Season 1 Full Screen Vs Matted Widescreen

[Guest Demolition Man]

Since there is some show footage in the Making Of Season 1 documentry in a matted Widescreen format, I decided to take a few screen captures and compare them to the original 1.33:1 Full Screen format. Very interesting overall and thought everyone would be interested in seeing what I came up with. I reduced the resolution of the image so the file size wouldn't be so high for those folks in dial up connections. However you still should be able to see the differences.

Gehenna

Full Screen

Widescreen

Blood Relatives

Full Screen

Widescreen

I'll take some more in a few days, but indeed very interesting to see how the two look when compared together like this. I'm very interested in doing a comparison of Season 2 since it sounds like it was shot and intended to be in Widescreen unlike Season 1.

I'll leave you all with this as well....

Strange that the menus are true 16:9 Widescreen, yet the documentry is only 4:3 Letterbox.

Anyways, enjoy and looking forward to your comments.

DISCLAIMER: I want to remind everyone that Season 1 was NOT shot or intended for Widescreen, therefore this is not done in the attempt to prove to the "Full screen rawks" folks that Widescreen is inferior. I'm doing this more as a curiosity to folks who want to see a comparison between the matted footage from the documentry and the true (and intended) Full Screen.

[The Old Man]

Great post Brian, thanks for that. I've now read so many oppinions on the subject my head spins! Its clear from your shots though that there is no content on either side of the screen missed off. I had always believed that it was filmed in widescreen but never shown on TV in that aspect ratio.

Out of interest, I was just comparing the dvd info at https://www.foxtvdvd.co.uk/ between Season's 1 & 2:

Season One: Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 Standard 4x3 TV

Season Two: Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Standard 16x9

Can't wait!

[Guest chrisnu]

In the matted widescreen, it appears that a considerable amount of the picture was cut off from both the top and bottom. I am glad that the DVD set was released in the format in which the show was filmed.

[Guest Second Coming]

I always prefer OAR(original aspect ratio). cutting the top and bottom is as bad as cutting left and right.

[Guest Demolition Man]

Same here. I'm not going to panic if a few clips of the show are used in a documentry in a matted Widescreen format, since the presentation on the discs themselves are in their intended FS format. I am excited for Season 2 tho, especially after seeing those Forth Horsemen comparison pictures. Very interesting indeed.