OK - hold back those rotten tomatoes you're about to throw at me. I have a friend who is an absolute ABBA fanatic, and her only copy of this admittedly odd cultural artifact of the '70s was a broadcast from VH-1 from years ago with commercials and panned & scanned, obviously. Well, she's a DirecTV subscriber, and so does not get INHD or INHD2 and so I DVR'ed a broadcast of the film for her to replace her poor old worn out VHS thinking it would at least be presented 2.35:1 now. Check this out for pure schizophrenic weirdness when it comes to framing during their broadcast:

- Pre-credits sequence presented 2.35:1, picture area pillarboxed to 1.85:1 - this is absolutely correct - because just prior to the opening credits it opens outwards to fill a 2.35:1 screen (in the same way that the brainscan sequences were supposed to be presented in BRAINSTORM (1983), but have not been since it's first WS LD release). I was really shocked that they actually got this right.

- Credits sequence - full 2.35:1 - and it does indeed fill the entire frame - things looked good for my friend here

- The instant the credits sequenced finished - cropped to 1.78:1 (I was in fast forward from here on until)

- End credits to finish - full 2.35:1

She's still glad that she'll be able to replace her mono P&S version (with commercials) with a uninterrupted, somehwat letterboxed copy with a new 5.1 mix (downmixed to Dolby Surround for her tape) from the original 4.0 mag tracks. But I was really annoyed by the presentation. It smacked of nothing other than a half-assed (sorry for the language, Todd, but it's justified here I believe) placation to owners of 16:9 sets who 'bought the sets so they wouldn't have to see those black bars'. I fired off an email to INHD and got this response from a CSR within a few days:

> Thank you for your note.
>
> Generally we do show movies in a 16:9 format. Our opinion is that this is better > than a 4:3 format. Rarely we do show movies OAR, but not often.
>
> Thanks for your interest in INHD!

That answer really troubled me in that not only did it confirm to me that they seem to be playing to the desire for 16:9 set owners to have the picture fill the screen with no letterboxing, but seems to also imply that any content of an aspect ratio less wide than 1.78:1 will be cropped. They have two channels (INHD and INHD2). They both play the same programming, just on different days and times - you would think that one could offer OAR broadcasts while the other appealed to the masses.

My rant though - I don't really care about this movie in particular, but this policy is really disturbing to me, consistent as it may be with the prevailing trends. Does anyone have any idea what the job title of a person at a network that would be responsible for making these deciisions would be so that I may ask for a paper mail address to write to said individual to address my concerns (and possibly petition)? I know cropping everything to 1.78:1 seems to be the way things are going, but I want to at least make my voice heard - especially since the INHD networks seem to be playing alot of titles that are not on home video or any of the other premium channels).