# Link request



## bluejay (Sep 10, 2007)

Can anyone provide me a link to an "educational" page or two? I would like to read up on a couple of things I do not understand yet. For example;

I have a 27" CRT television. My DVD player will stretch some widescreen DVDs and provide a picture with only thin black spaces, top and bottom, (anamorphic?). I like this and I can stand it compared to the thick black space. People are tall and thin.

When I went to the store and looked at some wide flat panel TVs, sometimes they had a thick black space top and bottom. Why would this be? I thought a widescreen DVD or TV show would fill the whole screen up, (or at least most of it)?

Also, I have collected a number of full screen DVDs over the years. Will they play with two black spaces at the side, on a wide screen flat panel TV? How does this look to you folks? I don't think I would want to stretch people out sideways and have them fatten up? I also do not think I would like to use 2x zoom because of picture quality degradation?

I am not close to a large city where I can check out a lot of different brands and models of flat panel televisions. Thanks. :reading:


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## Bob_99 (May 8, 2006)

Here are a few links that may be of interest:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/UnderstandingHDFormats.aspx
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-definition_television
http://www.cctv-focus.com/CCTVfocus_PDFs/cctvfocus33_understanding_hd_formats.pdf

http://www.flattvpeople.com/tutorials/lcd-tv-reviews.asp
http://www.hdtvexpert.com/
http://www.plasmatvbuyingguide.com/
http://www.crutchfieldadvisor.com/S-7OScDbVnMKa/learningcenter/home/?listAll=1

There are far more knowledgeable people on this forum who can probably provide better links.

Bob


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Most displays will give you the option of what you want to do.

Personally I don't like to stretch anything. We have a 65" widescreen RPTV that will stretch the picture if we want it to and it actually does a fairly good job, but the overall quality of the picture is not the same as normal viewing. I'd rather see black bars on the sides with a more accurate picture, which with SDTV and Dish Network, it's still far from accurate. :sarcastic: 

The issue you run into with still seeing black bars at the top and bottom even on a widescreen display is from the "super widescreen" movies. A standard display (or what is considered "fullscreen") has an aspect ratio of 4:3 or 1.33:1. The aspect ratio for widescreen displays is 16:9 or 1.78:1. Movies, films and various programs have varying aspect ratio's ... 1.33:1, 1.66:1, 1.78:1, 1.85:1, 2.30:1, 2.35:1, 2.40:1, etc. As you can see, it would be impossible to develop a display to accommodate every possible aspect ratio. 

The most common are fullscreen at 1.33:1 and widescreen at either 1.85:1 or 2.35:1. When you view 1.85:1 on a 1.33:1 display you will see small black bars at the top and bottom. If you view 2.35:1 on a 1.33:1 display you will see thicker black bars at the top and bottom. When you view 1.85:1 on a widescreen set (16 x 9), you don't see any bars, but if you view 2.35:1 on a widescreen set, you still see some black bars at the top and bottom, but not as thick as they would be on a 1.33:1 (fullscreen) display.

:dizzy:


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Here's a couple more good links:

The Ultimate Guide to Anamorphic Widescreen

What's an Anamorphic DVD?


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## bluejay (Sep 10, 2007)

Thank you gentlemen. :bigsmile:

My biggist worry was if and when I buy a new set. I thought maybe the cheap ones were missing something. So as a rule of thumb, try to run in native format without stretch if you have a 16:9 set. Nearly all the new HD panel display sets are native 16:9. The further the movie is filmed away from that the wider the top and bottom space is. 

And going the other way, fullscreen 4:3 stuff will have sidebars, (this part of it I did expect but was not sure). Like you say, side bars are not that bad when you have 50 inch screens and everything. Thank you for the links. :1eye:


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

Bars were annoying to me for the longest time, but after forcing myself to view SDTV with the bars, I finally got use to it. I actually let my Dish Satellite Receiver do the work for me now, while my TV is set to Normal... if it's HD, it will show in widescreen and if it's SD it will show side bars, unless it's TNT-HD... which TNT does their silly stretching sometimes and tells the signal it's HD when it's not. :rolleyesno:


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## bluejay (Sep 10, 2007)

I read the two links. I have a much better understanding now. Should I be embarrased that I watch the anamorphic DVDs in the wrong mode? It sounds like I am not alone and that even the stores were unaware the DVD players settings were incorrect. I will pay some more attention to it but at some aspect ratios the stretch is not so bad, (or I am used to it now). :surrender:

Now I know why I don't like watching letterbox Ben Hur on my 4:3 TV. I felt like giving that back to Wally 5 minutes after I got home. :spend:
I can't blame the store because someone sold them truckloads of disks and said they were good. :dizzy:
Ben Hur is the widest movie ever made, it just gets real small in my TV. 

Thank you again for the help.


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## Sonnie (Apr 11, 2006)

lol... I don't think there's anything that's gonna make watching a 2.76:1 AR movie very good. But I'm pretty sure there is a 2.35:1 version of that movie.


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