movie at FOX cut off sides on TV

So the simpsons movie shows up a couple days ago, and the FOX bastards centercut it! Fox was doing better by no longer centercutting the regular episodes, but then they do this to the movie, which I mistook at first as a regular episode. Centercut is a mindless automated cutting off the sides of the movie or show, and is far worse than Pan and Scan ever was. The regular episodes are in 1.77 ratio for the last few years and are now being shown fully, but for years were centercut to 1.33; the movie shown a couple days ago is supposed to be 2.35, but was centercut to 1.77.

Why would they waste time and money doing the episodes in widescreen format when Fox wasn't airing them that way?

My DVD of The Simpsons Movie was a gift, and is not the widescreen version. Perhaps they simply showed the same version on TV.

• Trevor

On Tue, 26 Apr 2011 15:57:18 -0600, Trevor wrote:

I don't think the 16x9 episodes started until the premiere of S20, but they were always shown widescreen _if_ your Fox affiliate carried them that way. Lots of the SD stations were centercutting instead of letterboxing for a while, but it varied from station to station.

Cropping the movie from 2.35 to 1.78 isn't really surprising, though. Even HBO has a nasty habit of doing this to 2.35 movies.

-lugnut

I think the OP was referring only to the standard-definition feed; the HD broadcasts were in widescreen. But there are cases of shows which were filmed in widescreen with an eye to future DVD or HD uses even when the original broadcasts were entirely in the traditional aspect ratio.