Anamorphic Squeeze Trick & Memory Loss (1 Viewer)

[Charles M Berry]

Ok guys,

Do you ever forget the answers to questions you once knew?

I feel like a real jerk since I know this has been discussed a million times, and I know I personally once knew the answer to my own question, but alas, I am either am getting too old (I recently turned 22), or I have recently contracted J6P disease.

Here's the Question:

I have a Sony Wega KV27FS13 which does the so-called "squueze trick", but does not automatically recognize 16:9 DVD material. So, I set my DVD player to "16:9 TV", and I set my TV to "16:9" mode. This mean I am getting the extra 30% vertical resolution with anamorphic DVD's, right?

But what about NON-anamorphic DVD's? My player and TV are still set to "16:9", and the picture seems to look OK (as in, not stretched), but am I artifically distorting the image by leaving the squeeze trick modes on?

I did a quick scan of the Newbie primer and did not see a topic devoted to the squeeze trick. I would love to see this topic added, since it seems to be a source of confusion. All my reading and thinking about home theater had somehow had the negative effect that I am starting to second guess what I thought I used to know.

Can someone please help me out?

 

[Yee-Ming]

in my experience, if the source material is non-anamorphic, you should then disable the squeeze at the TV. this will display the material correctly. at least that's how it works on my Wega (a KV-ES29M61).
on the flip side, I assume therefore that if you have a 16:9 display, you would have to activate the "horizontal squeeze" or "window-boxing" to watch 4:3 properly, if the display can't detect the difference?
(and Charles, if you think you're old at 22, what does that make me, since I'm 50% older? )

 

[Allan Jayne]

The rule is simple.
If your TV has both 4:3 and 16:9 (squeeze trick on a 4:3) modes, set the DVD player to 16:9 and leave it that way.
Then adjust the TV for each DVD so it looks best.
Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm
Anamorphic (16:9 enhanced) DVD's are not always labeled so on the outside of the case. You should find that non-anamorphic DVD's look best in 4:3 mode.
For a 16:9 TV, one of the zoom modes is best for non-anamorphic DVD's with movie aspect ratio 16:9 and greater. I prefer the mode(s) that don't stretch the picture horizontally more than vertically.
When the DVD player is in 16:9 mode, it is delivering maximum resolution at all times. In 4:3 letterbox mode, the player LOSES about 30% of the resolution of just the anaomrphic DVD's, bringing the picture quality to slightly less than a non-anamorphic DVD of the same program (if such a DVD exists).

 

[Yee-Ming]

Allan:

am I correct in interpreting your response as saying there is no difference in terms of quality of output of non-anamorphic material regardless of whether it's set to 4:3 letterbox or 16:9?

 

[Allan Jayne]

Yes, you are correct. Non-anamorphic (and full frame 4:3) material comes out the same regardless of the DVD player TV shape (aspect ratio) setting.

(unless the disk is incorrectly made)

About that 4:3 pan and scan setting on the DVD player...

This only affects anamorphic disks. The player automatically does pan and scan (cropping the sides) according to instructions on the disk.

Fewer than one in a thousand anamorphic DVD titles have pan and scan instructions. For disks without, what any given make and model player does is unpredictable. It usually does letterbox but it might give a full frame and crop an even amount off of each side.

 

[Charles M Berry]

To Yee-Ming and Allan Jayne,
Thanks for the information guys. What I have always done in the past was to keep both DVD and TV on 16:9, and it seemed to look normal. I will now leave DVD on 16:9 per Yee-Ming, and switch TV as needed.
Switching TV back and forth wont be a big deal since the freakin' KV27FS13 Sony won't remember 16:9! I have to set it each time I turn on the TV.

(and Charles, if you think you're old at 22, what does that make me, since I'm 50% older? )

I don't know. Thats the other thing that I've lost with age, my ability to do mathmatical computation.

 

[Colin-H]

You probably have to turn 16:9 squeeze off. My dad has a widescreen TV, and it took me a few minutes to realize Office Space wasn't anamorphic and switch the TV into the proper zoom mode. It's hard to notice sometimes because 1.85:1 non-anamorphic material looks scope-ish (just squished a little) when played as if it was anamorphic.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Switching TV back and forth wont be a big deal since the freakin' KV27FS13 Sony won't remember 16:9! I have to set it each time I turn on the TV.

ah, mine has the same problem. initially I thought something was wrong, then realised that the TV doesn't remember it. probably works out better, since the other half doesn't get anamorphic widescreen, 16:9, pan&scam and all that, and she usually watches 4:3 TV shows anyway.
as an aside, I notice the new Wegas have a button on their remote that engages the squeeze mode (called "Wide") with a single button-push, and another to change the video input to the DVD component inputs directly. nice features which I wish I had, right now I have to scroll through 4 video inputs to get to DVD, and enter the set-up menu to engage squeeze mode. sigh :frowning: