Widescreen TV dumb q's
Napoleon Plural
LondonPosts: 10,308MI6 Agent
OK, I know if you get a widescreen telly it stretches the picture to make it fit the screen... No biggie when it's the news etc
But that means, however, that as most movies shown on TV are pan and scanned ie the ends cut off to make it fit the usually square shaped telly, then this pan and scanned image is then pointlessly stretched to fit the widescreen, so the final image is totally bowldedised.
True?
Now with DVDs, what gives? My landlord has a plasma telly widescreen and mostly the widescreen DVDs fit it perfectly... but really most films are much wider in the cinema... is the image therefore being squashed up to fit the screen perfectly?
And I'm guessing that if you have an old 1930s film on DVD like The 39 Steps, which has a different, more square-shaped format, it also stretches that picture. Unless you press a button on the remote that puts it in the right ratio, but with distracting black lines to the right and left of the picture... that's right isn't it?
To what extent is the image being messed about with? ?:)
But that means, however, that as most movies shown on TV are pan and scanned ie the ends cut off to make it fit the usually square shaped telly, then this pan and scanned image is then pointlessly stretched to fit the widescreen, so the final image is totally bowldedised.
True?Now with DVDs, what gives? My landlord has a plasma telly widescreen and mostly the widescreen DVDs fit it perfectly... but really most films are much wider in the cinema... is the image therefore being squashed up to fit the screen perfectly?
And I'm guessing that if you have an old 1930s film on DVD like The 39 Steps, which has a different, more square-shaped format, it also stretches that picture. Unless you press a button on the remote that puts it in the right ratio, but with distracting black lines to the right and left of the picture... that's right isn't it?
To what extent is the image being messed about with? ?:)
"This is where we leave you Mr Bond."
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Comments
You're exactly right in all of your suppositions. In my opinion, it's pointless to buy one of these hi-def TV's unless you plan on feeding it a signal that will really take advantage of the format; be it hi-def TV programming, anamorphic DVD's or the newer game consoles. If most of your TV time is spent watching broadcast TV or very old movies, then you're really wasting your money since that kind of programming doesn't take advantage of the TV and will usually look worse (especially, as you mentioned, panned and scanned movies).
When it comes to viewing material, most newer widescreen TV's will let you play around with the image in a number of ways:
You can stretch it so that it fills the entire screen; of course, as you say, if the original image was a different aspect ratio then the new image will be distorted in some way. Many TV's also offer a modified stretching option where only the sides are stretched but the center of the image remains at its original aspect ratio. This works pretty well although when the camera pans across an image you sometimes get a weird fisheye effect.
You can leave the image at its original aspect ratio, in which case the TV will insert either horizontal or vertical black bars to fill the rest of the screen.
Or you can zoom and crop the image so that it fills the screen and is not distorted. But by zooming you'll be losing part of the image (the sides for widescreen material and the top and bottom for square material).
No one solution is best for every situation - in many ways it's like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole - and it all comes down to personal preference. Personally, I prefer to watch programs in their original aspect ratio and let the TV add in black bars to fill the screen - that way, the image appears as the filmmaker originally intended. I find that after watching the program for a few minutes I quickly forget about the bars, especially if the room is dark.
Hope that helps; feel free to ask away if you have any other questions.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
I've actually seen some home theaters that use hi-def projectors where people have done exactly that, believe it or not. They draw the curtains in or out to show enough of the screen relative to the aspect ratio of what they're watching.
Some TV's let you change the color of the side bars so you may want to look for that when you go shopping. Keeping around an old standard def TV is also a pretty good idea although I must warn you, once you see some good high-def content on one of these TV's you'll be hard-pressed to go back.
And yet... it still didn't look that wide. Not like on the illustration on the back of the DVD or as I think of at the cinema.
Roger Moore 1927-2017
Assuming you watched Moonraker on a 16:9 TV set, the size of the black bars would be smaller than on a traditional 4:3 TV; that's probably why it probably didn't seem as wide to you. The DVD definitely plays at the original aspect ratio 2.35:1 (at least, the US version is).
LALD was shot at a ratio of 1.85:1; the new hi-def TV's have an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 so the movie fills almost the entire screen. Thus the abence of letterboxes.
BTW, my brother checked out out LALD last night on the plasma and he said the movie looked uniformly sharp to him throughout, so make of that what you will.
Are there any HDTVs that display 1.85:1 as its native resolution? I have seen many HDTVs on display at the store, most of them look awful as they aren't set up right, or are playing a widescreen film stretched to an even wider widescreen... 8-) But even if they were playing a film correctly, they almost always have black bars showing. I can understand the 2.35:1 versions, but I would think that it would be somewhat self-defeating if when viewing 1.85:1, you're pretty much going to have those bars even if you buy such a TV (unless it uses some overscan like old-fashioned TVs do). So to buy one simply to avoid seeing those black bars seems a bit fruitless to me. Although I will admit, I personally love widescreen films, so one could argue that my standard-def TV is going to have black bars "burned" into the screen when I get done with it...
For whatever reason, the various committees in charge of developing HD standards for American TV decided on a ratio of 1.78:1 and any HD broadcasts here in america (network TV shows, sporting events, etc.) and even hi-def video games for the Xbox 360 and PS3 follow that standard. As such, to the best of my knowledge, all widescreen TV's are that ratio.
The 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 ratios are so close to one another however that you probably won't even see any black bars when watching a 1.85:1 movie, especially as a lot of these TV's actually do still have a bit of overscan to them.