Anamorphic Widescreen Help

corm500

Hi

Just took delivery of my first widescreen TV, a Sony Trinitron 32" 100hz. Very happy but for one thing, I was under the impression that when I played an Anamorphic DVD it would fill the screen but every disc I have tried: E.T, Back To The Future, Gangs of New York etc. has still got black bars at the top and bottom of the screen. I have tried flicking through the diffferent screen modes on the TV but the only one that fills the screen is Zoom. Is this aproblem with the TV or was I just expecting too much from my DVD's.


Corm500

Kali

Most widescreen TVs are 16:9 format, however anamorphic widescreen is 1.85:1 (I don't think its actually a standard though, it may differ between DVDs), which is slightly wider and less tall... hence the black bars. Use the strech feature of the TV to eliminate the black bars if you like, you're still seeing a much bigger icture than the equivalent on a standard 4:3 screen.

Korg

Look here for a good explanation on the whole thing. If you see black bars on your anamorphic dvd's your tv's doing the correct thing by stretching it a little to the correct aspect ratio. Newer tv's can do this without losing much, if any resolution.

ALso i think kali was referring to 2.35:1, 1:85:1 is the same as 16:9

corm500

Thanks Guys

Looks like I had misinformed myself about the whole anamorphic thing. It still looks great, I was just worried that I was not utilising the set properly

Corm500

sceptre

The important thing to remember about anamorphic DVDs is that they're little to do with the aspect ratio. OK, they're usually in 1:2.35 ratio but it's what's done with the picture on the DVD itself that counts. They take all that black space at the top and bottom and stretch the video to take up the space, adding extra information to the vertical picture for better quality. Your player converts this back to the original ratio, giving you a slightly better picture at no extra cost to you. That's anamorphic widescreen. Being John Malkovich is anamorphic in the region 2 release even though the aspect ratio is only 1:1.85

The gibberish I've written is far better explained here, here and here.

MartinHSabag

Korg said:

....1:85:1 is the same as 16:9

Just a small correction:
16:9 is 1:1.78.....

To the original question:
There are several standards fro "wide screen" :
1:1.78, 1:1.85 and 1:2.35
Each studio will choose how they want to make the movie - it's not your fault or the TV's fault.
If you'll look at the back to the DVD case you'll see in what format it was filmed.
I also have a ony 32" widescreen TV and I find that teh"Smart" mode is the best for me.