HDTV
That’s what I thought.
I’m guessing we’re seeing more vertical info in the 1.78:1 hdtv version because the blu-ray was probably cropped on all four sides (in order to keep the aspect ratio at 2.40:1 without resizing/scaling the pixels down to 3840:1600 / 1920:800 from 4096:1706 / 2048:853) whereas the hdtv version simply crops off the sides to get the picture from 4096:1706 / 2048:853 to 3036:1706 / 1518:853. Hence we’re getting the full vertical information in the 1.78:1 version.
Has anyone done a similar comparison between the blu-ray and hdtv versions of TFA aside from the imax scene?
Force Awakens was filmed in anamorphic Panavision, thus the HDTV is pure pan and scan.
That’s a separate issue from what I was talking about.
Even if a movie is native 2.40:1, the 4,096/2,048 width cinema master either needs its pixels resized (which results in scaling artifacts) or needs to be evenly cropped on all four sides (so that the aspect ratio stays the same) in order to match the pixels 1:1 to the 3,840/1,920 width tv master.
But if they don’t need to worry about preserving the theatrical AR and simply want to fill out the 16:9 tv frame, well, then they only need to crop information off the sides and not the top and bottom.
Again, I’d love for someone to check the non-imax scenes of TFA’s hd broadcast to see if we’re getting just a little more vertical information from the original source.