"The Ten Commandments"... looked like bad VHS on ABC-HD
 

When I saw they were showing this tonight I thought it might be fun to watch since it's been a long time. But when I went to the ABC-HD channel I was surprised to see that they were presenting it in really poor quality pillarboxed 4:3. According to IMDB it was originally released as 1.85:1, then later re-released as 2.20:1. http://imdb.com/title/tt0049833/technical

What a disappointment! This makes me think that wide adoption of HD may be further off than I had thought....

(EDIT) Hmm... as an afterthought... perhaps it was just the local (Philadelphia) outlet that was showing the movie and not the network?

Unfortunately, no. My local ABC affiliate has had commercials for weeks about it- I'm dissapointed to hear that it's not using 16x9, and indeed, that the quality is so poor.

Well then, "rasberries" to ABC for such a poor job!

Biggger raspberries for that even worse remake.

Well, thank goodness. I thought I was being overly critical when I could only take the first 10 minutes of the cheezy acting before deleting both parts off my TiVo. That and the bad video quality made for a very disappointing remake.

My neighbor and his family watched the whole thing on their new widescreen TV. Not only was it mangled and cropped for 4:3 but then their TV re-stretched back to 16:9. Talk about crashing consumer standards. The humanity, the humanity ...

Actually that's interesting... if I watch regular analog channels, or SD digital channels then I can choose the screen format (full, zoom, stretch, etc), but if I watch an HD broadcast then none of those options are available, you have to watch it in 16:9 mode. So in the case of that program I had 4:3 pillarboxed inside the 16:9 frame.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's not connected properly. But I'm diplomatically not saying anything about it, until I can pull my neighbor aside privately.

You know, the "Ten Commandments" was shot on VistaVision... 35mm 8 perf (just like 35mm still camera film frame size) moving sideways through the camera. Amazing sharpness, closer to 65mm in image area but cheaper to shoot. So, it's a great pity that more care isn't given in the transfer to HD.

About ten years ago a local theatre showed a print of it over the Easter weekend... it was terrific, so I know better can be done with it.

I have fond memories of that movie on TV when I was young... I think it was the first thing I saw on -gasp- COLOR TV... also gave me my interest in visual effects...

Regards,

Jim Arthurs

Amateurism? Or were they too cheap to give it the necessary attention?

How do you like the quality of this "restored" version? :-)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=CJBsyePY8...20commandments

The last time I caught The Ten Commandments on network "HD" television (don't remember which network it was) it was aired in 4:3. I didn't even know it had been originally shot in widescreen. At least the network didn't air it pillerboxed, which meant I could watch it fullscreen on our 4:3 HD CRT.

And I can't believe someone would even contemplate remaking The Ten Commandments. There are some movies that just can't be redone.