CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[owenatverrs]

After watching M*A*S*H and compareing it to a letter box laserdisc version, I noticed that on the CED, they have to move the Telecine lense because the film is shot in panavision. If you notice in the scene when Halkeye is walking agianst the wall of the Officers Latrein, they move the film over so that you can see the Magather Quotes. In the letterbox format you can see both the titles and Hawlkeye. how do they do that, and why didnt CED's have a letterbox option?

[Jesse Skeen]

Pan & scan was standard for TV and home video in the early years, I don't know who thought of it, or when the concept of letterboxing came up. Letterboxing has always been controversial because some people don't like "the black bars", thankfully they've finally decided to tell those people to go to hell. It's kind of fun to watch old video transfers and see how bad the pan & scan is on some of them though, on "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" at the beginning you can see the picture cut and pan from one side to the other several times just so you can read all the opening credits. I haven't checked the CED of "Deliverance", but I have the old Discovision laserdisc and during the credits at the very end the picture moves gradually to the right so you can read all the text. Some movies just squeezed the picture so all the text would fit on the screen, like that didn't look at all funny but a letterboxed picture did!

The first 2.35 movie I remember being letterboxed on home video was "Manhattan", which had gray bars instead of black.
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Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!

[owenatverrs]

Was that Manhatten on Laserdisc?? I would like to get a copy of that on ebay if it was on LD.

[Jesse Skeen]

Yes- It was letterboxed with gray bars on all video formats when it first came out, I even saw it once on broadcast TV that way. I think the laserdisc was later reissued with black bars (which is much more preferable) as well as on DVD. I don't think a pan & scan transfer was ever done of this movie, since Woody Allen insisted it be shown properly. If only all directors felt the same way- though Steven Speilberg has always been a big proponent of letterboxing, most of his movies on DVD have also been released in separate pan & scan versions. I thought it was hilarious that they did a "fool screen" version of "Schindler's List" on DVD- since that was shot in black & white they might as well colorized it too, and also made it shorter and made it less depressing
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Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!

[owenatverrs]

would this be the version with grey bars? http://cgi.ebay.com/MANHATTAN-Laserdisc-LD-LBX-Woody-Allen_W0QQitemZ130049248624QQihZ003QQcategoryZ381QQrdZ1QQssPageNameZWD1VQQcmdZViewItem

[Jesse Skeen]

Yes- the letterboxing is explained in that block of text at the bottom of the front cover, as it also was on the VHS and Beta tapes. The first letterboxed movie I remember seeing on VHS was "The Color Purple", which was done that way on the insistence of Steven Speilberg.
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Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!

[mandfmangham]