The World Cinema HD airing of THE WEIRD LOVEMAKERS, which I mentioned yesterday, came off with some interesting variations. Dish Network listed the film on their menu under this highly exploitative title, but all of World Cinema HD's on-air promos gave the title in Japanese -- KYONETSU NO KISETSU -- in a bid to make it sound more respectable, I suppose. When the film began and its title appeared onscreen, it was subtitled as "THE WARPED ONES." It was preceded by a Janus Films logo, so it seems there is every chance that a Criterion DVD may someday be in the offing. (Ah, but under which title?)
Follow-up to my Dish Network woes: I was able to record an acceptable (1.78:1) copy of THE WEIRD LOVEMAKERS this evening because it was shown in 2.35:1. It's still cropped, but a fast zoom-through didn't show any cropped subtitles or horribly damaged compositions. But most of what is being shown on Dish's HD channels is 1.78 or 1.85:1 to begin with, which my DVD-Recorder is receiving as a cropped 1.33:1 picture.
Donna and I have been troubleshooting today, and it seems that the real problem is inherent in my Panasonic DVD-Recorder, which -- like any other DVD-R currently on the market, that I know of -- is equipped to record MPEG-2 signals, not MPEG-4. It records MPEG-4, but it can't receive a full-blown widescreen signal; it crops the picture. If I use my TV controls to widen the picture, it only widens the cropped portion of the picture. My recorder also can't differentiate between an MPEG-4 picture that is squeezed or letterboxed or zoomed-in; it reads all of this incoming source as the same thing.
This means that -- if you have the same DVD-Recorder as me (a Panasonic DMR-E85H) -- this could well become your problem too, should you upgrade to MPEG-4. These MPEG-4 receivers are the new kid on the block, HD-wise, but it seems they're incompatible with current DVD-R technology, at least as I know it. Now I'm wondering if Radio Shack carries some kind of conduit that can dumb-down MPEG-4 to MPEG-2 purely for recording purposes. What are the chances that such a thing exists?
