ABC-HD Movie Of the Week - Page 3

Not OAR, I was worried for a second they ran that "this movie has been formatted to fit your TV and to fit in the time allotted" in 4:3 but then they went HD.

What's with the high pitched cricket sound?

This Sunday, Dec. 30th looks like the next movie for ABC. The Sound of Music. In years past the movie has been 4:3. Will it be 16:9 this year in HD?

New Years eve has Shrek 2. No doubt this one will be wide screen HD.

I'm hoping for 2.35:1 - as it should be for this film.

Last time it was pn, it was 1.78:1 HD feed....so you could still see chopped off children (or not see them) in some scenes.

The Sound of Music should actually be shown at 2.2:1 AR. It was filmed in 70mm (Todd-AO): http://imdb.com/title/tt0059742/technical

I haven't seen it in many many years, I bet it looks good in HD.

It doesn't look spectacular, but the cropping to 16:9 is very apparent as the filmmakers explicitly took advantage of the entire Todd-AO frame.

As many expect, it's cropped. Looks like we only get OAR on the credits.

Well only the beginning credits were OAR, then they starting cropping.

Yep, now I'm seeing nuns being cut in half.

The ironic part is the credits were actually well within safe title for 16x9, so I'm not sure why they bothered teasing us that way.

Edit: and of course, the commercials are ten times louder than the movie. And what comes up in the break, ironically? An ad for the DVD of The SOund of Music - cropped to 4x3.

Also noticed plenty of dialog in the RL channels, despite my A/V R indicating DD 5.1. I'd guess my local ABC affiliate is the culprit.

I was comparing this to my DVD copy because I thought the ABC version seemed a bit grainy and dirty. In looking at the same scenes, I've noticed that the DVD transfer is much cleaner. In fact, I'm hard pressed to see any major improvement in the ABC version - much less of one, at any rate, than the Wizard of Oz and other HD transfers of older films.

The Luddite in me doesn't like the colors in this transfer, either.

That Wal-Mart Ocean's 13 commercial was funny (many months late).

You couldn't crop someone's name in the credits, so they did OAR until the credits were over and then chopped those poor nuns in half

Same as the previous broadcast about a year ago.

...and cut out several children in nearly every shot. Of all the movies to do this on, this is one of the worst since 75% of the shots actually use the full width of the frame for the visuals.

My DVD is like that. I think whoever did the 5.1 remix went a little overboard.

Absolutely. In this case, the age of the print can hardly be to blame since many older films have much better looking prints. Add to that the crop job and I opted not to watch the whole presentation.

I didn't watch the whole thing either, but I did record my favorite singing parts, (Favorite Things, Adu, Do Rey Mi Fa So La Ti Do!). 4 hours would have taken up a lot my hard drive space! I guess I missed the nuns getting cut in half.

I will say that the picture was a little grainy, but I wouldn't say it was terrible by any stretch! It wasn't excellent either but still a decent broadcast.

Well, it only comes on ABC once a year, so maybe they'll spruce things up for next year, eh?

Whats the next movie for ABC?

1000 apologies. I see another epic, Perl Harbor, is on in 2 weeks, (Sat. Jan 12th)

Pretty Woman is on in HD http://abc.go.com/specials/prettywoman/index. Thanks alot WEWS Cleveland for NOT showing the movie! Instead I get to watch some Evening of Stars garbage!!

I HATE that channel! This is not the first time WEWS has cancelled ABC programming to put their own crap on. Sometimes they put their own movie on instead of the ABC movie. This sucks!!

Wasn't on in DC either. UNCF telethon and then a show about Dr. King. WJLA pre-empts network programming more than the other big three DC network affiliates combined.

Allbritton doesn't own WEWS, do they?

nope, Scripps owns WEWS (source: wikipedia)

well my ABC affiliate is still without a digital signal after their tower collapsed two weeks ago. they're using another station's backup tower for their analog, and they say they're hoping to get digital back on the air soon. Probably not in time for LOST though

good movies coming up on ABC in February...

February 2-War of the Worlds
February 9-Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
February 16-Miracle
February 23-Forrest Gump

all listed as HD on ABC.com. Now I really wish that tower had not fallen down. War of the Worlds in HD would be awesome and I want to archive Forrest Gump in HD. Oh well, I'll catch them next time I guess.

I'm getting Meet the Fockers in bad SD up convert on WABC-DT now.
The video had ghosting lines and is soft.