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tillitea

Junior Member

18. June 2003 @ 08:35

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I was under the impression that widescreen formatted DVD's are the original format seen in the theaters and that DVD's that say "formatted to fit your screen" are modified versions that have had pieces cut off of each side of the film so that you can fill your 4:3 TV without having a funny picture (i.e. less picture).
I rented a DVD where you could watch either version. The horizontal picture area was the same in both, which completely baffled me. Of course, when I say horizontal picture, I mean the picture content, not how much the screen is filled up. There was more vertical picture content in the standard version than the widescreen version (i.e. content like the tops of people's heads were cut off in the widescreen format). Thus, there was more total picture content in the fullscreen version. Is this normal? Can someone explain this? Thanks

tillitea

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Oriphus

AfterDawn Addict

18. June 2003 @ 08:45

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If you are viewing it on a good Panasonic, Sony or philips TV, they all have features to allow picture interpritation. panasoincs, for instance, is caled Just picture control. Also, remember that the cinema screns are usually 18:9, i think, whereas our own TV's are 16:9 and 4:3. So in essence, all cinema formats are formatted to fit your screen!

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tillitea

Junior Member

18. June 2003 @ 09:13

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I didn't know that about the 18:9 ratio. Nevertheless, when a DVD says widescreen, is it not suppose to have more actual picture content? Thanks

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Discmania

Senior Member

2 product reviews

18. June 2003 @ 22:40

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Only if a Widescreen movie is described as 'anamorphic' (check on the DVD cover) will it play full screen on most (but not all) players. Otherwise it is down to your player. I find it best to just accept the horizontal bars top and bottom - atleast you see the full picture like that. Setting your equipment to 16:9 for a widescreen TV gets the best playback picture no matter what your player is.

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ger

Newbie

19. June 2003 @ 01:00

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I think that most movies are actually shot "full screen", but the director frames the picture so that the images he/she wants only take up a small portion of this full frame in the 16:9 ratio (did I explain clearly??). So when a full screen version of a movie is seen on DVD it can (but not always) contain more picture information than the widescreen version. However, the full screen version will show things that the director did not intend to be seen.

Hope that made sense!!

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loaded

Moderator

19. June 2003 @ 03:19

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Normal TV is 4:3

Widescreen TV is 16:9

Full 'letterbox' cinema image is 2.35:1

As pointed out before, televisions can be made to stretch a letterbox (full cinema widescreen) image vertically, so that it fills the whole screen, although this can make things look taller. This stretching can be done proportionally across the whole screen, or disproportionally (part of the anarmorphic process), which will make faces, say look less stretched than other parts of the screen. Other 'tricks' to make it fit, without losing the action, would be to take just the part of the full image in which the action is going on in. Imagine a box, with slightly different dimensions than the full 'letterbox' frame being moved and only being able to 'see' those bits in which the action is going on. Some TVs have this function, even if the DVD does not (Bang and Olufsen have a function that stretches the screen in different ways, depending on where the action, or faces are) This is particularly visible when you play the credits at the end of the film ,they seem to speed up, then slow down at different point as they scroll downwards.

The trouble with playing the whole frame on your TV without stretching, is that even with widescreen 16:9, a full width cinema picture will fill barely half of it, so the detail can be too small. IMHO it is better to stretch the image a little bit, unless of course you have an enormous TV :-)

Paul.

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tillitea

Junior Member

19. June 2003 @ 10:56

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Thanks. You all are correct. This website really explained it all. It shows the movie in question also. Movies can have more than one kind of original filming. There was nothing wrong with my DVD.

tillitea
http://home1.gte.net/res0mrb7/widescreen/film.html

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