The Wire is in HD and Widescreen on Amazon Prime Streaming

That is awesome!

My wife and I were just talking about going back and binge watching it.

 

It's interesting that it's widescreen on Amazon and 4:3 on HBO GO.

 

Advertisements

This 16:9/HD version aired on DirecTV's Channel 101/Audience Network a couple years ago, so Amazon wasn't responsible for it -- they must have just gotten their hands on the same "remastered" version that DirecTV used.

 

The show was probably shot on widescreen film, but framed for 4:3. So, there could be stuff that you see on the sides that you weren't meant to see.

Buffy was like this. I remember a scene where you could see an arm shaking this vine that the actors where trying to get thru. You couldn't see that arm in the 4:3 version because it was outside of the frame.

I've never seen The Wire, but have always meant to. Maybe I'll finally break down and watch it.

 

As someone who was just about to start watching the show for the first time, I'm now confused about which version I should stream. I did a quick Google search, and I came up with this article that gives some insight into the situation:

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/griffin_nick/hbo_the_wire.php

It appears that the show was indeed framed for 16x9, but it was only ever intended to be shown in 4x3.

 

It's not in HD, whatever the aspect ratio.

 

It could be, if they have the original film. Which I assume they do...

 

While if that were the case it could be, it's not, unless Amazon made a mistake labeling the show. If it were HD, there would be an HD banner across the bottom of the show icon.

And I couldn't find any source, legal or not, that had HD digital copies of the show. But I don't have the most obvious source, HBO Go, so I don't know if they are or not.

 

Some interesting stuff right at the end of this article about HD and aspect ratios from the directory of photography. Not conclusive about whether there could be a real HD version or not but does confirm that the first 3 season were shot in 16:9 and then reframed to 4:3 for broadcast.

http://library.creativecow.net/articles/griffin_nick/hbo_the_wire.php

 

There is no doubt whatsoever that there COULD be an HD version (the series was shot on film; film is higher def than HD); the only question is whether they did the work of going back to the film and rescanning it to HD.

Somebody upthread says they saw an HD version of it. That could have been upconverted from the SD version, or it could be true HD scanned from the original film.

 

Articles in this thread seem to indicate that they did some upconverting and it looks better than a typical consumer-TV-driven upconvert.

 

All I'm saying is "The Wire" streaming from Amazon is not HD.

 

It's not. I just watched the first episode last night. It did look good, though. It will be weird if it suddenly switches to 4:3 for the last two seasons.

 

They stopped framing for 16x9 after the first three seasons once they decided to keep the show 4x3 for the entire run. They framed the initial seasons to future proof just in case. The producers intention is for the show to be in 4x3.

 

Fascinating article. Thanks for posting.

 

So, GoPackGo, you got an image credit in the Verge today: http://www.theverge.com/2014/9/2/6096833/hbo-the-wire-hd-marathon