by canofhumdingers » Tue May 19, 2015 7:01 pm
Yeah I actually just re watched a season 2 xfiles episode on Netflix the other day and was surprised to see it was in widescreen HD. I did a bit more research based on that experience and this conversation. What I've found is that the show was always shot framed with a widescreen picture but intended to be matted to 4x3 for regular tv at the time. However it was scanned and edited on video and many of the fx shots or composites (or some of the aerial shots from airplanes or helicopters in the episode I watched for example) were either shot or finished on video and in a 4x3 ratio.
The end result is that most of the show looks awesome in and open-matte HD picture that fills modern widescreen tv, but the shots I mentioned such as a composite close up of a tv screen will take a drastic nose dive in picture quality and will also be cropped vertically in order to fill the screen. It's a bit of a mixed bag but overall a reasonable compromise I felt. And fortunately it only affects early seasons. Later seasons were framed, finished, and aired in widescreen from the get go. So while some shots like composites might still take a nose dive in PQ if they were finished on video, the aspect ratio issues won't exist.
What was this thread about again?