Ok, I'll volunteer to be treasurer, then, as long as I don't have to write checks or keep track of expenses.

EDIT: Damn - I just dropped John Meyer something in the mail yesterday. If we had come up with VCC just 36 hours sooner, I could have alerted him.

Grazie's just about to go to sleep (after a day of St Patty parties) but he'll see this when he sobers, er - I mean gets up.

Our ranks might swell . . . . .

Where do I get my membership form for the Velvet Curtain Underground Club (VCUC)?

I'm in post, after 3 years of shotting a doc on drive-in theaters and everything
I shot was in 16:9 but all the archival footage is 4:3, so I've just had to get
creative and play around with the footage to see what works.

Terry

"Rumor has it you meet the age requirements"

I wish it were just a rumor, but the reality is that I'm 55 (and a half.)

By the way, while John Meyer hasn't posted anything here since the 9th of February, he continues to visit the forum virtually every day (as is evidenced by the "Last Visit" field in his user profile.)

http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowProfile.asp?UserID=5739

I also noticed John Meyer is user# 5739 and joined on 2/2/2001, Spot also joined on 2/2/2001 and his user# is 745, I joined on 7/26/2002 and my user# is 24953. I looked at a couple of the newest users and their numbers are at 53553 and above. Assuming that the user numbers are assigned sequentially and don't get reused, the forum sure has / has had a lot of registered users. Just a trivial observation...

I'll be 54 on Thursday.

And I come from the land of Laserdisks!

Terry

. . . mmmhhh . . . nyah nyah . . .. ( scraps sleep from eyes . . ) Did somebody call me? . .

Well, having JUST upgraded our "viewing pleasure" to a 40" SONY BRAVIA ( oh . . my . .. eye . . ) and having taken jr's recommd' to get an upscaler DVD player, just WHAT have I been thinking of??? - This LCD stuff has come on by leaps and bounds. AND in correct 16:9 flavour we are now having to re-experience ALL our slim collection of DVDs.

What I will say is that I am now completely aware of the badly broadcasted ratio compliancies out there. And just how good the BBC is in continuing to plough a "sensible" furrow. Having now studied and grasped the intricacies of the "zapper" I have my own way of getting 4:3 broadcast up-ratioed to 16:9 with "acceptable" consequences.

What I will also add is that our Freeview BT VisionBox, which supplies HDMI out, has been a complete revelation to me. We are now getting very near HD viewing through a terrestrial aerial - no cable - onto the 1080p screen. Oh . . .my . . eye . . . We watched the new BBC "Yellowstone" production and I am blown away.

Grazie

ps - didn't "do" Paddy's day yesterday. Had my head in a project!

Aw MAN!?? Downt they HAVE velvet cutains any more, in Kinemas?? - The World is going to the Dogs in a Hand Cart - and no mistake!

Gentlemen - and ladies - as the interest in the VCC is growing, I think it's imperative that we decide on definite qualifications for membership, or it will lose its exclusivity. Remember, as Groucho once said, "I'd never join a club that would have me as a member."

With that in mind, I'd like to start a list of qualifications for membership. Please feel free to add more, and remember that this is a fluid and dynamic beginning, subject to change.

Here we go:

1. You know who Spin and Marty, Mighty Mouse and Sky King are.(our overseas brethren and sisteren could be exempt from this one.)

2. You think stereo is a passing fad.

3. You remember when "surround sound" meant that there were several places in the theater where the piano used for intermission could be located.

4. Your sister had a friend who dated Humphrey Bogart.

5. Your brother had a friend who's sister dated David Sarnoff.

6. You still think Johnny Carson is the host of the Tonight Show, as you haven't been able to stay awake past 10:30 for the past 20 years.

7. The "web" is something you see in the corner of the porch. Nothing else comes to mind.

and finally . . . .

8. You once ordered Spot's pamphlet "Microphone Techniques for the Fred Allen Show" from VAAST for 35 cents and 4 Bosco labels.

You have the floor . . . .

Well, I guess we have our list of membership qualifications, then.

See you at the next VCC meeting - time and place TBA

To me, the most objectionable byproduct of the switch is watching 4:3 reruns (and there are 40 years worth) pillarboxed on a widescreen box. It just looks awful to me. Guess I'll have to get used to it, because the alternatives (stretch or vertical crop) are just as bad. . .

I dunno... I picked up Pinocchio on Blu-Ray the other day, and being 70 years old pillarboxing is kind of a necessity, lol. I guess it's a bit unfortunate that around 259200 pixels go unused on either side of the image, but IMO it's the only way I'd ever want to watch it. I can't stand people who sit and watch $3000 TVs with a distorted image, and think they're getting high quality. And the picture on Pinocchio is phenomenal, anyway; hard to believe how old it is.

From the moment I started buying regular DVDs as well, I only ever purchased content in its original aspect ratio. I quickly got used to the letterboxing on my old 4x3 TV, and the pillarboxing on a 16x9 TV doesn't bother me any more than that did.

It's OAR or nothing, as far as I'm concerned.

Oh, I quite agree with you, the second part of my quoted post affirms that.

It's the black pillars on my widescreen set that bother me, thus the lighthearted references to velvet stage curtains for TVs.

The thing I can't stand worse is a stretched or vertically cropped image.

Since you seem to agree with everything that's been said so far, welcome to the club!

plasmavideo said (in part)

"Speaking of matching screen to material, have you seen that mode in some of the newer sets where you can do a slow 4:3 stretch to 16:9? I'm not talking about merely horizontally stretching the 4:3 to 16:9, but gradually stretching the picture. It seems to work this way - the main (center) part of the 4:3 aspect is retained, but from about 2/3 of the way out in each direction, a slow, gradual stretch happens to fill out to 16:9. I guess the theory is that the talkng head will not be morphed into a fat face, but the portions off center can perform a s-l-o-w stretch without anyone noticing. It's really wierd to watch a car chase across that screen. The cars go from long and lean on the left, to squashed in the center to long and lean on the right."

AtomicGreymon said (in part)

"I can't stand people who sit and watch $3000 TVs with a distorted image, and think they're getting high quality."

I don't like distortion of any kind. I've noticed that gradual distortion on some screens in public places ... don't like it.

I'm a member of my local cable access TV station. The station manager recently put up three 15" LCD TV's in the lobby to view each of our channels. Of course the TV's are 16:9 and our output is 4:3. He selected "stretch" and I complained right away. He told me if he got one other complaint he would switch it to 4:3.

It's still at 16:9 :-(

A month or so ago ... aparently during the "conversion" to HD .. I was watching a PBS show that didn't look right. It didn't take too long for me to realize that they were taking a 16:9 image and squashing it down to 4:3 for standard def TV. Now who was doing the squashing I can't say, but it was someone along the chain.

Since I was watching TV on the tuner in my computer I was able to stretch my window and view the program without distortion, but I pity those with regular TVs who were watching this show.

Later in the week I caught the repeat of same show on another PBS channel and it was letterboxed.

I suspect that it was just someone who didn't "push the right switch" or something and now that first PBS station has no more problems.

It's the black pillars on my widescreen set that bother me, thus the lighthearted references to velvet stage curtains for TVs.

It's funny... with the Pinocchio Blu-Ray, Disney does offer a viewing method that fills up that black area with artwork specific to the scene playing.

Am i odd in that i don't even notice the black bars? To me, the image is the *image*, not the screen. It doesn't matter if i see 4:3 pillarboxed in 16:9 or 16:9 letterboxed in 4:3 or ... whatever ratios there are. I see the frame of the media being displayed and that's all i care about. It doesn't matter to me whether there's black screen along two sides, or the bezel of the display device's frame, or the books leaning up against it, or the wall behind it, or the cat sitting on the desk. As long as it doesn't interfere with the image being displayed the way it should be, all that is completely immaterial.

Maybe that's why i found BB's posts so amusing. I simply couldn't take anyone complaining about that seriously as i couldn't believe anyone could be serious about it.

Maybe those folks need a good dose of "deal with it".

Kelly,

You would not believe some of the things viewers call to complain about. You would also not believe what some consultants come up with either.

Gotta run. I'm responsible for refreshments for the first VCC meeting, and COSTCO closes in an hour. I hope they haven't run out of popcorn.

"Am i odd in that i don't even notice the black bars?"

I think a big part of my problem is that my first HDTV has a shiny silver frame. That makes the black pillars stand out like a sore thumb. I'll get one with a black frame next time, and at such point, or when I have successfully marketed the curtains, I shall stop complaining.

Kelly, I must say, from some of the parallels you've drawn, BillyBoy and I must have much more in common than I ever suspected. Not that I'm necessarily proud of that revelation . . .

"COSTCO closes in an hour. I hope they haven't run out of popcorn."

You had better hope they haven't run out of this stuff!
http://www.pub-corn.com/

"I must say, from some of the parallels you've drawn, BillyBoy and I must have much more in common than I ever suspected."

Except he was a flaming, ignorant jerk and you're not.

John, thanks for making that distinction, it is reassuring.
I could name a few people who might disagree with you, but on second thought I will leave that one alone . . .

OK, you've never been a flaming, ignorant jerk here. :-)

Given that the human eye "translates" a multiple still-frame flow as a moving picture, it didn't take long for me to stop noticing letterboxing and pillars on my 36 inch flatscreen TV. As a tradeoff, hi-resolution is a real treat when it pops on from the DTV box, so I've learned to avoid changing the setting via remote, to a stretched picture which defeats the purpose of hi-resolution 16:9.

CNN and other networks use some appealing pillar graphics to soften the switch between ratios during a news segment playing multiple source material.

Still reluctant to lose my trusty DVX100 in 4:3 and move 'up' to a hi-def format camera in future shoots. We used black tape on the LCD pop-out screen to frame the picture for a later crop to 16:9 (yes, I know, you're losing pixels but in the end it's about the content), and that saved us a couple of reshoots where a creeping boom or reflector or elbow crept into the (4:3) shot--we could crop that out later for the 16:9 format.

Man, I thought you guys were getting old. The brave ones giving their ages in the 50s are a few years younger than me.