Disney's At It Again, i.e., Captives (Also, AR ratios on my monitor) (1 Viewer)

[PaulaJ]

OK, this isn't exactly a title everyone's been salivating for, but I liked this movie.
Buena Vista is releasing the Tim Roth/Julia Ormond movie CAPTIVES on June 4. Once again, there is no AR information available. So am I to assunme it will be pan and scan? Guess I will have to hang on to my letterboxed LD, then.
Speaking of aspect ratios... I have watched maybe 15 1:85 AR films enhanced for 16x9 widescreen on my new monitor (Pioneer Elite) and of them all, only one (The Faculty) was true 1:85. All the rest are enhanced to 1:76. All the people I've talked to at the home theater store where I bought the monitor says that it's a real scam, that the packages claim 1:85 but they're not, they're 1:76.
Is everyone else finding this too or am I still doing something wrong? I had my television calibrated yesterday and overscanning was corrected, but the discs are still playing at 1:76.

 

[LukeB]

I've taken screen captures and measured aspect ratios of various DVD titles. Disney's aspect ratios are usually close to being on the money. (1.66:1 titles are exactly 1.66:1 for example). Angels in the Outfield was exactly 1.85:1, Cool Runnings was only about 1.75:1 (neither was anamorphic). The two Toy Story movies were exactly 1.77:1. As for the 1.85:1 anamorphic titles I measured, such as The Kid, they're around 1.81-1.82:1 or so, which is pretty close. Warner's and Columbia's 16:9 "1.85:1" films are usually around 1.80:1 or 1.79:1. This is a very small percentage anyway, just something I noticed in measuring some screen captures.

It's not a "scam" or anything either.

 

[Justin Lane]

Paula, when films are shot, the director intends for there to be a safe area around 1.85:1 (if thats the aspect ratio used). It is not a hard number, and when you actually watch it in the theater it will probably differ as well.

J

 

[Lars Vermundsberget]

Re "safe area":

For most practical purposes I think of all aspect ratios from 1.66:1 to 1.85:1 (including 16:9) as basically the same thing.

So according to this simplified worldview there are three different ARs (applies to 99.9 % of movies...):

1.33:1 to 1.37:1

1.66:1 to 1.85:1

~2.4:1

 

[Mark Zimmer]

When you say your "overscan was corrected" what exactly was done? Usually this means "reduced to 2-3%" because if you reduce it to zero you get garbage on the sides from broadcast television. If it's reduced to 2-3%, though, the measurements are going to be off because you still have some overscan. 1.78 and 1.85 may well be indistinguishable most of the time.

The Malata N996 DVD player will, however, allow you to eliminate the effects of overscan completely---which was an eyeopener, once I saw how much picture I was losing with a standard player on my set. My ISF calibrator set the overscan way too high (5-6%) and 2.00:1 Apocalypse Now looked like 1.78:1 and had no black bars at all!