HDTV in Full Screen!

Folks, you should know, there's HDTV in standard aspect ratio!

There's no need for the distortion-vision of widescreen TVs!
There's no need for bright gray bars to "warn" you that you're
watching material in the "wrong" aspect ratio.

Howard Brazee...

But for some reason when you watch regular TV shows in HDTVs at
restaurants and stores, it's almost always distorted.

Lincoln Spector...

That's because most people, including those running the restaurants and
stores, don't know what they're doing.

When my TV was delivered, the delivery guys helped me set it up. One of the
first things I did, once everything was plugged in, was to set the default
for all four inputs to "Normal" (4x3). This shocked the delivery guys. They
felt they had to explain to me that I just bought a widescreen TV and should
be watching everything in widescreen.

Frankly, I love the fact that when I put in an anamorphic DVD and start
playing the movie, the image gets wider. It's like the end of the prologue
in This is Cinerama. THAT's what a widescreen TV should do.

Need A. Life...

Every station in my area that runs a 16x9 AR crops and stretches ALL
4x3 content. Maybe that's why you're seeing it that way. I asked a
friend of mine in the broadcast industry why they do this and he told
me that they want their content to "look" wide-screen, even if it's
not. Personally, I'd rather they broadcast unaltered 4x3 and let ME
decide how I want to watch it. I can crop and stretch 4x3 if I want
to, but I can't restore the missing cropped top and bottom!

~consul...

Because they are dumb.

moviePig...

I'll float an outright guess: Those are cheap (merely) digital
widescreen-sets, with conversion flexibility that's cumbersome at best.

Derek Janssen...

Or sets with the monitor-setting adjusted to 16:9, with no one bothering
to tend it for normal shows.

Derek Janssen (again, we find ourselves back at the theme of "What
Walter didn't know before posting")
ejanss@comcast.net

Go for flat screen, in Academy ratio as it's now possible.

telenovels...

Why would I want to view my rectangle-shaped videos/movies on a square
tv?

Justin...

Because you are watching the movie and not the TV, perhaps.

Btw, 4:3 isn't square

That makes NO sense.

Walter Traprock...

It's great for watching subtitled widescreen movies, as the subtitles
show up in the lower black bar.

Obveeus...

I agree. However, it makes equally little sense to watch a square TV
program in stretch-o-vision.

~consul...

I don't watch anything in stretch-o-vision.

Walter Traprock...

Distortion-vision is MUCH worse than having black bars! I wonder if
it even causes eye problems.

Harkness...

Well, if your 1,77 TV shows 1.85 movies without letterboxing, then your
overscan is just about 1%, which isn't really serious.

moviePig...

Though still distasteful, overscan's not the real danger. Rather,
that'd be subliminal 'squeezing'... to which prolonged exposure can
cause "El Greco syndrome"...

Sean O'Hara...

True, it's no worse than the difference between 1.37:1 films on
1.33:1 sets. (Although any time I watch an old movie on a standard
set and there's a close-up of a letter or book, I end up zooming out
because the old time cinematographers shot it so the text goes right
to the edge of frame.)

John Harkness

Derek Janssen...

Uh, still haven't found the "16:9/4:3" aspect-ratio button on the remote
and/or menu, then?
Don't worry, once you find it, you can show Walter where it is, too.

Derek Janssen
ejanss@comcast.net

Until they make wide screen TVs that suffer no ill effects from having
black/grey bars on the sides during normal TV viewing, they remain a waste
of money.

telenovels...

I've been watching movies with black bars (top/bottom) for YEARS, and
there's no ill-effect. Of course, I'm using a CRT, not a plasma.

Lincoln Spector...

So have most of us. But I think the chance of burn-in is greater with the
4x3-within-16x9 situation. When you watch letterboxed movies on a 4x3, the
exact position of the lines changes from one transfer to another. But every

telenovels...

No not really. Most movies since 1970 to 2007 share the same 1.85:1
ratio, so the DVD player always puts the image in the same set of
scanlines: 80-to-400*

Justin...

That pretty much defines most.

Lincoln Spector...

I've had letterboxed DVDs and LDs at 1.66, 1.85, 2.00, 2.20, 2.35, 2.39, and
2.79.

Richard C....

=================================
No
...................movies in that period are about 50%1.85:1 and 50% 2.35:1.

Tarkus...

Since "most" means over 50%, why would he have to ignore those?

So if you were using a plasma, you would experience burn-in, even with
the old letterbox. My suggested solution: Don't buy plasma.

Lincoln Spector...

I'm in complete agreement.

* 4:3 NTSC; approximately

time you watch 4x3 on a 16x9 set, it occupies the exact same position.

Lincoln

Just avoid plasma and you're safe.

dgates...

We bought a DLP and LCD 16x9 HDTVs for exactly that reason. We don't
want to stretch the 4x3 shows and we don't want to cause burn-in by
not stretching them.

~consul...

They do, one of the most popular ones are using cutting edge technology called 'LCD and/or
DLP and/or RearProjection'. Hopefully it will catch on in the populance.

moviePig...

Populance - n. - A medical transport large enough to hold an entire
citizenry.

(Obviously, you meant 'populous'...)

Walter Traprock...

Especially when you can buy non-widescreen HDTVs!

Justin...

How does that work with black bars on the top and bottom for 16:9 TV
broadcast?

Lincoln Spector...

They do make such TVs. DLPs don't suffer from burn-in, and LCDs rarely
do--and when they do it's reversible. If you avoid plasma and CRT, it's not
a problem.

I've got a Sony rear-projection set using LCoS (Sony uses another acronym,
which I don't remember). No burn-in yet. I set all four inputs to default to
"Normal" (4x3), with it switching automatically to widescreen for anamorphic
DVDs. No problems. Even at 4x3, it's still larger and looks better than my
old TV.

marc0ni...

Forward! Into the past...

(with acknowledgement to the Firesign Theatre(?) )

Now if you desaturate the color signal, you can also have the kind of
B&W set yer grand-pappy used to enjoy.

moviePig...

Might make sense *if* your set's to be used only for 4:3 movies. For
the rest of us, though, 16:9's a reasonable compromise (between 1.85:1
and 2:35:1)... with 4:3 getting shortest shrift, which is justifiable

Calvin...

16:9 is 1.78:1, not between 1.85:1 and 2:35:1

Calvin...

If that's an attempt to weasel out of your error, it makes no sense.

moviePig...

Sorry to disappoint your weasel fetish... but no, it merely reflects a
very long-standing erroneous assumption I'd made about some arithmetic
I've never bothered to check.

I amend my remarks to say that 4:3 is given short, but not zero, shrift
by the compromise raster... and that any still-present bias towards the
wider formats remains relatively inconsequential, for the reasons

Bill's News...

You'd probably benefit from this:

moviePig...

I plead duress. Calvin was eyeing me for a weasel scarf...

earlier stated.

Sean O'Hara...

Note though that they make SD sets with 4:3 screens that can display
16:9 material at full resolution.

considering that older movies generally have coarser resolution to
begin with, and thus won't suffer as much, percentage-wise, in a
reduced raster-portion.

Sean O'Hara...

Even grainy old films have higher "resolution" than an HDTV.

~consul...

Why is it called "Academy" if so many more movies, at least since the 60's were shot
widescreen. I would have thought that the "Academy" would have moved away from that

Lincoln Spector...

Anim8rFSK...

Okay, I'm shopping right now for HD tvs. I take it your set somehow
senses the DVD anamorphic signal?

Lincoln Spector...

If everything is configured correctly (no guarantee of that, of course),
that's pretty standard.

Howard Brazee...

So they actually had to work to make all of those public HDTVs
distorted?

Lincoln Spector...

No. The default setting is distorted.

Jukka Aho...

How is that done in NTSC/ATSC land? You don't have SCART connectors, so
you can't use SCART pin 8 widescreen signaling. You also can't use

~consul...

I get OTA digital HD to my Sharp Aquos, I don't want to pay for cable or sat. Shows that
are widescreen come in widescreen, those that come in 4:3, come in regular. The tv changes
everything on its own, as broadcasted.

Jukka Aho...

That's understandable for OTA HDTV broadcasts. If the set has a built-in
ATSC (HDTV) tuner/decoder it can read the aspect ratio flags straight

Jukka Aho...

The previous poster claimed that widescreen signaling works on his
American tv set and American DVD player over a component video (YPbPr)
connection (although he did not know which WSS standard was being used
for relaying the aspect ratio information to the tv set and how the
signaling worked on a technical level, exactly.)

I provided a link to one possible explanation in the part of my message
which you snipped off: a specification which defines a VBI-based
widescreen signaling method for 525-line analog systems. Here's that
link again:

I have no way of knowing how widely supported this particular WSS method
is in the US, or if it enjoys any support at all. Perhaps it is the
signaling method that is responsible for the behavior observed by the
previous poster, or perhaps some completely different method is being
used. If someone can shed some more light on this, please do. It would
be interesting to know.

The 625-line version of the same signaling standard (also described in
that document) is supported by all kinds of devices in Europe - ranging
from set-top boxes to video cameras to game consoles - such as the Xbox.

off the digital stream.

But what about playing back DVDs (which is what the original question
was about)? How does the DVD player tell the tv set "this signal is
full-screen 16:9" or "this signal is full-screen 4:3"?

~consul...

Ah ... hmm, I'll have to check. But I keep it set for 16:9 all the time, and if I view
something 4:3, I get the bars on the side. I know that I can manually zoom or strech or
fill screen with my remote, but I never do it, as I just watch it in what ever aspect
ratio is on the dvd.

I've never changed the aspect ratio on any of my screens. It plays like that on my aquos
and on my laptop which was 16:9 and my desktop which was 4:3.

Howard Brazee...

It wouldn't take much programming for a decoder to determine the
aspect ratio.

Lincoln Spector...

Part of the DVD signal identifies the program as 4x3 or 16x9. Ever watch
DVDs on a computer in a window (as opposed to full-screen). The window
changes shape when it goes to 16x9.

Whether that information gets to the TV, I'd imagine, depends on what type
of connection you're using. I'm using component video, and it works fine. I
suspect it also works with HDMI and doesn't work with composite video. I
don't know about S-Video.

You also have to tell your DVD player that you have a widescreen TV (there's
a setting in there somewhere). Without telling it that, the player will
convert all 16x9 signals to 4x3, adding letterboxing and reducing the
vertical resolution by 25%.

You also have to tell your TV to handle this change automatically.

Bill's News...

I think that your fluency in written English may confuse its
idiomatic speakers as to your origins. Your well written, easy
to follow English, just might be construed as condescending by
those of us monoliguists barely able to construct a proper
sentence in our own language ;-0)

Personally, I'd like to say thanks for your video/TV/DVD
tutorials and the expanse of knowledge you share regularly - and
patiently. It's like attending class all over again, and I mean
that in a good way!

PALplus style line 23 WSS signaling - at least not on line 23. So how
does the set know whether it is receiving full-screen 16:9 (16F16) or
full-screen 4:3 (12F12) signal from a DVD player?

Jukka Aho...

DVD players and their MPEG-2 decoders can read the aspect ratio flags
straight off the MPEG stream on the disc. That was not the question. The
question was, as you can see from the above, how this information is
relayed to the tv set so that aspect ratio switching works
automatically. (Note: we're talking about full-frame 4:3 and full-frame
16:9 signals here. There are no black bars in the incoming signal that
the tv set could detect.)

moviePig...

Doesn't the player send a digital stream of "square" pixels to the
(digital) tv? If so, it'd seem the aspect ratio's gotta be in there

Jukka Aho...

The original poster ("Lincoln Spectator") didn't specify the make and

Lincoln Spector...

Please, it's Lincoln Spector. And you don't have to use quotation marks.
It's my real name, on my birth certificate and my driver's license.

Jukka Aho...

Sorry, misread the last name in haste and thought it was a pseudonym of
some sort.

model of his DVD player, or the exact type of connections he is using.
What he said was:

"Frankly, I love the fact that when I put in an anamorphic DVD
and start playing the movie, the image gets wider. It's like
the end of the prologue in This is Cinerama. THAT's what a
widescreen TV should do."

DVD players can be connected to a tv set in a number of ways:
HDMI(/DVI), component (YPbPr), SCART RGB (in Europe), s-video (Y/C),
composite (CVBS).

Only one of these - HDMI(/DVI) - is digital.

Then again, HDMI might of course be the key here, since HDMI streams
carry aspect ratio flags. If "Lincoln Spectator" is using HDMI cable to
connect his DVD player to his tv set, there is no mystery. (But the
question still remains: is there an American standard for signalling
aspect ratios over YPbPr, Y/C, or CVBS connections, or is HDMI the only
way to get aspect ratio signalling?)

As for the squareness of the pixels, HDMI is designed to carry common
SDTV formats, such as (720�)480i/30 and (720�)576i/25, with their
non-square pixels. (Normal, standard definition DVDs use these formats
and do not have square pixels.)

somewhere, either explicitly or implicitly.

(Just curious.)

Because the Academy named 1.37 the official AR in, I think, 1933. It was the
first time that relatively new organization officially endorsed an AR. I
don't know if the Academy has done that since, but the name stuck with that
one.

uninformational.