Netflix Secretly Cropping Movies?

This is a bummer, I hope Netflix fixes this for all movies. Or gives options in settings -> original film aspect ratio for film buffs, or the auto fit/zoom for the casuals.

The picture quality on Netflix HD/Super HD is better than an upscaled DVD on my PS3, same as with my Amazon Prime HD subscription. A Blu Ray disc is a little sharper in rez @ 1080p, but it's a lot smoother with less ghosting or blur up close (or just more film like cuz of the higher bitrate Blu-Ray provides I believe)

They are both excellent services for their costs. Less than 16.00 a month for both Amazon and Netflix services and 9.99+tax for the Blu-Ray/DVD Netflix 1 disc out at a time plan. So 27.00 dollars a month for convenient services with a lot of variety imho is a fair deal. At least there is more options than cable or dish. ;)
 
yeah, an option would be nice.

However, as the owner of a older Plasma TV (2010 model), part of me is glad that they do this if for nothing else than causing damage to the screen. Although, I could also use my TV's own scaler (have to use it for 4:3 content anyway)... but having netflix do it probably results in a somewhat nicer image if I had to guess.

The odd thing is, I KNOW that I've seen content on Netflix at it's original aspect ratio, letterboxed, on my 16:9 TV... so I'm a little curious as to why Netflix is selectively cropping some and not others. Part of me wonders if it's the studios/etc sending them the cropped content (so to give the DVD's/Blurays more appeal)
 
Netflix isn't cropping them, multiple companies still distribute titles in DVD format with both pan-n-scan and full frame versions. What your finding is that netflix is taking the cheapest format of a movie (in this case, pan-n-scan) they can find, and upscaling it from standard def to 1080p or what-not, then sending it out. Nobody is asking for Pan-N-Scan any more, so its REALLY at an attractive price point for content providers. They just automat/crop the material to a new 'letterbox and most folks don't know the difference.
 
That's more than a simple crop. They completely deleted a human being. In the 1st degree.
 
Netflix claims that it does not crop movies and that the movies you see on Netflix that are cropped are the "wrong version."

Netflix has categorically stated "we do not crop," adding that it attempts to offer "the best picture and provide the original aspect ratio of any title" on its service. Netflix admits that while it attempts to offer movies in their original aspect ratio, it may sometimes deliver the wrong version of a title. "When we discover this error, we work to replace that title as soon as possible," the company notes.
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We don't crop movies, we just sometimes accidentally show you movies that we cropped.
 
Zepher said:
Some of you must have shitty internet connections because netflix looks very good on our systems, yes, Bluray is better, but I can't afford to buy 20K bluray movies and tv shows so that I can watch anything I want at any time.
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This is true. I do have a crap connection compared to some. Netflix is great for a lot of TV shows and movies that I'll watch once, or the older movies. But, for some like Avengers (which Netflix recently got), I'll go with Blu-ray over Netflix. The quality can be ok on Netflix, but it's far from great. I'll watch it all day long on my 40" in the bedroom. But, on the 110", I can't. If I had a fiber connection >25Mb, maybe. But, that's like buying $10,000 on kitchen appliances and things and making hamburgers. Sure, they are good, but you're not really making a good use of the kitchen.

I guess it depends on the show, too. Avengers kind of needs the higher quality visuals and audio. Others, like a comedy or TV show don't need it.
 
Ur_Mom said:
This is true. I do have a crap connection compared to some. Netflix is great for a lot of TV shows and movies that I'll watch once, or the older movies. But, for some like Avengers (which Netflix recently got), I'll go with Blu-ray over Netflix. The quality can be ok on Netflix, but it's far from great. I'll watch it all day long on my 40" in the bedroom. But, on the 110", I can't. If I had a fiber connection >25Mb, maybe. But, that's like buying $10,000 on kitchen appliances and things and making hamburgers. Sure, they are good, but you're not really making a good use of the kitchen.

I guess it depends on the show, too. Avengers kind of needs the higher quality visuals and audio. Others, like a comedy or TV show don't need it.
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Personally I think comparing watching a movie on Blu-ray vs netflix all things being equal is a pointless endeavor. Why would you watch it on netflix if you have the bluray already?

The question is whether to purchase the blu-ray or to just watch the netflix version that is the question and factors you mention are used in that decision.

For the price, ease of use, price Netflix is well worth it. If you demand more, there is blu-ray.

Do I wish netflix had better quality... yeah. Would I be happy at the same price, yeah. Would I be outraged if they raised prices and quality... no because there is value there still.
 
DoggyDaddi said:
Netflix isn't cropping them, multiple companies still distribute titles in DVD format with both pan-n-scan and full frame versions. What your finding is that netflix is taking the cheapest format of a movie (in this case, pan-n-scan) they can find, and upscaling it from standard def to 1080p or what-not, then sending it out. Nobody is asking for Pan-N-Scan any more, so its REALLY at an attractive price point for content providers. They just automat/crop the material to a new 'letterbox and most folks don't know the difference.
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This. Original Aspect Ratio (OAR) in streaming is the exception, not the rule. Especially if you see identical titles cropped in Amazon Prime Instant and Hulu as well.

And most joe-average non-cinephiles will still insist that they're being cheated if they see those black bars in a OAR letterbox presentation, so it becomes a stoopid customer support issue too.
 
The "wrong version" Netflix is talking about is the one that a content producer provides. When they say they aren't cropping video, I believe them.
 
do anyone think that the people who used to complain about letter boxed content to Blockbuster magically went away now that HD is around? No they still complain when they see 2.35:1 on their 16:9 TV maybe even more so if they remember being told that HD would eliminate the problem. I wouldn't doubt Netflix's reasoning is that people complained about the bars more than people complain about not seeing the entire screen.

You have to remember, even though HD has been reasonably affordable for most people for around 8 years or so there's still a lot of people who watch nothing but SD content. Either they don't know there's HD channels, never bothered to get a new cable box or simply don't want to pay extra for the right equipment. To these people the only thing that matters is that their 50 inch screen is full, not that it looks right.
 
Ryokurin said:
do anyone think that the people who used to complain about letter boxed content to Blockbuster magically went away now that HD is around? No they still complain when they see 2.35:1 on their 16:9 TV maybe even more so if they remember being told that HD would eliminate the problem. I wouldn't doubt Netflix's reasoning is that people complained about the bars more than people complain about not seeing the entire screen.

You have to remember, even though HD has been reasonably affordable for most people for around 8 years or so there's still a lot of people who watch nothing but SD content. Either they don't know there's HD channels, never bothered to get a new cable box or simply don't want to pay extra for the right equipment. To these people the only thing that matters is that their 50 inch screen is full, not that it looks right.
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Peasants should be happy they even have TVs.
 
We do realize that picture from "man on the moon" one is from the original theater release, and the one for Netflix is the edited Directors Cut right? I mean shit, how does the guy gain more arm in the second frame otherwise? That's on the studio side, not Netflix.

Netflix streams what they're sent. It's cropped from the provider. Why in the hell would Netflix waste their time cropping streams? What a stupid fucking argument.
 
Ur_Mom said:
This is true. I do have a crap connection compared to some. Netflix is great for a lot of TV shows and movies that I'll watch once, or the older movies. But, for some like Avengers (which Netflix recently got), I'll go with Blu-ray over Netflix. The quality can be ok on Netflix, but it's far from great. I'll watch it all day long on my 40" in the bedroom. But, on the 110", I can't. If I had a fiber connection >25Mb, maybe. But, that's like buying $10,000 on kitchen appliances and things and making hamburgers. Sure, they are good, but you're not really making a good use of the kitchen.

I guess it depends on the show, too. Avengers kind of needs the higher quality visuals and audio. Others, like a comedy or TV show don't need it.
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You don't need fiber. The max a netflix stream is ever going to get is around 7Mbps and that's a worse case and they only offer that if your ISP is part of their CDN network. Typically the average HD stream is in the 5-6Mbps range.

The key thing that a lot of people neglect is that they also take into account what type of hardware you are playing the video back on and as a result HD can look drastically different on a computer vs a bluray player vs an PS3. Even if you meet the bandwidth requirements if your device can't handle their newer more tightly compressed streams (with better quality) then it will fallback to an older stream that may not look as great.
 
dandirk said:
Personally I think comparing watching a movie on Blu-ray vs netflix all things being equal is a pointless endeavor. Why would you watch it on netflix if you have the bluray already?
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I was referring to buying vs. streaming. Those blockbuster, high action movies are much better on Blu than Netflix. If you're going to enjoy them, either Redbox or buy the Blu-ray. If you already own it, no doubt you'd watch it on the best quality version you have.

For me, it's similar to the VHS/DVD difference. It's a good, noticeable difference. There are some that I don't mind the quality (Jack and Jill....), but others deserve more. Watching Avatar, for example, on VHS would blow. Watching it in 1080p/5.1 DTS is much better (not sure if it supports 7.1). I love Netflix, and I watch a lot of movies and TV shows on there. But, for those movies that are amazing, it needs the Blu-ray. I own some Blu-rays that I bought on sale for really cheap that should have been Netflix viewed (or never watched in the first place). I've owned Star Wars on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD and Blu-ray. It's one movie that deserves the best quality available (for me, I'm a fan).

Netflix is awesome. I watch more Netflix than I do Blu's. But, it's definitely not the best option for a good home theater.
 
A better way of saying is that netflix is the mainstream tool, and Blu-ray is what the enthusiast/collector gets. Kind of like how VHS was to LD in the 80s
 
Yes, I'm sure Netflix has the time and money to go through and selectively edit through each of their movies, do their own pan and scan, etc. :rolleyes:

While I'm sure they do some minor cropping on alot of their movies, I'm positive it's static (aka, cropping off the outer 5% of the picture), they absolutely have nothing to gain by painstakingly going through and selectively cropping scenes in movies. They're probably just getting a pre-cropped/pan-n-scan version of the content from the studios.
 
I would think that the wider 1.85:1 cinema, shown on the most common 16:9 screens and yielding letterboxing

...would significantly reduce netflix's bandwidth usage.
(1920x1080 pixels, many just black, blah blah compression blah blah fewer graphical variances blah blah)

this "cropping" should be more expensive for netflix to use. This leads me to believe that doing this is about quality.
 
I am happy with Netflix... Streaming HD to my TV... I think it's great. The quality of a streamed video blows me away every time. Thinking back 10 years to 56k, this is great!
 
I am calling BS on this. The images you use in the story aren't simply cropped to 16:9, it is cropped on the sides and the top and the bottom. If you are cropping for new aspect it doesn't make sense to crop the top and bottom as well.
 
As someone who used to provide support for Netflix Instant Watch streaming back when it was first launched through until a little while after the first Roku box was released -

Netflix asks for copies of the content from the movie content owner, who then provides the version of the movie you watch. They dont touch the movie itself. Never have, probably never will. The only thing they do is provide lower resolution files from the master that's given.

When they notice an issue (It requires you to report it to them, they dont magically know as SO many people seemed to think), it's sent off to the content owner with a request for a revised copy without whatever issue is there. They can give a new copy thats fixed, or they can say "tough shit, live with what we gave you". Usually they fix it, but its a several month turnaround for issues to be resolved. Or it was when I last worked there.
 
c4v3man said:
Yes, I'm sure Netflix has the time and money to go through and selectively edit through each of their movies, do their own pan and scan, etc. :rolleyes:

While I'm sure they do some minor cropping on alot of their movies, I'm positive it's static (aka, cropping off the outer 5% of the picture), they absolutely have nothing to gain by painstakingly going through and selectively cropping scenes in movies. They're probably just getting a pre-cropped/pan-n-scan version of the content from the studios.
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Netflix is a series of DVD drives that are loaded by trained Capuchin monkeys. When you request a movie, a monkey trained for that movie is dispatched and a treat is waiting in the DVD drive that will be used to stream to your house.
 
Snowdog said:
I am calling BS on this. The images you use in the story aren't simply cropped to 16:9, it is cropped on the sides and the top and the bottom. If you are cropping for new aspect it doesn't make sense to crop the top and bottom as well.
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They cropped more because it would be stranger to have 1/3 of a person in a shot.
 
Snowdog said:
This post says much the same:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/netflix-cropping-aspect-ratio_n_3616774.html
"That may indicate the true culprit in the Netflix cropping controversy: film studios. Due to contractual obligations or restrictions, there's a chance that the films were given to Netflix in the modified form, at which point the company is essentially powerless to change them."
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Yep, this is how most distributors structure things. You send stuff to Amazon, Apple, etc., following their specs and generally using their own tooling, and they just stick it in the databases.
 
c4v3man said:
Yes, I'm sure Netflix has the time and money to go through and selectively edit through each of their movies, do their own pan and scan, etc. :rolleyes:

While I'm sure they do some minor cropping on alot of their movies, I'm positive it's static (aka, cropping off the outer 5% of the picture), they absolutely have nothing to gain by painstakingly going through and selectively cropping scenes in movies. They're probably just getting a pre-cropped/pan-n-scan version of the content from the studios.
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This. For every movie they cropped scene-by-scene, they would be forced to pay someone to do it. Just assuming said person makes $16 (a professional would likely make much more), for every hour spent cropping scenes, Netflix would have to count out the revenue of 2 subscriptions. Really, in the end, thats how you would have to think of it, how many subscriptions do I have to count on to pay for this job?

It just doesn't make any sense. The better question is, why would studios crop random scenes after production?
 
I won't argue the idea of a movie being played the way the artist intended.

But I will argue that CinemaScope largely responsible for the 2.35:1 aspect ratio is an idea that was create for bad and good reasons and most of the good reasons don't apply anymore.
a) Firstly it was created to drive an even bigger incompatibility between Movies and TV to help protect the movie industry. People were predicting the death of movies from television like today they predict the death of the PC's from tablets. And for a long time it looked like they were going to be right. Transferring a 2.35 or larger ratio to 1.33:1 aspect ratio is not the best.
b) It was created so that on paper is sounded like a knock off of Cinerama. Which because it has a near semi-circular screen is actually completely different
c) Westerns and other panorama friendly movies were popular at the time of its launch. You were sort of wasting film on a usually detail-less blue sky. In fact that was used to avoid having detail in the scene that drove movie costs like ceiling-less sets.

And the reasons people don't like it is a little more that its just not using 100% of their TV screen.

For one its an unnatural aspect ratio. You vision is a lot more square than 2.35 especially if consider the portion of your vision that can actually absorb some level of detail. The 16:9 or 16:10 ratios are probably closer. At the same time, 4:3 is not wide enough and not liked because its also unnatural in the other direction.

The other reason is that you're taking almost a 25% hit on vertical detail. A 1080 is close to a 720p TV and a 720p is like SD in that direction. The detail loss is with you 100% of the time. This isn't a problem in the theatre because the movie is analog and film frames were usually appropriately upsided for their quality need. At the same time, percent of the time is the 2.35:1 ratio actually leveraged? In a theatre if you leverage all of it all of the time, that movie becomes a labor to watch because depending on your seats your eyes are always moving around or even your neck. So you suffer a 25% loss of vertical detail 100% of the time for the 5 or 10% of the movie that needs the enlarged horizontal.

Basically there's another way to look at the situation. Cropping wouldn't be considered if the movie was shot without 25% of the vertical dimension missing.
 
jpm100 said:
I won't argue the idea of a movie being played the way the artist intended.

But I will argue that CinemaScope largely responsible for the 2.35:1 aspect ratio is an idea that was create for bad and good reasons and most of the good reasons don't apply anymore.
a) Firstly it was created to drive an even bigger incompatibility between Movies and TV to help protect the movie industry. People were predicting the death of movies from television like today they predict the death of the PC's from tablets. And for a long time it looked like they were going to be right. Transferring a 2.35 or larger ratio to 1.33:1 aspect ratio is not the best.
b) It was created so that on paper is sounded like a knock off of Cinerama. Which because it has a near semi-circular screen is actually completely different
c) Westerns and other panorama friendly movies were popular at the time of its launch. You were sort of wasting film on a usually detail-less blue sky. In fact that was used to avoid having detail in the scene that drove movie costs like ceiling-less sets.

And the reasons people don't like it is a little more that its just not using 100% of their TV screen.

For one its an unnatural aspect ratio. You vision is a lot more square than 2.35 especially if consider the portion of your vision that can actually absorb some level of detail. The 16:9 or 16:10 ratios are probably closer. At the same time, 4:3 is not wide enough and not liked because its also unnatural in the other direction.

The other reason is that you're taking almost a 25% hit on vertical detail. A 1080 is close to a 720p TV and a 720p is like SD in that direction. The detail loss is with you 100% of the time. This isn't a problem in the theatre because the movie is analog and film frames were usually appropriately upsided for their quality need. At the same time, percent of the time is the 2.35:1 ratio actually leveraged? In a theatre if you leverage all of it all of the time, that movie becomes a labor to watch because depending on your seats your eyes are always moving around or even your neck. So you suffer a 25% loss of vertical detail 100% of the time for the 5 or 10% of the movie that needs the enlarged horizontal.

Basically there's another way to look at the situation. Cropping wouldn't be considered if the movie was shot without 25% of the vertical dimension missing.
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I really don't like 2.35:1 and agree with pretty much everything here, especially about human vision. I have seen so many people erroneously claim that our vision is wide like 2.35:1, when what I have seen of the actual vision area is more like 1.4:1 (and very rounded and irregular).

While I often do my own cropping (to some in between compromise like 1.9:1) when watching scope movies on my HTPC, I don't want them pre-cropped, by the studios.
 
xIronCrossx said:
Well the black bars look like shit too, either way you can't win to be honest.
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projection and an anamorphic prism pair... there you go, problem solved...

can even be done for not that much money now

if you love movies then you will already have/desire such a setup... if you don't love movies, well, then you're probably watching netflix anyway so who cares ;)
 
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