Forcing DVDs to skip the garbage... (1 Viewer)

[MarkHastings]

Which means that they are only targeting the 4x3 sets and not us with WSTV's :frowning:

 

[CraigF]

Doh! I never even thought of that..I'm not sure if I should be ashamed or proud to admit I've never watched a DVD on a 4x3 set. But still, since Uni is a prime suspect, and they often have separate FS releases, a double-slap.

 

[MarkHastings]

Well until they make all DVD players have the ability to squish non-anamorphic video horizontally on a WSTV (pillarboxing, I believe is the correct term) so that we don't have to worry about switching it manually with our remote controls everytime we go from 4x3 to 16x9 video, then they can mix whatever they want.

 

[Matt Rexer]

MarkHastings: They actually make DVD players that can automatically handle non-anamorphic widescreen video appropriately on 16:9 sets? (I don't have a 16:9 set, so I've never played with such things)

 

[Thomas Newton]

He wasn't talking about automatically handling letterboxed (widescreen) video on a widescreen set.

Automatic "pillarboxing" would display 4:3 video correctly on a widescreen TV that was expecting an anamorphic signal, at the cost of making non-anamorphic letterbox image areas smaller than they could be.

I don't think there is a way to automatically handle every signal correctly, short of a computer-based frame-by-frame examination to test for the "black bars" of letterboxing.

 

[StephenL]

The Panasonic RP91 can, provided that the DVD is correctly flagged.

 

[Jacques C]

This is one of the reasons I love TheaterTek (best software DVD player out there). I can pretty much skip through all the forced stuff to the menu with it. In addition it allows you to set a movie start bookmark that will start from that point every subsequent time you put the movie in, along with the selected audio track, aspect ratio, subtitle selection, etc.

Makes it much nicer when folks come over. Heck, you can even put in your own trailers beforehand (ones that make sense) if you want. Great stuff.

Take care.

 

[MarkHastings]

Yeah, I know there are some that can, but they should have all had this ability from the start.

 

[Matt Rexer]

Yeah, I was asking about players automatically zooming non-anamorphic stuff to 16:9, but I think StephenL answered my question. Learn something new everyday!

 

[PaulP]

Nope, he thought you meant pillarboxing, where you'd get bars on the side of a 1.33:1 letterbox image, filling a widescreen TV and not distorting the non-anamorphic video.

 

[StephenL]

The Panasonic RP91 can be configured to provide aspect ratio control for wide screen displays. It can shrink (windowbox) 4:3 images to maintain that aspect ratio on a 16:9 display. It can zoom letterboxed 4:3 images (those that are not enhanced for wide screen displays) so that they fill the screen. The RP91 can do this automatically provided that the DVD is properly flagged. The aspect ratio can be adjusted manually for DVDs that are not properly flagged.

 

[Thomas Newton]

There are flags to indicate that "this 4:3, non-anamorphic video actually contains a letterboxed image with an OAR of 16:9 or wider" and thus "16:9 TVs can safely zoom the image to cut off part or all of the black bars"? That's useful.

 

[StephenL]

"Video that is letterboxed before being encoded can be flagged so that the player will tell a widescreen TV to automatically expand the picture. Unfortunately, some discs (such as Fargo) do not flag the video properly. And worse, some players ignore the flags."
http://www.dvddemystified.com/dvdfaq.html#3.5

 

[Dave Koch]

I just got- and watched- Lost in Translation, too.... and was quite annoyed at having to keep pressing the FF button to get to the dang movie...

But the forced video that I find most annoying is John Lassiter's forced Fan Boy commentary just before Spirited Away, Kiki's Delivery Service and Laputa.

You get to the menu (Disney learned early on, and now Menu DOES take you to the menu!) and you hit "Play Move." THEN yu get forced into this stupid 2 minite fan boy droole that has no bussiness being there, much less being forced.

And besides, it REALLY makes Lassiter look stupid.

 

[george kaplan]

Once I get to the menu I NEVER hit Play Movie. This almost always does something other than play the movie. I go to chapter selections, go to chapter 2 (chapter 1 often goes to the same pre-movie place as Play Movie), and then hit chapter back once and the movie starts right up.

 

[CraigF]

Another comment on this, something I noticed while re-watching Red Dragon (Director's) and remembered this thread, Uni disc of course...

They were tricky here, put the forced trailer *after* you hit "Play Movie" on the main menu, and it wasn't anamorphic either.

Also, the featurette (disc 1) had mixed anamorphic and non-anamorphic shots of the speaker from different angles. As was said before, they don't consider people with WS sets, and the majority with players that won't adjust automatically (the player would have to be damn fast at it to switch so much in some instances). I guess this was made for FS, which is no problem, but it looked bad for WS me.

 

[Chris PC]

Hey Craig, fellow GTA HTF member. I'm in Durham too.

I agree about the mixed anamorphic and non-anamorphic trailers. Thats just stupid. If its a non-anamorphic trailer, I'm not going to take it seriously. There's nothing worse than watching bad non-anamorphic stuff on a 16:9. Come to think of it, some trailers are comic relief because of how bad the movies in trailers are sometimes.

Here's what I'm going to try tonight, I'm going to look at the programing of my Panny CV51 DVD player. I'm going to look at programming it and see if programming it to play the selections will bypass the trailers. I can program the DVD even before inserting it into the platyer, or at least, before I close the drawer.

If all else fails, some DVD players can be firmware flashed to make their button's un-lockable, or so I've been told. I'm going to look around. Frankly, its not something I want to pay for.

 

[Chris PC]

duplicate post :p

 

[CraigF]

Hey Chris, which of the thriving Durham meagalopolises do you live in?

Actually, I am much more bothered by the mixing of anamorphic and non-anamorphic images/trailers than I am by the fact I'm being "forced" to watch them. I have no idea if my Panny RP82 handles the flags properly, that is if the flags are even there properly...it's such a mixed bag, with so much stuff being badly flagged, that there are sometimes advantages to having a player that ignores some flags...you can't win just yet, and IMO DVD players are actually getting worse in some ways instead of getting better, with the RP91 possibly being the apex (not Apex).

 

[Andre Bijelic]

I just picked up an LG DV7832 player. My favorite feature is something caled "Auto Play" - it automatically looks through all the titles recorded on the disc and starts playing the longest one, which is inevitably the movie. It's worked perfectly so far, even on Universal and Paramount discs. No more FBI warnings, foced trailers etc.

Great machine, too. No chroma bug, DCDi chip, can upconvert to 720p or 1080i through either DVI or component outputs. And all for $300CDN (which is about $225US these days).