Greg_S_H
Senior HTF Member
A lot of HD broadcasts will now put picture information of some kind on the sides when they have a need to show 4x3 material. For example, if American Idol shows clips from their pre-HD seasons, they will blur and mirror the material being shown and fill in the bars with that. A better example is a WWII doc that is on Discovery right now. When they show archive material shot in the '40s, it is framed by artwork made to look like the hull of a fighter plane. This is also done on XBox Live games that are 4x3. Something like Pac-Man will play in its OAR and be framed by artwork designed to look like the original cabinet.
This seems like a pretty good solution for people who hate the black bars. You can put anything there--could be movie theater curtains for an old movie--and it'll "trick" some into not even noticing they are watching 4x3. I'm just wondering if this kind of thing has been used before for DVD or Blu-Ray? I've never seen it, but I only have DVD and haven't bought anything in a while. Also, is there any kind of resolution benefit you could get by turning a 4x3 image into a 16x9 image without altering the original material? I would think not, but I don't know.
This seems like a pretty good solution for people who hate the black bars. You can put anything there--could be movie theater curtains for an old movie--and it'll "trick" some into not even noticing they are watching 4x3. I'm just wondering if this kind of thing has been used before for DVD or Blu-Ray? I've never seen it, but I only have DVD and haven't bought anything in a while. Also, is there any kind of resolution benefit you could get by turning a 4x3 image into a 16x9 image without altering the original material? I would think not, but I don't know.