I'm a relative newcomer to the world of DVDs. While I've had a player on my laptop for a while, I only just got one for my home. Its rigged through my surround sound stereo and my plain old 27" TV. While I can appreciate the increase in both sound and picture quality, I'm getting extremely frustrated by the widescreen/letterbox effect. Case in point - I rented Training Day the other night, and the standard set-up for widescreen playback gave me a letterbox type screen with at least 4" missing from both the top and bottom of the screen - enough so that it looked quite pathetic. I fiddled with the setup, and managed to get it to full screen, but the picture was stretched and made the characters look distorted. What is the point of having this increase in picture quality if you only utilize a third of the screen, or have to distort the picture to see it fullscreen? I know not all DVDs are like this (Jurassic Park 3 was widescreen, but only chopped an inch or two of the top and bottom). What is the criteria for deciding what the actual aspect/playback ration is like - are all DVDs different? Am I missing something in the setup? Is there some way I can tell before renting a video, so I can get it on VHS instead? I sincerely hope that the only answer is "get a widescreen TV", because then all your normal TV looks distorted.
Your always going to have at least two camps on this subject. One camp wants the picture to fill the screen with no black bars on top and bottom. This full screen video is typically known as Pan & Scan. The sides are usually cropped off and you don't get what the director originally had in mind when he filmed the movie. The other camp wants only widescreen and original aspect ratio to view the movie exactly as the director intended. This leaves the film intact. This introduces black bars on top and bottom but the sides are no longer cropped off and you do get what the director filmed and wanted you to see. Other people want both widescreen and full screen on the same DVD. While I sympathize with you small TV owners, I want the widescreen DVD format every time so I can see exactly what was intended to be seen without cropping off the sides of the picture. Alot of times...there are characters in a shot which can no longer be seen because the image has been manipulated to fill your screen. How big the black bars are on the top and bottom depend on the original aspect ratio of the film(or OAR). Some will have smaller black bars and others will have larger black bars. Studios typically make a choice on which way to go if they can't present both widescreen and fullscreen. Die-hards want widescreen(anamorphic and OAR) while non die-hards want fullscreen for their little TVs. If you can't stand widescreen, then don't buy the movie if it's not offered in full screen. Or buy a bigger TV. Or do nothing. When HDTVs become normal and you have to upgrade to one, your going to wish all your full screen DVDs were anamorphic widescreen.
I like the Widescreen personally. But if it's in regular, that's fine too. Nothing wrong with it either way.
Good questions, Davo. Are all DVD's different? Well, pretty much. The aspect ratio in which the movie was filmed is pretty much detiemined by the director. Most movies nowadays are filmed with a 1.85:1 aspect ratios, while CinemaScope and other movies have a 2.35:1 ratio or higher. Some DVDs, as mentioned already, are converted using the "pan and scan" method to fill the entire screen of a 1.33:1 standard monitor. Others simply "crop" out the sides of widescreen movies to accomplish the same thing. (I actually have seen some of these, and they are terrible...speaking actors are sometimes split in half or not in the scene alltogether!) Others are presented in widescreen, but that is not always a good thing, either. Unless the widescreen is anamorphic, there will be a considerable loss of quality in the picture. The key to figuring out what is on a disc is by learning to read the labeling on the back of the disc packaging. Unfortunately, there's really no standard when it comes to labeling. Some studios are better at giving detailed info, while others may offer none at all. In a nutshell, if the disc says "widescreen" "enhanced for widescreen" or "letterboxed", you will get the black bars at the top and bottom of a screen. If the disc is called "full frame" or "standard version", you will probably end up with a "modified for tv-type movie". You still won't know which methods were used to achieve these formats, however. I usually check out video reviews online or in print to get this information. My guess is that you'll probably learn to like the wider screen formats and the bars will virtually "disappear" after a while. If you can't get used to it, your in for some surprises: more and more tv shows will start to be produced in widescreen formats in the near future. In addition, there are actually more "black boxes" on a widescreen tv than on a standard one. If you watch a standard tv broadcast/tape on a widescreen tv, you will still get black bars...but on each side of the picture, as opposed to the top and bottom... I remember Sound & Vision magazine had a couple of excellent articles on DVD labeling a year or two ago....let me see if I can find them for you... x34
Davo I had the same problem although one weird thing I noticed is that all the cars seemed "thin". At first I though it was just Denzels car but then I started looking at the other cars and they were also "thin" as if someone downsized the width.
ROCKSS, Check your DVD player configuration. Make sure it is set up for the type of television you are using. If its a standard set, use the 4:3 ratio If its widescreen, use 16:9 If your DVD player is set up for widescreen, but isn't, the player will incorrectly output the format and you will end up with a bunch of anorexic actors/actresses... x34
I can definitely live with the regular black bars at the top of screen, and agree that you "don't see them" after a while, but not the ones in Training Day, which were beyond a joke. x34 - I didn't get the email yet, but thanks.
What's weird is some of these movies that are offered on DVD in aspect ratios that are neither the original aspect ratio nor the 4:3 ratio. The Godfather series is in true 16x9 (1.77:1), so there's cropping of the original frame... but it's still widescreen. I saw a movie at the store the other day that had a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. I couldn't imagine that's what it was originally filmed in (and it wasn't 61*, which was filmed in 1.66x1 in my understanding). I didn't like widescreen at first, especially the Cinemascope ones, but I have grown used to it and like it better now. I've not seen the Training Day DVD.
I like the older DVDs where one side of the disc is full screen and the other side is widescreen. I don't think any studios are putting those out anymore. Some DVD's like Go and The One have the option of either FS or WS on a single-sided disc but the fullscreen option seems kinda grainy compared to the widescreen. Some studios are putting out 2 different discs of a title. American Pie 2 and A.I. Artificial Intelligence for example.
What you guys who don't like Widescreen should really do is go out and buy some old cinematic classics like The Third Man or The Lady Eve or Citizen Kane or Arsenic and Old Lace and so on since they are all full-screen. That way, you don't have to deal with widescreen AND you're seeing a good movie for once in your lives.
I hate full screen... It's like watching TV...It's only wide for me. Black bars? What black bars? Real connoisseurs, choose widescreen.
i watch widescreen on the 36 inch TV in the living room but I prefer fullscreen on the 20 inch TV in the bedroom. I just like being able to choose.
