The following was forwarded to me from a buddy at ABC-TV:

Please be advised that tonight’s (11/28/07) special “Dr. Suess’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (scheduled 8:30pm-9pm) will be in HD, however the original 4X3 aspect ratio will be preserved. Therefore, although the telecast will be true HD the viewer will see ‘side panels’ (or pillars) throughout program content.

the original 4X3 aspect ratio will be preserved.

Amen

ABC premiered "How the Grinch..." in HD last year for the 40th anniversary. I highly recommend watching it if you missed it.

just ticks me off more that our local ABC affiliate (KATV) has a deal with Lincoln Financial Sports to show SEC basketball of sub-par quality (both the games and the PQ, looks like VHS). So if I want to see tonight's specials, gotta record at 12:35am and they won't be in HD as KATV does not have HD timeshifting equipment...

Look forward to the Grinch every year and last year's HD was the best.

"You're a vile one, Mr. Grinch.
You have termites in your smile.
You have all the tender sweetness
Of a seasick crocodile.
Mr. Grinch.


Given the choice between the two of you
I'd take the seasick crocodile."

Hmmm...sounds like TWC as The Grinch! :D

Good!

OP, you (and everyone) should know that OAR is correct, and to stretch or otherwise distort "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" would be wrong. If you want to "fill your screen" and avoid those nasty-wasty "pillarbars," feel free to use the controls on your television to foul up the picture however you might like.

I like the announcement, but I hate the thread title. "But in OAR of 4x3" makes it sound like OAR is a bad thing. I believe from previous discussion, we know that fans of OAR are at least roughly half of the folks here.

Grinch in HD, OAR of 4x3 is neutral. Grinch in HD, but in OAR of 4x3 makes it sound like it is distorted, when it is not.

Love the Grinch but somehow don't think it's gonna benefit much if any from being in HD...it already looks pristine on DVD and on TV IMO.

ABC premiered "How the Grinch..." in HD last year for the 40th anniversary. I highly recommend watching it if you missed it.

Last year there was a little special on the Grinch afterwards and I saw something weird. The special of course wasn't HD but appeared to be coming from the ABC HD feed since it didn't have the local affiliate bug.

After a commercial it came back with the affiliate's bug and the upconversion looked terrible. I guessed I was now watching my affiliate upconverting ABC's SD feed. I was surprised at how bad it looked compared to ABC's upconversion.

I like the announcement, but I hate the thread title. "But in OAR of 4x3" makes it sound like OAR is a bad thing. ....

The title reflects the tone of the note that was forwarded and is thus entirely approriate. That you may hate the tone of the note I will grant. However, the note is appartently based on the premise that HD with an OAR matching the OAR of most SD material is an unusual occurrance. "But" is therefore appropriate.

I too interpreted that you thought OAR was a bad thing.

Anyway, who cares about grammar, its the internet.

I too interpreted that you thought OAR was a bad thing.

Anyway, who cares about grammar, it's the internet.

But we care about spelling. :D

thought it was beautiful. made me feel like a kid again, but the picture being so much better than old recorded vhs was awesome.

As my wife and I were watching it, I was thinking that if I didn't know how old this was (and the fact that Boris is like dead), it could have passed for something made yesterday. The clarity and color satuation was fantastic.

Good!

OP, you (and everyone) should know that OAR is correct, and to stretch or otherwise distort "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" would be wrong. If you want to "fill your screen" and avoid those nasty-wasty "pillarbars," feel free to use the controls on your television to foul up the picture however you might like.


:D:D

Kind of like stretching WIZARD OF OZ, for example.

DVR'ed both this & the Shrek special last night. Watched Shrek w/ the 5 yr old - pretty impressive for a one-off XMAS special, and caught a bit of GRINCH. Looked great.

Good!

OP, you (and everyone) should know that OAR is correct, and to stretch or otherwise distort "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" would be wrong. If you want to "fill your screen" and avoid those nasty-wasty "pillarbars," feel free to use the controls on your television to foul up the picture however you might like.

Hear hear. :D

Love the Grinch but somehow don't think it's gonna benefit much if any from being in HD...it already looks pristine on DVD and on TV IMO.



Absolutely disagree. The colors popped off the screen in a way that the SD-
DVD couldn't match at all...

Absolutely disagree. The colors popped off the screen in a way that the SD-
DVD couldn't match at all...

Especially when compared to the first DVD release of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" that I bought back in 1999 or so. The Grinch on that DVD is lime green- colored and fuzzy. The ABC-HD recording is superior. I didn't catch it in high-def last year, so glad I got it this year.

Did anyone notice if the 4x3 aspect ratio actually looked a bit wider? I recorded to DVD-R on a Panny DVD recorder equiped with a digital tuner. I also caught the tail end of Shrek. But Grinch displays about 2" wider on my 42" HDTV. I wonder in the original master is a bit wider than 4x3. I'll have to try recording a "regular" version and comparing the two.

Maybe my affiliate stinks but I thought it looked like bad SD.

Maybe my affiliate stinks but I thought it looked like bad SD.
Maybe it was for your affiliate.

Maybe my affiliate stinks but I thought it looked like bad SD.Sure, the colors are more vivid in HD, but I thought everything else looked bad (particularly the Grinch closeup where there are rapid background color changes).

I missed it, does anyone know if it will be played again before Christmas?

It's being replayed:
12/08/2007 8:00 PM EST

It's being replayed:
12/08/2007 8:00 PM EST
That is the movie, not the cartoon...

Shrek the Halls, the Grinch (40th ann airing), and the Grinch movie all preempted in Little Rock by KATV on Nov 28th for what Glenn Hauser refers to as "Stupid Ball Games".

Sorry for the late post.....

I missed it, does anyone know if it will be played again before Christmas?


I hope so.

Cartoon Network HD is airing it 12/9 8:00 PM and 12/16

The abomination remake starring Jim Carrey is airing Saturday night on ABC-HD.

Cartoon Network HD is airing it 12/9 8:00 PM and 12/16

That would be cool if it's in HD. I'll be sure to set the DVR just in case!

I compared the ABC-HD version with the Cartoon Network analog version. I recorded both with a DVD recorder.

The HD version wins hands down. Colors are more vivid and picture is sharper. I have two Panasonic recorders, so it was easy to pause similar images in order to make A-B comparisons.

The HD version is also 3" wider on my 42" HDTV. In fact it looks wider than most 4:3 material displayed. At first I thought they partially stretched the HD version so I measured some round logos such as the ABC circle. A little difficult to do because the logo has a slight shadow effect & difficult to tell the actual edge. In both cases the horizontal was a tad bit greater than the vertical, about 1.25 to 1.5 percent. Could be the source, the TV, etc. But the HD version was not perceptially stretched.

I thought perhaps the HD version might be enlarged in both directions, thereby cropping off part of the top & bottom of the picture. But the HD version actually shows a bit more in the vertical direction. I really did not look at picture content in the horizontal direction because I didn't think of it at the time. I just measured. Unfortunately I already erased the analog version.

The HD image measured about 30" x 22.75", which is about 1.32:1, pretty close to 4:3.
The analog image was about 27" x 22.75, which is about 1.19:1.

The HD version shows more, is larger, and (at least from my perspective) looks better.

Without any "overscan" issues/etc, "cropping out" the sidebars as well as a small, 4 pixel high "blank" area at top of frame With DGdecode/DGINDEX's cropping filter on a PC :

As broadcast via ABC HD from WCPO-DT Cincinnati Grinch HD version seems to have been 988x716 pixels, or approx. 1.38:1, 4x3 is 1:33:1 ....

Note I tried this same test with HD "rudolph" via WKRC-DT CBS HD Cincinnati and oddly enough it had about a 10~12 pixel high "blank" area at top of frame, but the side bars were what they'd normally be for 4x3 --- So, it was 1440x1070 or 1440x1068, about 1.35:1 ....

Note that checking other captures from these stations during ABC or CBS HD programming, there is no "blank" area at top of frame as was the case during rudolph+Grinch .. I haven't checked Frosty yet, although I did capture it) ... And Grinch/rudolph were definitely HD from these stations, as the HD Network bugs were there ...

Also, The circle around the "cat in the Hat" in the HD version of Grinch measures quite circular vs. circles from test patterns on the same HD display, that is the only thing I checked/didn't compare to any other versions as Mike99 did .....

Nitewatchman,

I did measure the circle around the "Cat in the Hat" in the HD version of Grinch & it was quite circular also. But this logo did not appear in the analog version. I do not have any way to check pixels, so I just measured the image on my HDTV screen.

When you mentioned 10-12 blank pixels at the top of Rudolph, do you mean visible blank pixels, or blank pixels that are "covered up" by overscan?

I also did record Rudolph in HD but did not notice any blank pixels at the top, but then I was not looking for them either. I did measure the image width as I was curious, & it was about 29". So this would be about 29" x 22.75" = 1.27:1 ratio, at least on my set.

I never measured my side bars till now because they always looked about the same, so I presumed they were. But the HD Grinch just made them look noticeably smaller so I was curious what was happening.

I should add a DVD drive to my PC, but I'm afraid I'll just spend more time editing out commercials than I'll ever save by just fast forwarding through them.

When you mentioned 10-12 blank pixels at the top of Rudolph, do you mean visible blank pixels, or blank pixels that are "covered up" by overscan?


The latter.

I use HTPC for HD-DVR. A Hauppauage WinTV-HVR1600(with ATSC OTA HD signals) + WatchHDTV TS scheduler was used to capture the ATSC/MPEG2 Transport stream for the descriptions in my last post here.

I was curious, so here's an update. As I previously mentioned, the HD version actually showed a bit more picture content in the vertical direction, but I never compared the content in the horizontal direction. Well Grinch was on again in analog & I recorded part of it so I could compare.

First I have to correct my previous measurements. My TV screen is about 20.5" high, not 22.75". I have no idea how I came up with the incorrect size. Usually I measure twice to make sure. So now I re-measured many times at approx 20.5". This changes my previous aspect ratios. Therefore the HD image measured about 30" x 20.5", which is about 1.46:1. And the analog image about 27" x 20.5, which is about 1.32:1, which is pretty close to 4:3.

Anyway, the HD version has about 4" more content in the horizontal content than the analog one. The HD picture is about 3" wider so how could the content be 4" wider? Well the vertical content is also different, about 3/4" more. Again I did a freeze frame using two DVD recorders so it was easy to see the difference. The analog version really cuts off picture information. One scene I compared was when they were decorating the tree near the beginning of the program. The analog version actully cuts off part of the tree and ornaments on the right side of the screen. Very obvious.

But now I wonder about the aspect ratio of the original source. My HD measurements come in real close to 1.5:1. Is my TV (or DVD recorder) cropping off way too much at the top & bottom? Nitewatchman's pixel measurements would indicate it is. I'll have to check my set with the Avia test DVD.

But the bottom line is that the HD version does show more actual picture content.