Litigating OAR
The studios have been getting away with it for years.
It all began when CinemaScope initially appeared in the early 1950s. While some theatres were newly equipped with much wider screens, some older houses merely cropped the top and bottom of their extant screen to create the illusion of width, albeit on a smaller canvas.
And those audiences which viewed widescreen films within the walls of these ill-prepared theatres were unknowingly the recipients of a well-prepared, yet deeply deceptive fraud. They were seeing a much smaller projected image than intended by the film's creators, and yet were paying full price for their tickets.
When widescreen home video came into play, many laserdiscs were proudly emblazoned with banners promising "Deluxe Widescreen Edition."
But it wasn't the widescreen edition that was deluxe, but more properly the pan and scan full screen edition. It was the full screen which needed additional processing, time and the investment of additional monies for creation. The widescreen edition was simply the film as it had been seen in theatres. No big deal here. Repetitive of the theatrical experience and a waste of screen real estate with those black bars.
And on to what I understand is the subject to be heard by the courts, and which will most likely make its way to the Supreme Court as an issue of violated Constitutional rights.
I have been shocked to learn that many "widescreen" releases, well...
Aren't.
Well, they are, but then again, they aren't.
Anyone who spends a bit of time reading The Bits or HTF will likely understand that every one of the studios is perpetuating a fraud upon the consumers with their continual pushing of "widescreen" and the use of the ubiquitous term "OAR."
For the uninitiated, OAR stands for Original Aspect Ratio, as relates to the shape of a motion picture image as projected within the confines of a motion picture theatre via a projection system.
Those of you who have read about the subject understand that the entire OAR concept is another fraud being perpetuated by the studios.
Motion pictures as properly projected in the real world are NOT RECTANGULAR!!!
The actual area of projected image is TRAPAZOIDAL!!
Therefore if a film is to be presented properly in its OAR, then the resultant image as seen on a television device MUST BE TRAPAZOIDAL in shape.
If it is not, then the software is a fraudulent release.
The current suit doesn't seem to bring these facts to the fore. It understandably attempts to simplify the problem in relating that a widescreen image is many cases simply a cropped (at top and bottom) flat image.
And the suit in question correctly identifies this fraudulent activity by the studios via which image information is stolen from the licensee of the home video rights.
In short, the licensee is getting much less than they bargained for.
Rather than receiving more information on the sides, the image being delivered has, in many cases, been shorn at the top and bottom yielding less information.
I applaud the fact that this situation will finally be heard by the courts. Hopefully the public, which has been mistreated and literally stolen from over the years will somehow be compensated, and that these deceptive practices will end.
Robert Harris