Mr. Hildebrand and Mr. Sapan,
I spent a long time on the phone last night with one of your representatives trying to find out about the service that Voom offers. It was the second time I had called within 20 minutes. The first time I called, the woman directed me to your website to answer questions that required an actual person to answer, and also insisted that your service was owned by Time Warner. I pointed out that that was a little odd, I already had Time Warner HD, and why would they compete with themselves? She said your company was an outsourcing of Time Warner's service, an attempt to broaden their horizons through offering satellite service. The second person I spoke to, a Mr. Brian Beyers, was extremely helpful and nice, and did his best to answer my questions, especially as the conversation went on for a little over an hour. One thing that he was unable to make clear, and I do not blame him for this, as I don't imagine this is part of his training, was whether you were showing all your HD movies in the aspect ratio of 1.78. From what I was able to gather from Brian's description, you were showing both War of the Worlds (proper aspect ratio 1.37) and Blood Alley (proper aspect ratio 2.55) in 1.78, thereby destroying the image as it was supposed to appear.
You may believe that customers will not be able to tell the difference if, in the case of War of the Worlds, some heads are cropped off, or in the case of Blood Alley, some people are cropped off the side of the image, but by going through this process and ruining the image and pretending it is normal, you are insulting the intelligence of those informed viewers and pandering and condescending to those viewers who have yet to understand how aspect ratios are supposed to work, as well as corrupting the intention of the filmmaker. If the film was shot in 1.33, and you would like to show it on one of your HD networks, please windowbox the image, as that is how it is supposed to be seen. If the film was shot in 2.35 or 2.55, please show it in that ratio. If people don't like the bars because they don't understand their purpose, your box has the option to zoom in, and they can see the film that way. But don't destroy the image before we can make up our own minds. Since what are you trying to do, is take us away from the larger conglomerates (though I am aware you are part of one) by giving us options and choices, you should do the same with the programming itself. Do not make the decision for us. Your goal should be to get me to put down my DVD in the correct ratio, and watch your vastly improved HD image.
If you continue to show all movies in 1.78, you would be forcing the informed viewer to settle, thereby lowering their expectations. Your goal should be to exceed expectations, never promise more than you can deliver, lest the customer be disappointed. The main reason I did not subscribe to your service last night, was because of this destruction of the films. I refuse to have to compromise, and I will stay with my current provider until these issues are either worked out by you, or another, more attractive offer is made.
And since smaller businesses rely on word of mouth, I will be forced to tell friends not to choose your service for this reason.