... thanks for continuing here.
First, there's an important term known as original aspect ratio or OAR. OAR means that a movie or television program you are watching is being shown in the same format (width to height ratio) as it was originally filmed in and/or intended to be viewed in. Most movies are filmed for a widescreen presentation, intended to be shown on big theater screens in a format that is much wider than it is tall. A more traditional and more obvious rectangular shape, versus the more square shape of the TV sets that have been in use in U.S.A. households for the last many years. Typical aspect ratios for films are 2.39:1 (meaning that the image is 2.39 times wider than it is tall), and 1.85:1. For TV the ratios are traditionally 4:3 (old standard definition or SD TV) and 16:9 for widescreen high-definition TV.
What is so important about original aspect ratio? Oh, absolutely nothing if you don't care about seeing a film as it was intended to be viewed, or at least viewed as the director intended. Huh? Well, lets say that the director filmed a scene widescreen and has action going on in either side of the main part of the screen with the main part of the screen being basically a square in the center of the screen. If the director has something going on in the fringe areas of the screen and you are concentrating on viewing only the center area of the screen then you'll miss the action in those fringe areas and be wondering what was going on or why you are watching a scene of an area that isn't changing. This 'problem' gets resolved by people that re-work images to fit our TV screens by making a version of a film in a Pan and Scan version, meaning that they pan the camera from side to side as necessary to focus on the majority of the action and keep the important actions in a film on the main part of the screen. They may focus on the left half of the screen, or the right half of the screen, or mostly the middle area of the screen, etc., to get the action to remain in focus. If done right, the transfer (copy of the original film) comes out fairly well and viewers that watch the film in the P&S (pan and scan) format are able to watch and enjoy the film without feeling that they've missed anything important in the original film. P&S, in and of itself, isn't too bad as the original aspect ratio is maintained though 'data' and imagery from the original material is lost (truncated or cut away) in the process.
Having known for years that films had to be reformatted to fit on TV screens, or the film would have to be 'matted' and aired in a manner where there would be empty space on the sides or top and bottom of the screen, many film makers have put in extra effort to film their movies in a way that takes the formatting of the end product into consideration. They film so that the majority of the action is always in the center of the screen and they avoid the use of the sides of the screen in most cases so that nothing important is lost when the film is shown in the 4:3 format. As long as the director of the movie has taken that all into consideration and has done a good job, viewers will still be able to watch the product as the director intended.
With those definitions and slight detours out of the way, I can get back to the point of my argument and rant here and that would be the abomination that is known as STRETCH-O-VISION. Stretch-o-vision (SoV) involves taking a movie/film product and changing it so that the original aspect ratio is completely trashed and the image is warped to make it fill the screen of the viewer no matter what. SoV is used to cut out any and all 'dead space' or 'unused space' on the sides and top and bottom of the viewers TV screen so that there are no pillar boxes/bars on the sides of the screen. SoV has some nasty side effects of warping parts of the screen so that actors/actresses look bloated and fat, or stretched like Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four.
Why does SoV exist? Well, ask yourself why colorization of classic films exists or existed. Or, ask yourself why people buy movies (on DVD or, shudder, video tape) that they know, or should know, have been altered from the original format and have data and material missing from the sides of the film. Actually in this case it's somewhat simpler and comes down to some fairly deeply rooted fears that expensive big screen TVs will wind up suffering from burn-in of black or gray bars on the sides (or tops or bottoms) of the screens if the images there don't change often enough. Most TVs have settings that allow the users to change the output format of the programming they are watching so that the images are stretched by the TV, but some older models may not offer that ability. In addition, most DVD playback devices, satellite TV receivers, and even cable boxes also offer similar abilities. Knowing that, one would think that the programmers wouldn't have their channels warping images that they are sending out, but alas there are many programmers that are doing just that and that are warping the images 'at the source' (before they send them out to viewers).
TNT-HD was one of the original culprits in pushing SoV upon viewers. Now, with several more HD channels being offered, sister stations (part of the programmers bigger umbrella of station offerings) to TNT are showing up and following the same road map for image distortion that TNT already established. Apparently TNT (and their parent company, Time-Warner) never received enough complaints about the crappy product they were providing to customers. Apparently too many customers thought it was ok to have the image warped before it got to them, or just never noticed and never cared about the distortion.
Actually, the number of customers that were getting high-definition programming in the past has been fairly small and within that set of customers, the number of customers that were offended by the modified images were probably not as great as people like myself would like. As many more customers move into the high definition world, things may change (hence the rant here, hoping to inspire more customers to write in and complain about the warping of the images they are being sent), but it is possible that things may just change for the worse and the great un-washed masses (sorry to all you members of the great un-washed masses) may prefer to receive the warped images on their TVs. Again, consider the number of people that still buy Fullscreen versions of films on DVD format, feeling that Widescreen versions are somehow broken or inferior when the reverse is really the case. God forbid that those people 'win' and get what they want, for if they do, we'll be stuck with stretch-o-vision until the 16:9 format takes over completely and all older film products are eliminated from view.
Personally, I want SoV to end now.
