Question Re: Pride and Prejudice Special Addition

My wife loved this series - the BBC television one that is - and so she bought the 2 disk Special Edition (A&E).

The box states the following:

"Completely digitally remastered....FIRST EVER ANAMORPHIC WIDESCREEN (2:35:1) Presentation.

Well, it's not 2:35:1. It fills the entirety of my 16:9 HP 65" set so it appears it is likely 1:85:1 or a similar format. In addition if it has been digitally remastered it could have fooled me. Poor picture quality with washed out colors. My main problem appears to be the false advertisement regarding picture format.

Hasn't anyone purchased this version and can verify the false indication of format?

If you're referring to the 1995 British television version with Colin Firth, it's odd that it would have been filmed in 2.35:1, unless it was matted and shown that way theatrically somewhere. More likely, it was filmed at 1.33:1 or 1.66:1 and then matted for 1.78:1 widescreen television showing.

Anyway, it's not the first time that the screen dimensions given on a keep case have been wrong. Chalk it up to human error; I'm sure it wasn't intentional. Studios don't purposely go out of their way to annoy their customers.

As far as "digitally remastered" is concerned, that phrase can mean anything. All film is scanned digitally before it is transferred to DVD (which is also a digital process). Does that qualify it as "digitally remastered"? We'd like to think "remastered" means "restored" or carefully color corrected, but apparently the keep case doesn't say that. Maybe what you're seeing is exactly what was on the original print. In eleven years, prints fade.

John

John thanks for that.

I should have noted that I played it on my Toshiba HD- A1 player.

Now I took it to my daughter's sd progressive scan player and her 23" LCD 1080i TV. And there it was, in 2:35:1 format but it appears it has been stretched to fill that ratio (the people looked stretched). When I zoomed once then it oooked like the proper proportions and filled the screen like my HP. Go figure.

your daughter's dvd player is probably not set correctly (or she may need to change the tv's viewing mode for different programs). the bbc "pride and prejudice" series with colin firth has a 1.78:1/1.85:1 ratio. it should not appear as a 2.35:1 video, and there should not be any distortions.

Ok thanks for that. It definitely looked stretched and disproportionate in that mode.