncle had an early-eighties Betamax (which was a slimmer, more 'standard'-type size box), and it too had a corded remote.

IR remotes only became commonplace after the mid-eighties. For a good couple of years, an IR remote was a pretty big "up-sell feature".

[ajmrowland]

I lol at some of the stuff. But considering I'm a '90s baby, it was very informative!