Wide Screen TVs and Wide Screen Movies

Cafe Society
1

I have now had an opportunity to see movies on a widescreen TV.

I could not find a way to have the movie take up the entire screen, however, or at least, as much of the screen as possible without cutting off some of the picture.

There were five display settings:

4:3
16:9
Panorama
Zoom 1
Zoom 2

4:3 displayed the movie “letterboxed” in the center of the screen, with black borders not just on the top and bottom but on the left and right as well. The setting basically just shows an old-fashioned TV picture in the center of the widescreen display. So the movie was shown using the right aspect ratio, but as a small rectangle in the center of the display rather than as a large rectangle taking up as much of the display as possible.

16:9 stretched the picture out on the left-right axis, but it seemed, not on the up-down axis. The quality of this display option seemed to vary from movie to movie, but in each casde, the picture seemed compressed on the up-down axis–even on the films where the DVD box label said the film was in 16:9

Panorama does some wierd thing where the middle of the picture is normal but the left and right edges are stretched out toward the left and right edges respectively, so this was a nonstarter. (And who would watch anything using this option, and why?)

Both zoom options zoomed in too far on one axis or the other, cutting off some of the picture.

Why oh why wouldn’t there have been a custom zoom option, letting me manually zoom the picture until one or both axes had been magnified to the edge of the screen? Is anything like that available on some widescreen TVs? Or do all widescreen TVs fail to provide optimal viewing options? Or was I probably missing something?

We just ended up watching everything in 4:3, which is fine since it shows the whole picture in the right proportions, but it seemed to render the widescreen display moot.

-Kris

2

16:9 is what you want. Could you describe the up-down squishing a little more, because that shouldn’t be happening with a 16:9 movie being shown on a 16:9 display.

3

From what you describe it sounds you like you were playing with the settings on the TV itself. Depending on the type of connection you have from the DVD player, you probably need to navigate the DVD player’s setup menu to output a proper widescreen image to the TV.

A digital connection (like HDMI) should work automatically, as it contains info about the resolution, but if you’re using component or S-Video and/or an older DVD player, you will have to tell the DVD player the output is not going to a standard 4:3 TV (very likely the default setting).

4

I’m guessing that the situation is as follows: you just bought a new widescreen TV, hooked it up to your old DVD player, and then viewed a widescreen DVD, but it didn’t look the way it was supposed to.

With those assumptions in place, the most likely suspect is the DVD player. In order to display anamorphic DVD movies at their beautiful best, you need to change a setting in the DVD player’s menus to tell it that you’ve hooked it up to a 16:9 TV. Go into the DVD player’s setup menu and search for an option along the lines of “TV Type”. Options will be something like “4:3 Letterbox”, “4:3 Pan & Scan”, and “16:9”. Change that setting to “16:9”, and the player will output the image to the screen in the correct format.

Incidentally, I hope you’ve hooked up the DVD player to the new TV using either an HDMI cable or the red/green/blue component video connections. Those give you a much better picture than the old yellow composite video cables or even an S-video connection.

5

Are you talking about watching a Standard Definition signal? If so, one of the zoom options should be pretty close to cropping both the vertical and horizontal bars (assuming the movie is ~1.85:1, if it’s ~2.35:1 you’ll still have horizontal bars).

If you’re watching a DVD, you may need to go into the options menu on the DVD player and tell it you are using a widescreen display. Then 16:9 should work perfectly.

[edit] Or, just follow Max Torque’s advice.
[edit again] Or robardin’s for that matter.

6

Sorry, I don’t know what kind of connection was being used or anything, because it wasn’t my TV. (It was my wife’s uncle’s new TV at his new house that we stayed at for a few days.)

The 16:9 was universally agreed by those in attendance to be compressed on the up-down axis even when watching 16:9 movies. I was indeed messing with TV settings and not DVD Player settings. Maybe it was in fact the DVD player I needed to mess around with.

Better luck to me next time, I guess!

-FrL-

7

Yep, leave them at 16:9. Remember though, there are several different ratios that movies are filmed in. 4:3 movies will fill up the screen from top to bottom, but leave black bars on the side. 16:9 movies will fill up the entire screen. 2.35:1 or 2.40:1 movies will fill the screen from side to side, but leave black bars on the top and bottom. TVs are made for TV shows. In the past, they were 4:3, so that was the shape of a TV. Now, they are all changing to 16:9, so that’s what TVs are becoming. Movies are a compromise on a TV, unless it happens to be filmed in the ratio that a TV uses. People that must view everything in the Original Aspect Ratio (OAR) can buy projectors with anamorphic lenses and motorized curtains that move in to mask the black bars on the screen like a movie theater does. Also, like was mentioned above, most people who get HDTVs haven’t used them to their full potential because they are still using SD cables or sources.

8

Well, it’s not so much “compressed” as “not expanded.” I know, to-MAY-to to-MAH-to. I shall explain.

Almost without exception, any widescreen DVD you encounter these days will be “anamorphic”. You know how on the back it’ll say, “Enhanced for widescreen TVs”? That means it’s anamorphic. Putting it simply, it’s a way to get the best video on a widescreen TV, but still show an acceptable picture on a standard 4:3 TV.

In order to accomplish this effect, they basically do some voodoo (but standardized voodoo) in the DVD player. When the player is set to show a 4:3 picture and you play an anamorphic widescreen DVD, the player essentially strips out about every fifth horizontal line before putting the image on the screen. This makes the picture look normal, rather than “stretched vertically” or “compressed horizontally”, by vertically shortening it, and the effect is normally pretty well invisible.

When the DVD player is set to “16:9” and hooked up to a widescreen TV, on the other hand, the player will display all of the available horizontal lines. This gives you a superior picture, with more lines of resolution than you get on your 4:3 set. The TV set should be set to “16:9” as well, which will fill the screen with a non-distorted, full-resolution picture (leaving aside the issue of a higher theatrical aspect ratio, like 2.35:1, which will still have black bars on top, but they’ll be greatly reduced by configuring everything properly). So, in your situation, the image looked “squished” on the vertical axis because the DVD player was improperly set and was still removing lines from the image, reducing the picture’s height. Changing the menu setting will make everything look tons better.

That’s the quick and dirty explanation, near as I can type it. For loads more info and some visual aids, here’s an old but informative article from The Digital Bits.

9

Thanks for the information, I was glad to learn it, but I must say, it sure still sounds like what I saw was “compressed” as opposed to “not expanded.” :stuck_out_tongue: For as you describe it, what I saw was an image with about a fifth of the lines removed. That’s compression, not a simple failure to expand. Idnit?

In other words, if I’m reading you correctly, I’d say you have two possibilities: A compressed picture or a non-compressed picture. I can’t see room for a “nonexpanded” category amongst the ones you discussed.

Hey it’s nitpicking but you started it! :wink:

-FrL-

10

My DVD player has 16:9 and 16:9 wide. What is the difference?