Turner Classic Movie (TCM) Picture Size Cropped

[#1]

Hi, I live on Vancouver Island, and have been watching TCM for the past 3 years.  Where I live TCM shows up as channel 35, and it is not HD.

For the past years I've noticed that movies that:

* movies that had aspect ratio 3x4 filled the screen vertically but not horizontally which was normal. 

* movies that had aspect ration 9x16 were cropped to the middle of the screen (because they were not HD).

Since April I've noticed that even movies that have aspect ratio 3x4 are cropped to the middle, meaning they no longer fill the screen vertically.

I've spent hours searching the internet, I have talked to shaw, I even called (but couldn't get through) to TCM itself.

I just want to know if anyone else is experiencing this issue, also if it will ever change back to the way it was, because like this, it is not really watchable.

Thanks in advance!

[michaelstein]

It's quite possible that Shaw is down converting the 1080i feed to SD

[shaw-tony]

Hey baba.baba,

Thank you for reaching out! Are you only noticing this with some TCM movies or are there other SD channels you've noticed this issue on? Depending on which TV equipment you have, you should be able to update the aspect ratio for your TV content. You should be able to complete that with the steps here. Let me know if that helps. 

Cheers,

Tony | Community Mod.

[#4]

I called Shaw yesterday - talked to someone in sales & someone in tech both of them told me that they didn't know of such downgrade.

The person in sales told me that I should contact Turner Classic Movie since they may have downgraded their feed.  I called & Emailed TCM but I am not expecting a response.

I wonder if there is a way for me to figure out what has happened.

[#5]

Tony, I appreciate the response.  I know how to change the aspect ratio on my TV and on the box.  That is not the problem.  

The problem is that the quality of the content has dropped. 

I will give you an example to demonstrate this.  On March 12 - 2019, I recorded the film "Maltese Falcon" on TCM.  Maltese Falcon was released in the early 1940s and has 3x4 aspect ratio.  When I play it back it covers the screen vertically and the image is sharp.

However, when I watch movies real-time on TCM they no longer cover the tv screen vertically.  I believe this started happening at the start of April.

This seems to indicate that the quality of the picture has dropped.  Could you please help me understand why it has dropped or if I can expect it to go back to what it was before?

Thanks in advance.

[shaw-tony]

 I tested on our TV sets here and do see what you mean by the video becoming a letterbox (black bars all around) instead of 3:4. I am not aware of any changes that may have caused this or if it will go back to what it was before. I will send this up to our video engineers to investigate and will note that it may be a broadcasting issue.

[#7]

Thank you very much Tony for following this up.  I really appreciate it!

Looking forward to your response.

[#8]

"TCM" isn't a real HD channel, it's just a copy of the main channel with better bandwidth - less compression artifacts, etc. But those films made when "HD was only a dream" are in fact "high definition" (higher than) in their native film form and a lot of them have telecines that can reproduce that (2K) it's just that TCM isn't showing HD material yet.

Whatever problem you are having with the picture size seems to be a problem with your cable service. I have Comcast and haven't encountered this issue.

[romany]

I have notice this too with Shaw Direct, just since April.

They are looking into the issue from what I’ve been told by Shaw Direct.

TCM HD has most of the movies in true HD as they have rescanned into HD from there film stock

Hopefully they get it sorted out soon.

[ensmain]

I am having this problem too. Good luck getting a satisfying outcome.