Netflix Secretly Cropping Movies?

well, if people are so dumb to not understand aspect ratios then this is probably what can be called "customer service". if most people want it to fill the entire screen then this is what they get.

i mean i see a lot of total morons every day, but i thought something like 4:3 or 16:9 (just the concept) was easy enough to understand even for people with an IQ of room temperature. stuff like this truly amazes me in weird ways.
 
Its not like people watch stuff on netflix for the image quality anyways. If you are that big of a cinophile that something like this pisses you off then buy it on bluray so you can see it in proper cinescope format.
 
i am more upset they have foreign movies with only the english audio track, sup with that? who the hell watches old boy with an english dub. TURRIBLE
 
Its not like people watch stuff on netflix for the image quality anyways. If you are that big of a cinophile that something like this pisses you off then buy it on bluray so you can see it in proper cinescope format.

You don't need to be a cinephile to want to see the whole scene in a movie.
 
i am more upset they have foreign movies with only the english audio track, sup with that? who the hell watches old boy with an english dub. TURRIBLE

WOT? I saw Old Boy in Korean with English subs.
 
When TV's are a big as movie screens, you can complain about crop & stretching images. Otherwise it really should be customer choice.

Depending on the size of the screen, distance from the screen and eyesight of the viewer, letter boxing risks a loss of detail even if its the same pixels stretched/squashed between the two formats. Definitely detail loss if the image is coded from the source for the different formats at 1080p.

The screen only has so many pixels and if you pan out, you're going to lose detail that could be there in the original.
 
I wonder if it's only netflix, but other streaming services doing this as well...

For me, most of the examples aren't "huge", but the Man on the Moon example is pretty significant of a cut.
 
So they are doing effectively the same thing tv has done for decades... holy shit! Say it ain't so! /sarcasm
 
So they are doing effectively the same thing tv has done for decades... holy shit! Say it ain't so! /sarcasm

The difference is most content on TV is now 16:9 and most cinema ratios are letterboxed these days. Netflix is trending backwards. TV owners still have to deal with overscan most of the time, though.
 
You can thank all the dumbs that complained to Netflix "durr how do I get rid of black bars on my tee vee"
 
Still on disc. 2.35:1 screen with an anamorphic lens. I really get pissed when studio's crop movie releases to fit 16x9, I always want the theatrical release.
 
Honestly with the fairly shitty bitrate on most netflix films anyway, this is a non-issue. If you want to watch it properly, watch it from a bluray/hddvd source.
 
Also just a guess, especially where they zoom in to a portion of the frame rather than simply crop off the edges, I would say this is more for catering to the mobile phone/tablet crowd which they try so hard to capture...
 
This is exactly what my parents do. They refuse (or just don't know how) to get HD programming from their satellite provider, and just zoom in all of the SD channels so they don't have the dreaded "black bars". It annoys the heck out of me to see stuff cut off on the edges of the screen, but it's their TV so I just let them do what they want.
 
Yes, many companies are selling/renting videos without respecting the quality or paying much attention to the product of the encode.

Tried to watch a few episodes from the beginning of MacGyver on Amazon Prime this weekend and the horrible interlacing artifacts (and downright appearance of the video being from someone's VHS tapes) almost made me stop watching.... almost.
 
I don't watch netflix movies any more because my ISP does not allow them free bandwidth, so there is no HD on my computer. I'm not surprised they are cropping stuff like this either.
 
Cutting out Jim Carrey is a service to the customer. The other examples, though, would annoy the hell out of me.
 
I'm about to cancel my sub. I know it's only $8 a month, but I never even use it anymore.
 
I'm about to cancel my sub. I know it's only $8 a month, but I never even use it anymore.

I think once I have finished all the seasons of shows I wanna watch(Breaking Bad, The Office and some others) I will get rid of it as well. The movie selection is so-so, but it really shines with series, because they are all there. With stupid cable you generally just get the latest one , so if you wanna start watching a new series and it's on like season 7 you are screwed.
 
You don't need to be a cinephile to want to see the whole scene in a movie.

Coupled with the quality, then it's really not for the die hard cinephile.

I'll watch Netflix for a lot of movies. But, I have a hard time watching it on the big screen. The quality bugs me. For that, I either watch Blu or a HD rip.
 
I think it's because Netflix knows your mom doesn't understand why there are black bars on her movies.

Netflix is aimed squarely at the lowest common denominator and they know it. Which is why I suspect they don't care about butchering our movies.
 
Well the black bars look like shit too, either way you can't win to be honest.
 
Well, you could get go find the rare 2:35/1 TV.

Then you'll have black bars on the SIDES most of the time.

Hey, you asked for the solution.

Honestly, it's one thing to just zoom and crop the bars but to rewrite the whole SCENE because simply zooming would mean no actor is fully visible? Damn, that's really lame. And no you don't have to be a cinephile to care about that.

Leave the damn black bars. They are SUPPOSED TO BE THERE. Tell people to SHUT UP ABOUT IT. It is WORKING AS DESIGNED.

The real problem is providing the chopped up screwy alternative in the first place.

And I havn't heard anyone, even my mother, ask about black bars in a decade.
 
Well the black bars look like shit too, either way you can't win to be honest.

That's true, but people who want to watch in full screen always have the option of hitting the "zoom" button on their remotes, and they're the least likely to notice any quality hit. Then again, they're also the least likely to know about the zoom button. ;)

I'm actually pretty surprised that Netflix is doing this to movies, considering Blu-rays and anamorphic DVD's have been pretty consistently presenting movies in their original aspect ratio for about a decade or so now. You'd think consumers would be used to the "black bars" by now, at least for movies.

It would be nice if Netflix reconsidered this, but...when they charge $8/month and cable is generally $100/month at promotional rates (and not even a superset of Netflix's content), I think Netflix has bought themselves a little leeway.
 
Holy Shit!

I can't believe everyone in this thread. The fact that a terrible techie such as myself had the foresight to actually read the article and not just respond to the headline itself, and none of you way more intelligent people were able to call it out.

It's bad enough the author of this article didn't fact check his complete misunderstanding of language technology. But if he did a little bit more investigating, he would of uncovered to himself that Netflix only streams online what the movie studio publishers allow.

Therefore...

Everything you're watching online right now through Netflix, has nothing to do with Netflix. And not a thing they can do about it...

It's the content providers that are making these decisions. Nothing else to it.
 
Honestly with the fairly shitty bitrate on most netflix films anyway, this is a non-issue. If you want to watch it properly, watch it from a bluray/hddvd source.

Have been watching Netflix on 82" 1080p TV for a couple years now. Looks as good as a DVD for the most part. Not sure I would share your opinion of "shitty". There are noticeable drops in quality every once in a while when the connection has a snag, but it renegotiates back to the higher bit rate within several seconds.
 
Therefore...

Everything you're watching online right now through Netflix, has nothing to do with Netflix. And not a thing they can do about it...

It's the content providers that are making these decisions. Nothing else to it.

Ya, actually my biggest gripe with Netflix is content that is removed. My young son gets into various flavors or shows and after a while they disappear. Prime example was Gumby. They had both the TV series as well as the movie. Then one day the show disappeared. Then about a month later the movie disappeared. I called them and they said it was the result of various negotiations with studios.

They had a really bizarre movie called Zardoz that I wanted to show people and found it was removed. Then I wanted to rewatch an anime called Claymore, and it has since been removed.
 
I noticed I say neflix has crap video and sound quality all the time and anybody that uses it is a nut job. 1 cropping issues not on blurays. 2 no DTS HD uncompressed sound tracks. 3 horrible stream decoders compared to the real bluray . netflix looks like garbage. I go rent or buy blurays. . it is like CD sound vs a crap mp3 night and day.
 
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.
 
Oh, and I first noticed a cropped movie when I was watching Hoffa last year.
The scene when the 3 guys are sitting in the truck with the camera looking in through the windshield, Netlix only shows 2 guys, and I swore all 3 were visible when I watched it last time on DVD, and I was right, DVD was theatrical aspect and netflix was cropped and pan and scanned.
 
Since at the lowest price point Netflix caters to a broad audience where many users care only that their screen is filled perhaps they need a performance tier ... for an extra $5/mo (or something) you could get unaltered video and higher quality sound ... the only question is whether enough customers would want this service to make it desirable to the studios ... clearly they have higher quality offerings on Vudu (for new movies) but I haven't rented a higher aspect ration movie there to see if they do have the black bars or not ... but as others have noted, the content on Netflix (except for their newer exclusive episodic content) is exclusively at the whim of the studios (both in terms of quality and format)

For me, this is why I continue as a dual subscriber (both blu ray and streaming sub) with Netflix ... I watch mostly TV shows on the streaming (which are all 16:9 or 4:3) and my movie consumption is primarily through my disc subscription (blu rays for most titles) ... the problem on increasing streaming consumption and quality is that this is almost exclusively in the hands of the studios ... they control the content and in what format they feel they get the biggest bang for the buck ... the fixed monthly cost unlimited viewing model is not a model they like at all ... for older titles they will accommodate this since their sell through options are more limited ... for newer stuff they are still most interested in the purchase or rental models (not consumption on demand) ;)
 
Honestly with the fairly shitty bitrate on most netflix films anyway, this is a non-issue. If you want to watch it properly, watch it from a bluray/hddvd source.

When I subscribed to Netflix last time, I had a 1.5 mbps DSL connection and watching old TV shows looked okay to me. I'm pretty sure you're exaggerating the quality thing by a lot. I went out to a home theater guy's place one evening and I seriously couldn't see a huge difference in his stuff over watching a show on my netbook with headphones except that his sound was way too loud and hurt my ears.
 
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 a convenient service with a lot of variety imho is a fair deal. At least there is more options than cable or dish. ;)
 
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