General question about wide-screen DVDs and displays

riredale wrote on 3/20/2005, 2:55 PM
I posted elsewhere that we now own a 16:9 TV monitor. I've had fun trying to learn what all the buttons do on the remote.

But what surprises me is this: when I put in a 4:3 DVD, what comes up on the wide screen is a 4:3 image with black pillars on each side i.e. a "pillarbox." That's expected. Okay, now put in a widescreen Hollywood movie. What comes up is still a 4:3 image but with the 16:9 image letterboxed inside it. To get it to fill the whole screen I have to run through the various resizing options until I find one called "Expand", which, sure enough, expands the 16:9 miniature image into one which fills the entire screen.

I would have thought that some flag would have automatically switched the monitor over to the 16:9 mode.

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Second observation:

When I am playing a Hollywood wide-screen movie in the expanded mode as outlined above, if I go to a menu I usually find that the menu thinks it's in 4:3 mode, and as a result the tops and bottoms of the menu are cut off on the screen (because the screen is in "expanded" mode). What am I doing wrong here?

I don't know if it makes any difference, but I should mention that the monitor is being fed by a Toshiba DVD player via an S-video cable going into the "Line 1" connection on the back. I could try to hook up the Y/Pb/Pr component cables instead but assume that the monitor will behave the same.

Comments

rique wrote on 3/20/2005, 3:12 PM
Assuming the DVD player is properly set for playing anamorphic (16x9 enhanced) DVDs, it sounds like the DVD you are playing is not anamorphic and is merely a standard 4x3 ratio with the imaged letterboxed within. A lot of early DVDs were like that.

BillyBoy wrote on 3/20/2005, 3:29 PM
Same thing happened here. When I got my wide screen LCD and the big screen Plasma I ran out to Best Buy just to see how a couple DVD's would look. It was when Troy, another bomb from Brad Pitt was just hitting the stores and it came in three versions no mention of format, wide screen and full screen. Having two wide screen (16x9) TV's I assumed "wide screen" was the version I wanted. I even asked the guy in the store and he confrmed, yea, get the wide screen, not the full screen. Well it plays wide screen, but still doesn't fill the screen. No setting combination on my DVD player or TV will blow it up full screen. So I guess I should have got the full screen version.

Orcatek wrote on 3/20/2005, 3:40 PM
Most widescreen movies are not 16x9 but 1.85 or 2.35, 2.55 or 2.66 etc to 1 which yield letterbox if the widescreen is OAR.

Only DVD's I've seen fill a 16x9 screen are specifically marked anamorphic 16x9 - which often means you don't get everything that was shot on the film on your set (not even taking into account scanning issues of TV's).





rique wrote on 3/20/2005, 3:45 PM
Acording to the IMDb "Troy" was shot for a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, so even on a 16x9 (1.78:1) screen it would need to be letterboxed.
riredale wrote on 3/20/2005, 3:47 PM
I don't know; I think I haven't set something properly. I need to dig out the manual for the DVD player. It's around here somewhere...

By the way, one other problem I'm having with this new 62" monitor: I wanted to put on some crummy old video I shot in 30i so I could see how much worse it looked than the 24p stuff from Hollywood. The problem is that apparently there is a chip inside this set that does some sort of interleced to progressive conversion as it up-samples the video to fit on the 720x1280 DLP screen. Aside from being a bit soft, my video looks pretty darn good! I'm glad and all that, but I want to find a way to TURN OFF the wizardry so I can see just how plain old 30i looks on this set.
JJKizak wrote on 3/20/2005, 4:00 PM
Sometimes the 16 x 9 flags only work with componet output from the DVD player. Make sure the Zoom setting on the TV is set right as some new TV's have 6 zoom settings.

JJK
riredale wrote on 3/20/2005, 4:07 PM
Oh, another By The Way, regarding the movie "Troy", since it came up:

I have a good friend who is an accomplished keyboardist who works exclusively with James Horner, who did the music for "Troy." Apparently the film was shot and the music was done by some other guy, and when it all came together the people in charge (I assume the Producers) were aghast with the results. They said either re-score the whole movie or we'll never show it.

So apparently someone contacts Horner, who has had an astounding string of successes (see bottom) in recent years. They beg him to do it, and he agrees, even though the official release date is only out a couple of months. He and his group work feverishly and they meet the original deadline. My friend says it was one of the most intense periods in his life.


According to IMDB, here are SOME of the movies that Horner has worked on:
Da Vinci Code, Legend of Zorro, Forgotten, Troy, The Missing, Radio, The Four Feathers, Windtalkers, A Beautiful Mind, Enemy at the Gates, Grinch, Perfect Storm, Bicentennial Man, Mighty Joe Young, Land Before Time, Mask of Zorro, Deep Impact, Titanic, Ransom, Courage Under Fire, Spitfire Grill, Balto, Jumanji, Apollo 13, Casper, Braveheart, Legends of the Fall, Clear and Present Danger, Pelican Brief, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Sneakers, Patriot Games, An American Tail, Rocketeer, Glory, Honey I Shrunk the Kids, Field of Dreams, Die Hard, Red Heat, Willow, Name of the Rose, Aliens, Commando, Cocoon, Star Trek III, Uncommon Valor, Brainstorm, 48 Hours, Wrath of Khan, Wolfen, Lady in Red...

Those are just the ones I'm somewhat familiar with. Amazing.
riredale wrote on 3/20/2005, 4:15 PM
JJKIZAK:

I'll have to try component. I notice on the back of the monitor that, in addition to the Y/Pb/Pr component inputs, there are also apparently sync inputs for H and V in the same grouping as the 3 component inputs. I wonder if this is how the DVD player tells the monitor what to do?