27" 4:3 TV with 16:9 enhancement? (1 Viewer)

[Anthony R]

I was looking at these specs for a 27" Sony TV which lists a 16:9 enhanced mode as one of the options. I'm a little confused about what this would mean exactly on a 4:3 TV. Does the TV letterbox the movie instead of the DVD player? Would that make any difference? Thanks,
Tony
http://www.sonystyle.com/electronics...id=9661&type=p

 

[Dave Schofield]

The short version of the story is this, the TV compresses its image vertically. Where once the letterbox portions of the screen were just wasted lines of resolution now they are just completely ignored by re-aiming the guns. The DVD player outputs a full 480 lines of resolution and then the TV compresses these lines into the widescreen image, whereas before, the DVD player only outputs 2/3rds of that many lines of resolution (that are actually used in the image) and the rest are wasted on black boxes.

I'm sure someone else will come along with a URL for a good explanation of this, but I thought I'd reply...

Do searches for "anamorphic" and you'll find what you are looking for.

 

[Anthony R]

Oh I see. I know basically how anamorphic enhancement works on an actual 16:9 TV set, but I didn't realize that the resolution could also be increased on a 4:3 set.

 

[Jack Briggs]

No, that's not quite it; the resolution remains the same. As Dave said, when a 4:3 set has a 16:9 mode, it collapses the scanning-line raster into a 16:9 window. But that window still contains 480 scanning lines. And this means the DVD player can output at 16:9.

If the set were to be adjusted to 4:3 letterbox mode, that means a player would have to scale a 16:9-encoded DVD itself, and draw the black letterbox bars--resulting in a net loss of 33 percent in resolution.

Hope this helps.

 

[MikeyWeitz]

Am I losing anything buy using the screen fit feature on my Samsung P401 on an anamorphic dvd in squeeze mode on my Tsl3294hf? It certainly lessens the size of the black bars. I havent noticed it to lose any quality in squeeze mode when I do it. Just wondering if it actually does tho.

 

[Dave Schofield]

"lessens the size of the black bars"

Are you stretching the picture vertically? Are the people all "weirdly tall"?

 

[MikeyWeitz]

Nope, not weirdly tall at all. It is a vertical stretch, but doesnt fit the whole screen, just makes the actual pic larger and the black bars smaller. Nothing like setting the TV to zoom mode tho, which makes everything stretched and weird. I guess it is a basic type of scaling the P401 does.

 

[Dave Schofield]

I'm confused, are you stretching the picture itself vertically to lessen the area in the black bars? If so, and I don't know if I'm understanding you correctly, you are distorting the picture... (either that or cutting off the sides, then you might as well use pan&scan)

 

[Anthony R]

Thanks for the replies. So what you are saying is that lines of resolution can be projected to cover a smaller area? I thought they were specific to the size of the screen, that there are, say 500 lines from top to bottom, but less lines in any smaller area. Could the TV re-aim the guns to project 480 lines on to any size area? Are there the same number of lines on 1.85 and 2.35 DVDs that are anamorphic?

 

[Mark Hobbs]

Could the TV re-aim the guns to project 480 lines on to any size area? Are there the same number of lines on 1.85 and 2.35 DVDs that are anamorphic?

The TV always enhances the 16:9 area, so if you are watching a widescreen that is "wider" than that (like 2.35:1), there is some black area above and below the picture that is being enhanced. You can tell it is a slightly different shade of black than the black that falls outside the 16:9 area. In other words, the TV always enhances the same area. It doesn't know what ratio the movie was created in.