Asking the obvious question: Is your DVD player set to show movies at 16:9?
Yeah, it is.
The next obvious question: Is your TV set to “Wide” rather than “Zoom”? I’ll assume that it is, in which case, rant away!
Incidentally I’ve added the movie to my own Netflix queue.
I have to move the aspect ratio around, depending on what I’m watching. It rarely automatically knows what it ought to be at, although it does know that video 1 is the DVD player which is “Zoom” (there is no “wide”, specifically - “zoom” is the one that makes movies look right on my TV. There’s “Zoom”, “Wide Zoom” which stretches things, “Full” which cuts off the top and bottom, and “Normal” which is side bars.) When I play DVDs of TV shows, however, I have to switch it to “Normal”, which is 4:3. The TV input won’t do anything but “Normal”, for some reason I keep meaning to read the manual to understand.
Oh, and some DVDs just arrange themselves appropriately - I assume they are true anamorphic?
OK. This is kinda complicated. Assuming 4:3 content, my widescreen TV has the following modes:
[ul]
[li]Normal - image is 4:3 with “pillarboxes” on the sides.[/li][li]Wide - entire image is evenly stretched out horizontally, filling the screen; nothing is cut off[/li][li]Panoramic - only the sides of the image are stretched out; the center is not stretched[/li][li]Zoom - image is zoomed in to fill the screen; this retains the proportions of the image, but the top and bottom are cut off[/li][/ul]
You’ll have to figure out what the equivalents are on your TV. Maybe there’s a manual somewhere online. Could you could post your make & model?
Now what happens with a widescreen DVD? Well, that depends on how you’ve got your DVD player set up and whether the DVD is true anamorphic. Let’s say I’ve got my player set to 4:3. In this case I’ll get letterboxing in Normal mode (4:3) regardless of whether the DVD is anamorphic or not. With the pillarboxes on the sides, my actual viewable image is a relatively small window sitting in the middle of the screen. Subtitles if present may be in the black letterbox below the image. I can set my TV to Zoom to expand the image and fill the screen. The top and bottom are cut off, but if there are no subtitles then all I’d lose would be the black letterboxing.
The magic happens if you have an anamorphic DVD and you set your DVD player to 16:9. An anamorphic DVD actually stores enough information to fill the entire screen top to bottom without (much) letterboxing. If you view this image in Normal mode, it will look tall and squished. To view the image in the correct proportions, I set my TV to Wide mode to stretch it out horizontally. Since there aren’t any letterboxes, subtitles should be displayed properly right on top of the image.
Some webpages to help you visualize this:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/anamorphic185demo.html
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/anamorphic235demo.html
See also these pages:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articles/anamorphic/page2.html
http://gregl.net/videophile/anamorphic.htm
Your “wide” is my “zoom”, I think. Basically, if it’s not a true anamorphic DVD, a widescreen format needs “zoom” and a 4:3 needs “normal”. The problem is when a non-anamorphic widescreen movie has subtitles in the letterbox bars, which I would normally be able to eliminate by tinkering with the aspect ratio. However, when I need to see the subtitles I’m stuck watching in a black box.
Let me ask: is your TV a Sony? Mine is, and I have the same settings you do. But, you’re not accurately listing what each setting does. Here’s how they work:
Normal: Displays a 4:3 picture in a box with grey bars on the left and right.
Full: Stretches the image horizontally to use the full width of the screen. This is the correct setting to use for anamorphic DVDs. With regular TV, it makes the image look horizontally “stretched” and everyone looks fat.
Zoom: magnifies the center of a 4:3 image, cutting off the top and bottom of the image to fill the width of the screen. This is the correct setting to use for non-anamorphic widescreen DVDs. With regular TV, the people look normal, but a large chunk of the image is completely cut off.
Wide Zoom: Fills the screen with a little trickery. The center of the image is normal, but the image is stretched more and more as it gets closer to the edges of the screen. A thin slice is cut from the top and bottom of the image to make everything fit. Because most of the action takes place in the center of the screen, the image doesn’t look as distorted as with “Full” mode, but you don’t get as much cut off as with “Zoom” mode. This is the setting I usually use for watching regular TV.
Now, here’s the thing with your situation: I’ve looked up the details for Rabbit-Proof Fence, and it says that the DVD is in fact anamorphic, with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio. Now, forgive me if I’m telling you something you already know, but, not all DVDs, even the anamorphic ones, will fill every inch of your 16:9 TV. Your TV’s aspect ratio is approximately 1.78:1, which you’ll note is not as wide as 2.35:1. Movies with an aspect ratio of up to 1.85:1 or so will fill every inch of your screen, but anything higher will require that black “spacers” be put at the top and bottom of the screen to display the movie properly and prevent distortion.
So, when watching a properly-formatted 2.35:1 anamorphic movie, there will be dark bars at the top and bottom of your TV screen, and that is perfectly normal. I’m guessing that you noticed the black bars and switched from “Full” (the proper setting on your TV for watching ALL anamorphic widescreen DVDs, even the 2.35:1 ones) to “Zoom” (which is only appropriate for non-anamorphic widescreen DVDs). This resulted in the image on the screen appearing vertically stretched, cutting off the black bars as well as the subtitles.
I hate to say it, but, if as you say your DVD player is set up properly to display on a 16:9 TV, it looks like the problem in this case is with you. You erroneously assumed that you were supposed to “Zoom” because you saw black bars on the top and bottom, but “Full” is the proper setting for watching Rabbit Proof Fence. The horizontal black bars are supposed to be there, because you’re watching a film with an aspect ratio that exceeds that of your TV. Notice that on “Full”, the image is not vertically distorted or “stretched” in appearance. Try watching again on “Full”, you’ll see what I mean.
Also, if your TV is a Sony, you can set a default mode for the display when the TV is receiving a 4:3 signal (standard TV). I have my default set to “Wide Zoom” because that seems easiest on the eyes to me. Look through the menus, I think it’s labeled “4:3 Default” or some such.
This mode is called “Panoramic” on my TV. I find the stretching at the sides distracting at best, nauseating at worst, especially when the camera pans around. Compared to other systems, my TV seems to have an especially bad algorithm for the stretching - it’s like peering through a fisheye lens.
I find the horizontal stretching in “Wide” or “Full” mode also distracting, so I tend watch 4:3 video in “Normal” pillarboxed mode. The black bars at the sides don’t distract me. In a dark room, you hardly even notice they’re there.
Yeah, I hate the Wide Zoom.
I wish I still had the DVD - I want to say I tried it in “Full” and it cut off the top, which would mean it’s not a true anamorphic DVD - usually when things aren’t working out well I check the other options. I believe it’s a Sony, yeah.
I’ve bumped it to the top of my Netflix queue. I’ll report back after I’ve watched it, sometime next week.
Where did they put the subtitles when it was being shown in the theatres? Across the back of the heads of the folks in the front row?
The movie came from Netflix today and I’ve just finished watching it. The movie is true anamorphic. However, the aspect ratio is in 2.35:1. Since widescreen aspect ratio is 16:9 or 1.78:1, you’ll still get letterboxing even if everything is properly set up. As Max Torque posted, the black bars are entirely normal.
Regarding subtitles, while some may be hard-coded onto the DVD image, these days they’re usually encoded as a separate video stream and overlaid on the original image by the DVD player. This allows the same set of subtitles to be used in both 4:3 and 16:9 modes. To display subtitles in a different language, the player simply uses a different subtitle track.
The problem is not with subtitles, but people who refuse to learn a language and rent the original.
I guess we’re all supposed to learn an obscure aboriginal language.