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[Speedball]

Our DVD collection of 100 or so are mostly widescreen version with only a few fullscreen. Our old 27" Sony flatscreet CRT shows black bars at top and bottom with the widescreen version. We thought about getting a new TV.....maybe something in the 37" - 50" range.

Will the widescreen movies being shown on a new TV 37" - 50" fill out the screen completely on all sides with the widescreen version and/or fullscreen?

Thank you.

..........forgot to finish the subject line.

[J.4knee]

OK if you get a wide screen 16:9 aspect ration TV you will still get some minimal letter boxing but it is much more livable and the larger image makes watching them enjoyable again. Most sets do have some adjustment to minimize the letter boxing even further so IMO getting a wide screen TV Is the way to go I would not go under 50. I would recommend one of the new DLP TVs they have an exceptional picture without the budget breaking cost of a Plasma or LCD flat screen sets.

EDIT: I have a 52-inch Mitsubishi DLP and love it. It is HDTV ready, and the picture and clarity are superb and as I said earlier it was not a budget breaker. I would highly recommend the Mitsubishi DLP's or any of the DLP's since TI makes the chip itself.

[dtel]

I'm not sure about all but the toshiba we have has a button on the remote that has 5 different settings to adjust the size of the picture to remove the bars from any format. Sometimes we just use it to remove the captions from channels like fox news. I don't know if this is standard or not, but was one of the things i liked about this tv.

[dtel]

Forgot something.

This toshiba is 16:9 and one of those adjustments changes it to 4:3 normal tv ,and after you see the 16:9 for a short time the 4:3 looks very strange.

Edit: their is still some CRT,s around if you want to go cheaper,still very good picture.

[atomicskiier01]

Widescreen DVDs are usually released in the aspect ratio that the director shot them in (NEVER 16x9). The 16x9 is a compromise made by some TV big shots when the TV's started coming out. Some DVDs say "Enhanced for 16x9 TV's". Those are the ones that you are looking for. They will fill the screen with no distortion (although I think that very small portions of the original shot may be cut off, but not enough to ever notice). Most widescreen DVD's will still have small black bars on the top and bottom, and your TV or DVD player will usually allow you to stretch the image to fit the screen. I guess this is OK if you are obsessed with getting rid of the black bars, but the image will be distorted (either stretched making the people look funny, or zoomed cutting off parts of the screen). Either way, as the others have said, a widescreen TV improves watching widescreen DVDs a TON! I would suggest a Samsung DLP or a Sony Wega LCD Projection. Good luck!

[big c]

It actually depends on the aspect ratio of the dvd.

Anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 will fill the whole screen.

Widescreen letterbox 2.35:1 (preserves the original theatrical version)you will get black bars top and bottom.

And regular 4.3 you will get side bars.

But with the new tv you should have aspect ratio control and you can fill the whole screen.

[toddvj]

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On 8/12/2005 9:30:20 PM atomicskiier01 wrote:

Some DVDs say "Enhanced for 16x9 TV's". Those are the ones that you are looking for. They will fill the screen with no distortion...

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That's not quite right. If the covers say "Enhanced for Widescreen TV's" that just means the disc is anamorphic. It has nothing to do with the Aspect Ratio.

And even if that did mean that the movie was 1.85:1, why would that be the ones that you are looking for. There are relatively few 1.85:1 compared with 2.35:1 DVDs out there. You'd be missing out on a lot of good stuff if you try to exclusively watch 1.85:1.

[toddvj]

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On 8/12/2005 9:33:39 PM big c wrote:

It actually depends on the aspect ratio of the dvd.

Anamorphic widescreen 1.85:1 will fill the whole screen.

Widescreen letterbox 2.35:1 (preserves the original theatrical version)you will get black bars top and bottom.

And regular 4.3 you will get side bars.

But with the new tv you should have aspect ratio control and you can fill the whole screen.

----------------

That's not quite right either. There are a Whole Bunch of Anamorphic 2.35:1 aspect ratio DVDs. The term letterbox doesn't mean 2.35:1 any more than anamorphic means 1.85:1.

Also, there are plenty of 1.85:1 DVDs which "preserve the original theatrical version." Believe it or not, some Directors prefer to use the 1.85:1 aspect ratio. Spielberg is one that comes to mind.

Also, there are many 2.35:1 Aspect Ratio DVDs that were not originally 2.35:1 in their theatrical release. Some are shown in the theater as 2.37:1, 2.39:1, 2.40:1, etc. There is no standard in the film industry, it's all up to the director, as it should be.

Lastly, maybe you CAN stretch the picture to fill the screen, but that doesn't mean you should. Might as well stick to your 4:3 TV, and only rent Fullscreen movies, if you are just going to butcher the movie anyway.

[sunburnwilly]

Speedball , if they say enhanced for 16x9 they will be full screen ; on a typical widescreen TV . Other than that some will and some won't . But on a 42" + screen you'll be happy !

[Speedball]

Hey thanks guys!

Letter boxing? I've heard that before somewhere. The fullest picture without distorting is what I'm most interested in and if it still has letter boxing then I guess thats OK.

The Aspect ratio control sounds interesting just like the remote resizing adjustment thing.

The largest CRT we have found is 34" and that wouldnt be much of a jump over our 27". Why in the heck dont they make a 42" CRT, guess it would be too big and heavy for some people.

I dont think we ran into a DLP yet, need to keep an eye out for that one. We were looking at Plasma and LCD but they are mighty pricey for now, maybe the price will come down on them just like VCR's and DVD players.

Our viewing room has a lot of uncontrollable light and the sitting distance is about 7' to 9' and whatever we end up with I am totally looking forward to seeing more detail. Giving up a "little" size to get more detail is sort of what I'm leaning towards.

.............Big screen...slobber...slobber.

[J.4knee]

Letter boxing is the term for those annoying bars we all hate on the standard 4:3 aspect sets when a wide screen image is displayed.

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IMO DLPs are the best option when you consider cost and image quality.

No doubt eth pricier LCD and Plasma give the best image quality but the DLP is so close at a fraction of the cost it just is the logical choice unless your budget can support the more expensive options. Places like Tweeter, Good Guys, Circuit City, Best Buy .....all sell the DLP sets, Sears even has them.

[atomicskiier01]

I was just saying that he should look for the "Enhanced for 16x9 TVs" if he really wanted to fill the whole screen w/o distortion or zooming. I have about 225 DVDs, and only a handful of them fill the screen. I thought that I knew everything about these aspect ratios, but now I am learning more.

[Speedball]

It is crazy how much there is to learn about this stuff, like what has been mentioned above. The average joe blow consumer who doesnt visit forums like this must really be lost.

[dtel]

Speedball i was talking about crt projection. They still should have some around very good picture also our room has 4 windows 36" wide and one window 72" wide and the tv is plenty bright enough,had to adjust the controls with the sound&vision dvd when we got it because before adjusting it hurt your eyes it was so bright. Toshiba model 65h84 65" 16:9 hd for under 2k, also people complain about the size/depth it is the same depth as the 32" it replaced 27" deep but 5' wide and 240 lbs.

As far as detail we sit 10' to 11' away and it is a much better picture even with basic cable than the 10 month old jvc or rca 32" tube we have.

http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/televisions/product.asp?model=65h84

Just trying to help i went through the same thing 6 months ago. Good luck you will not be sorry, get the biggest you can fit . IMHO.

[WMcD]

I'll give some of my knowledge on this. Then others should come in and amplify and correct.

Early in history, moving pictures were made with cameras and projectors which use a 3:4 ratio of the image on the film. The lenses did not distort anything. The lenses looked at that ratio and the screen had that aspect ratio.

When TV got standardized in the 1940's or so, they used the same aspect ratio. It made sense because motion picture technology was the medium of storage. No video tape back then.

The wide screen movie theory came along and the image on the screen in theaters was to be 9:16 in ratio or even wider. Let me stick to 9:16 for purposes of discussion. Some are very much wider.

So there was a technical issue in getting this to work for movies alone. Do we put down a 9:16 ratio image on the film? Gee, that would require changing a lot of the mechanisms. Hollywood had a ton of money invested in hardware.

Nope. What they did was to cook up special lenses to put on the camera, and the projector. A far smaller investment. The camera lense would look at 9:16 image field and squeeze it into a 3:4 image on the film stock. Then at the movie house there was a reverse process where the 3:4 image on the film would be expanded to 9:16.

Panavision was a company making the lenses. You see some of this in the Panavision logo which has a 3:4 rectangle inside a 9:16 rectangle.

The image on the film is called anamorphic. Every actor is tall and skinny on the film. In an optical sense, they were encoding and decoding at either end while maintaining usual equipment in between.

You have probably noticed this on broadcast TV of widescreen movies in the old days. In those days it was the practice to only show the center of the widescreen movie. What I'm talking about only showed up during credits.

The actor's, etc. names went out the edges of the screen. They didn't want to cut that off. So if there were images in the movie during credits, the actors were tall and skinny, as were the letters. Once the credits were finished, the actors gained weight.

Also, we see pictures of directors peering though a camera like device a the scene they are about to shoot. It may be that it was so they could see a wide screen image as would appear. Others just set up a box with their fingers as a frame.

Eventually we got to home video and wide screeen movies. All of this technology in the VHS - Betamax was stuck at 3:4 ratio of storage and transmission. Generally the best of TV transmission was 620 x 480 pixels. The home recording media could not meet this, two inch video tape could. This evenually found itself into the VGA standard for computers.

But, importantly, the TV screen at home was stuck. Very important concept, and one which has changed. At the movie theater, a different lense could be put on the projector. You can't do that to even the best TV at home.

In putting down movies on tape there were only two options. On is to show only the center portion, called pan and scan. If there was something interesting going on at the edges of the wide image, the recording tech would have to pan and scan across to fit interesting stuff in a 3:4 image.

The other was to honor the 9:16 ratio of the intended image. You let it fill the display from side to side. But the image is not tall enough. So you put in black bars at the top and bottom. You see this on normal analog cable transmission on normal TVs. At least you see the entire image. The downside is that all the scanning lines are not used.

Hollywood adopted the term "letter boxing" for these black lines. I think of letter boxes as what is out at the end of the driveway. What they really meant was "letter slot" which is a very wide hole in the door of an apartment or home.

Again, it works to show the whole image intended. Still, we're throwing away a lot of the horizontal scan lines. so it is moving away from "high definition."

Let me explain that a bit more. Assume the Muppets are in a 9:16 in the original image on a pan and scan. He gets all 480 vertical lines of height, we don't see all of Ms. Piggy and Kirmit off to the flanks unless there is a a pan and scan.

We solve that by (um) letter boxing. Now we see the whole crew by widening the image to the sides. Yet now Big Bird in height is only being shown in 300 or so lines. The rest of the video lines are the black bars.

Note again, this means that letter boxing leads to less resolution. We have 300 lines of Big Bird rather than 480. He fits there, but is more fuzzy.

- - -

What to do?

To some extent, we are limited by the fact that DVDs follow the old NTSC standard which is esentally a VGA resolution of 640 X 480 pixels.

One thing is to realize that the modern wide screen TVs can do exactly the same as the decoding Panavision lenses at movie theaters. That will work if, and only if, the information on the DVD is an anamophic image squeezed into the 3:4 of the DVD standard. Note here all the 480 lines are present.

But in other cases, either from the DVD or of the air, the wide screen image is letter boxed with black bars. Keep in mind this is 620 x 480 with much of the info as black, nothing.

What the modern computer based widescreen TV can do is to ignore the black bars and expand the image to fill the 9:16 screen. It looks nice but can't make up for the lack of information.

There are some other options when a 9:16 screen has to show a 3:4 image. One is to just stretch things overall. The other is just just stretch the edges.

Most of these options can be controlled from the remote.

Best,

Gil

[Malcolm]

As previously stated, the TV screen 4:3 (1.33:1) ratio is the result of the adoption of the 35 mm format commonly used for movies long before TV existed. The TV industry adopted this for obvious reasons.

Wide screen movies using anamorphic and spherical lenses, and different film sizes, have been made at least since the early 1930's. But for whatever reason, the American movie moguls decided to stick pretty much with the 4:3 ratio, with a few exceptions, until "This is Cinerama" was released in the Cinerama format in 1952. People liked it and that got the moguls' attention. After that, wide-screen took off big, at least partly in response to the threat of TV which was starting to eat into theater revenues. Twentieth Century Fox's CinemaScope was the original anamorphic process of the 1950s. Panavision started out making anamorphic projection lenses so theaters could show CinemaScope films. Later they developed their own processes. And now they design, manufacture, sell and rent complete camera systems.

Many widescreen formats have been used theatrically since the 1950s with aspect ratios as big as 3:1 using 35mm, 65mm and 70mm film various ways (matted, sideways film, anamorphic lenses, etc.). The 1.85:1 Academy 35mm format is not anamorphic. Standard IMAX is 1.33:1. It is just a big 1.33:1 picture. Some European films are 1.66:1. But most films today are 1.85:1 or 2.35:1.

The format the film was originally shot in may not be the format it is released in. For instance, it may be shot flat on 70mm film and released in an anamorphic format on 35mm film. For that matter, it may be released in more than one format. It may be released in several formats with bits of the top and bottom cropped off to account for differences in the formats various theaters can handle. What you see at your local theater may not be quite what I see at my local theater, or for that matter, what you see on your DVD.

The 16:9 ratio for wide-screen TV is based on a theatrical format. It is the result of decisions made by an ATSC committee when adopting the formats for digital TV. Everyone knows that a camel is a horse designed by committee, right? 16:9 is 1.78:1, not 1.85:1 or any other aspect ratio used in theaters. Anything released in one of the traditional theatrical formats is going to look at bit different on a 16:9 screen. It is going to have bars on the top and bottom or left and right sides, the ends will be cut off, or it will be a pan and scan version. Luckily, 1.78:1 is close enough to 1.85:1 that we don't notice.

That said, 16:9 may yet become a standard theatrical format as theaters go to digital. The aspect ratio of the CCD used in the cameras is 16:9 because they were designed for HDTV. Ofcourse, with an anamorphic lens, you can get different aspect ratios.

[Speedball]

As far as detail we sit 10' to 11' away and it is a much better picture even with basic cable than the 10 month old jvc or rca 32" tube we have.

This is very good to hear because we are running basic cable too.

[wally flick]

In the following image the Red area is in a 16x9 ratio, the yellow is 4x3. As you can see, people viewing widescreen movies in Full Screen are missing a significant amount of the picture. Like Gil said above, to adjust for this the person/s doing the transfer from film to electronic format has the ability to slide this 4x3 frame back and forth inside the widescreen area to capture most of the action. Many times though subtlety in the movie is lost. Pan and Scan introduces pans and cuts that were never intended by the director. Imagine two people having a conversation with one person at the left side of the frame, and the other at the right side. In order to show the person speaking, the 4x3 frame must slide back and forth or cut between the speakers. Not only is this dizzying watching all these unintentional cuts you also loose the reaction of the other person to what is said.

DVDs that are Enhanced have nothing to do with filling any size/ratio screen. All Enhanced DVDs do it to use another method to display the black bars above and below the picture thereby freeing the actual scan lines to create picture. In order to see the higher resolution of Enhanced DVDs you must have a television capable of taking advantage of Enhanced TVs. In the description you might see something like Squeeze or Compression I found the following descriptions on Best Buys site:

Sharp 4x3 television (Model: 32F641)

Vertical compression technology in 16:9 mode focuses available scan lines within the letterbox area, maximizing resolution for highly detailed images

Toshiba 4x3 Model: 32AF45

4:3 aspect ratio, with 16:9 widescreen mode with vertical compression

I believe this option is only available for 4x3 TVs and is getting hard to find.

If you're thinking about a new TV, go widescreen all the way. You will not regret it.

Good Luck

[Speedball]

Thanks for all the information guys.....