The Tumblr What Netflix Does is drawing attention to the company's practice of showing wider-screen movies - films shot in the 'Scope' formats, in the neighborhood of 2.39:1 instead of the standard widescreen ratio of 16:9.

Basically, as those comparisons from What Netflix Does illustrate, they've been cropping off the sides of 2.39:1 images to fit them into a standard 16:9 widescreen image. It is, at its essence, the same thing as "pan and scanning," but they're not telling you that they're doing it - and most viewers, without the obvious visual cue of black bars on the side of their TV, have no idea.

This may sound like nitpicking, but these are issues that matter for those who care about movies. The framing choices made by a director and cinematographer are important, and Milos Forman made a decision when he chose to show both Jim Carrey and Jerry Lawler. Quentin Tarantino wanted all of those people in that shot. Paul Thomas Anderson didn't want Daniel Day-Lewis and Kevin J. O'Connor falling off the side of the goddamn frame.

You don't go around chopping off the tops of paintings so they fit in the frames you've got lying around, and you don't go around slicing off the edges of movies so you don't have to deal with letterboxing. And if Netflix is going to insist on doing so, they should at least have the courtesy to tell us they're monkeying with their merchandise.