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| Thread ID: 65924 | 2006-02-05 02:07:00 | DVD's and wide screen | heaton (3697) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 427325 | 2006-02-05 02:07:00 | Bought myself a DVD player/recorder for archiving all my family stuff on DVD disks. Came with a voucher for two months subscription to a DVD Company and got myself some movies to watch. Bit dissappointed that all of the disks so far are wide screen and on my vintage TV the top and bottom are blacked out. My Question: Are all DVD movies now on wide screen ? Question 2: If I go to the expense of getting a wide screen TV what will ordinary programmes look like. Will they be distorted ? |
heaton (3697) | ||
| 427326 | 2006-02-05 02:17:00 | Most formats are going widescreen, but most quality dvd players give you an option of playing in letterbox or fullscreen. If not, then most newer dvd's allow a choice. If you chose to fill the whole screen with picture on an older format screen, you are going to lose the side images...unless (and here's another thing modern players allow) you can set it to "scan" the shot and slowly pan left and right to get as much of the action as possible onto the small screen. Not the best, but it tries to make it more liveable, |
SurferJoe46 (51) | ||
| 427327 | 2006-02-05 02:53:00 | Question 2: If I go to the expense of getting a wide screen TV what will ordinary programmes look like. Will they be distorted ? I assume they will be stretched, although I believe some, although I don't know how many, tv programs these days are broadcast in a slightly wider viewing format (can't recall the ratio - might be 14:9 or something as opposed to 4:3). This helps compensate for widescreen viewing without too much letterboxing on a normal 4:3. You can view tv in 4:3 format on a widescreen but then you get black space at the sides of the screen. What we need is free-to-air digital tv. Anyone know when that is likely to launched? I know there was some commitment by TVNZ a while back but I've not heard much for ages. |
manicminer (4219) | ||
| 427328 | 2006-02-05 22:22:00 | manicminer: Last I heard about digital tv was "not anytime soon" basicly. The question you need to ask yourself, when it comes to widescreen, is whether you want to see all the film or are happy with the sides cut off. Personally, the black bits at the top and bottom don't bother me. After a while I don't notice them. Jeff. |
Jeff (1070) | ||
| 427329 | 2006-02-06 01:56:00 | I thought free to air Digital TV was out? I know you can get a free to air decoder, that has TV1, TV2 and a heap of other foreign language channels. Is this not digital free to air? |
pine-o-cleen (2955) | ||
| 427330 | 2006-02-06 05:08:00 | Depends on the set you buy but most are manually switchable between the different formats. Ours (Toshiba) does 4:3 (standard tv, where you get black stripes down the edges), Super wide (which fills the screen by stretching the edges), cinema (stretches to fill the width and cuts off the top and bottom), Subtitles (trims to give a space a the bottom of the screen for subtitles), 14:9 and wide which both stretch the std tv image (you get very short fat people). The set will switch automatically in most cases to the format you are viewing, but this is not infallible. So Yes, if you watch standard tv on the wide screen, if the aspect ratio is kept true, you get black edges, but if you get a decent sized set, it really doesn't matter (52 inch is sooooo cooool!!). |
andy (473) | ||
| 427331 | 2006-02-06 05:14:00 | Just to clarify, digital TV is not 'widescreen' by default (see Sky for example - there are widescreen broadcast options on only about 4 of their channels - movies, rugby etc) . Digital TV is a method of broadcasting to reduce image data loss . The next major TV standard, High Definition TV, however is natively widescreen so increasingly companies are doing away with the older-style 'square' TVs . The widescreen technique ("16:9 enhanced"/"anamorphic") used by DVDs (and digital TV where available) involves recording additional vertical resolution (horizontal lines) in the picture which causes the images to be stretched vertically . A widescreen TV then stretches the image horizontally to compensate . You can set your DVD player to display the image without these extra lines (The "4:3 letterbox" mode in your DVD setup menu - 25% less 'lines' and the black bars at top/bottom of picture to retain the correct image/aspect ratio); or with them ("16:9" mode - all the lines but tall and thin people); or using the "4:3 pan/scan" mode described by Surferjoe46 which in practice is not very good (either cuts off half the picture or, more commonly, doesn't do anything as it generally requires extra information on the DVD to work) . My advice is get a widescreen TV (if you're in the market) . You won't regret it as TV programming (while not there yet) will definitely go there and 99% of DVDs now are Widescreen-enhanced . Just make sure you buy a good one with support for next-generation TV formats (High Definition TV) and from a reputable brand . Better-known brands (Sony, Panasonic, Samsung etc) tend to spend more money on making sure even regular (non-digital/widescreen) TV looks ok despite having to stretch or crop the images slightly to display them . Hope this helps . |
joe_exception (2874) | ||
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