Parity Violation

Just a tip to the fine folks at HBO - just because HD signals are in a widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio doesn’t let you off the hook from using letterbox if the movie was, in fact, shot in a wider aspect ratio than that.

I just caught the last bit of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, and while it looks lovely in HD, I see that now that the credits are rolling and all that’s to see is white text on a black background, they’ve chosen to letterbox. So, for the entire movie I’ve been missing some fraction of the movie as HBO decided to crop the movie to conform to my television.

HBO, trust me, your HD-buying customers probably are the same sort that want to see the movie in the same aspect ratio as it was shot and shown in theaters and on DVD, not cropped.

Some googling shows that I’m not the only one who feels this way. That home theater blog link also includes some illustrative screen caps.

Some might point out that the standard-def HBO channels don’t bother to letterbox either. One reason I’d say these “premium” stations are kind of weak. Even AMC and SciFi and plenty of other stations have the sense to show movies in letterbox now and then.

For the record, I have HBO (and Showtime) because of some Comcastic promotion for a year - soon they’ll either cost me an arm and a leg or I’ll have to drop them.

Mainly, the cost of the plans from AT&T. At first I was wowed with the new, lower, prices - $299 for a 16GB compared to the $499 I paid just a few months ago. But, AT&T has released some details, I refer specifically to this interview with AT&T mobility chief:

The data plans are different on the 3G iPhone vs. the 2G iPhone. Consumers will pay $30 a month every month, while enterprises will pay $45 a month. This is what you pay us on other PDA devices such as BlackBerry Curve. The SMS messages are not bundled anymore, and you pay for what you want. Again, the prices are based on what you buy.

The data part, I expected. iPhone users have voracious appetites for data and AT&T wants people to pay more for faster speeds, so I get that. But what’s up with this business about unbundling SMS? Does this mean that an iPhone user will have to pay another $5 a month just to get 200 text messages? Or perhaps to pay per SMS at fees higher than receiving data from space? Phooey on that.

I’m thinking I’ll be keeping my current iPhone until Apple opens up to other carriers, which hopefully will be the case by the time my contract is up in February 2010. (Don’t get me started about this “five year” exclusivity with AT&T - no one has confirmed that, it’s based one USA Today story which doesn’t cite anyone. Apple and AT&T have only said “multiyear”)

Now, I look forward to July so I can check out the app store. That should be quite awesome.