Widescreen

[motorollin]

Our TV is widescreen. The DVDs we rent or buy are widescreen. So why the hell are there still black bars on the edges of the screen, which force us to either not use the whole screen, or zoom in and cut something off, or stretch the picture? If everything is widescreen, why does the picture not fit the screen perfectly?

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moto

[Vincent]

There are different ratios of widescreen.

1.85:1 and 2.35:1 are the most popular.

1.77:1 (IIRC) is the ratio of widescreen tv shows and widescreen tvs themselves.

Apocalypse now was in 2.1:1 when it was originally released (it might be 2.35:1 now though).

All depends on who makes the films.  Spielberg tends to go towards 1.85:1 whereas Kubrick went for 2.35:1.

Widescreen tvs tend to be made for the lesser widescreen modes.  If they were made for the 2.35:1 ratio then you'd have black bars at each side of the screen or you'd zoom in and miss out on the top and bottom of the screen.

You can blame tvs for being popular so cinemas went to a widerscreen to try and pull in the punters.  There was no standard ratio for widescreen back then as it was a developing system.

Some preferred 1.85:1, others 2.35:1.  Both of them (and the lesser ones like 2.1:1, 1.77:1) were popular enough to be used throughout the years.

I suppose you can blame Panavision etc for not getting rid of the less popular ratios :-P

We've got a widescreen tv and what really annoys me are the non-anomorphic dvds out there.

[motorollin]

Vincent wrote:
There are different ratios of widescreen.

Well that's just stupid. Why not make all the TVs the same and all the DVDs the same? :roll:

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moto

[bloodline]

Any my MBP is 1.6:1   :-)

[A4000_Mad]

Doh! I'm always about 5 years behind the times and was thinking of getting a widescreen TV. I thought it was just a simple case of 16:9 for widescreen or 4:3 for our current TV's. It is obvious that we are just seeing the central area of more and more broadcasts on Sky TV now. I've tried switching the settings between 4:3 letter box and 4:3 pan scan to improve it. Jeeeezz!! :headwall:

I've recently bought a Sony RDR-HXD860 DVD Recorder which has HDMI out. Would this widescreen TV be a good choice to go with it or could someone suggest a better one?

 (I only want to buy one and I expect it to last as long as Amiga monitors do :-D)

A4000 Mad