Film Not Filling Screen (3 Viewers)

[John Dirk]

I decided to take a trip down memory lane today by watching one of my old school favorites, "Another 48 Hours." Since I have this one ripped, I originally cued it up in Kodi. The DVD case for the film doesn't list a specific aspect ratio, it just says "Widescreen." While the image I was presented with did appear to be of a 2.35:1 ratio, it was centered in the middle of my screen, leaving vast amounts of real estate top, bottom and on the sides.

Thinking this was a Kodi anomaly I grabbed the physical disc and popped it into my Panny UB820. Same thing!? With Kodi I can "fix" it using the widescreen stretch mode but I am not understanding why the original image doesn't fill the screen in a standard letterbox as it should. I have hundreds of older DVD's and have never experienced this before as far as I can remember.

Wondering if anyone has come across what I experienced here or understands what is going on.

 

[Edwin-S]

It Is probably a non-anamorphic widescreen disc.

Edit: A lot of early widescreens were non-anamorphic transfers, so they would display as widescreen on a 4:3 set, but end up showing fully letterboxed on all sides on 16x9 sets.

It was actually quite a battle to get studios to do fully anamorphic transfers in the early days of DVD.

 

[JohnRice]

To add... the projector should have a mode to scale it up to full screen. It'll look awful though.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

Wondering if anyone has come across what I experienced here or understands what is going on.

You’re looking at a non-amamorphic presentation, i.e. one that has *not* been enhanced for 16x9 televisions.

The entire picture is presented within a 4x3 container, and the letterbox bars are hardcoded within that 4x3 frame.

This is mostly likely a transfer from the days of laserdisc - Paramount repurposed a lot of laserdisc masters in the early days of DVD, back when the majority of consumers were still using 4x3 televisions.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

It's been a long time since I have watched a non-anamorphic DVD. Back in the "old days", I had a Panasonic RP-91 DVD player that would zoom / scale these discs on my old Toshiba CRT RPTV. I have purged all those discs from my collection, but the player may still be in a stack of old equipment in my basement.

 

[John Sparks]

I sold off all my non-anamorphic DVDs years ago.

 

[YANG]

View attachment 183030

the presentation seems to indicate the disc is a non-anamorphic 4:3 "letterbox" widescreen transfer.
depending on initial setting on the playback device, considering that the display device setting is set to default 16:9, i say your playback device setting is correct @ detecting 4:3 widescreen content. nothing wrong.

 

[YANG]

this is the way i replay WideScreen 1.66~1.95:1 on my Xtra Large sized 75" TV to get a black bar top and bottom same sized as WideScreen 2.2~2.4:1 movies on 16:9 screen.

 

[Thomas Newton]

I decided to take a trip down memory lane today by watching one of my old school favorites, "Another 48 Hours." Since I have this one ripped, I originally cued it up in Kodi. The DVD case for the film doesn't list a specific aspect ratio, it just says "Widescreen." While the image I was presented with did appear to be of a 2.35:1 ratio, it was centered in the middle of my screen, leaving vast amounts of real estate top, bottom and on the sides.

Thinking this was a Kodi anomaly I grabbed the physical disc and popped it into my Panny UB820. Same thing!? With Kodi I can "fix" it using the widescreen stretch mode but I am not understanding why the original image doesn't fill the screen in a standard letterbox as it should. I have hundreds of older DVD's and have never experienced this before as far as I can remember.

If it is 2.35:1 and presented in Original Aspect Ratio, it shouldn't fill the screen. A widescreen HDTV or UHDTV has an aspect ratio of roughly 1.77:1, so the optimal presentation of a 2:35:1 film would be with no black bars on the sides, and (thinner) black bars on the top and bottom.

 

[YANG]

If it is 2.35:1 and presented in Original Aspect Ratio, it shouldn't fill the screen.

yes. that stands correct for those not "shot to spec" matching to 16x9 widescreen aspect ratio.

 

[David Norman]

If it is 2.35:1 and presented in Original Aspect Ratio, it shouldn't fill the screen. A widescreen HDTV or UHDTV has an aspect ratio of roughly 1.77:1, so the optimal presentation of a 2:35:1 film would be with no black bars on the sides, and (thinner) black bars on the top and bottom.

Pretty sure John knows that, but that's not his issue. The non-anamorphic encode is almost 100% the culprit to his window-boxed presentation

 

[YANG]

Pretty sure John knows that, but that's not his issue...

i'm pretty sure, John is confused on the basic fundamentals of "EVE-Expansive Viewing Experience" should be horizontally panoramic, not vertically... where it's a common issue that bugs consumers sense of thought. "Why the image doesn't fills up my screen? i paid alot of monies for those unused areas!"

 

[YANG]

...The non-anamorphic encode is almost 100% the culprit to his window-boxed presentation

alternatively... if one bothers to put focus on the consistency of black bar thickness from top and bottom, one would not realize that they're viewing what a typical TV broadcast content should be sized.
for example... from my 75" 16:9 TV, i realize that when ever i played a WS1.85:1 content thru 4:3 letterbox output, the picture is sized about 55inch diagonally!

 

[BobO'Link]

You can likely correct the pillar boxing by changing the output setting of your BR player and/or adjusting your display device AR. IIRC my BR player is set for 16:9 output (it'll show 4:3 product stretched to fit 16:9 unless I change the AR on the display). My Samsung TV has a "Wide Fit" AR mode that fixes these kind of things by uniformly "zooming" the 4x3 box so the output sides are at the sides of the display (it does 19:9, Wide Fit, 4:3, and Screen Fit - I have to manually adjust the AR depending on what I'm watching). It can then adjust the image up/down in that window to help with any issues with cropping (have never had to do that). I have to use that mode for all non-anamorphic DVDs (which are few) and on those few occasions I decide to watch something 4:3 formatted as WS.

I have no idea how it might be fixed with a local streaming server - if it can be fixed at all.

 

[JohnRice]

i'm pretty sure, John is confused on the basic fundamentals of "EVE-Expansive Viewing Experience" should be horizontally panoramic, not vertically... where it's a common issue that bugs consumers sense of thought. "Why the image doesn't fills up my screen? i paid alot of monies for those unused areas!"

I seriously doubt he’s confused about that. Did you even look at the image he posted?

 

[Edwin-S]

i'm pretty sure, John is confused on the basic fundamentals of "EVE-Expansive Viewing Experience" should be horizontally panoramic, not vertically... where it's a common issue that bugs consumers sense of thought. "Why the image doesn't fills up my screen? i paid alot of monies for those unused areas!"

He was asking why he was not getting an image that filled the screen horizontally from edge to edge when the film is indicated as widescreen. He definitely was not talking about filling the screen in totality.

 

[JohnRice]

It's been so long since I played a non-anamorphic widescreen disc, I had also forgotten that they tend to play back windowboxed (bars on all four sides) on HD displays and projectors. As has already been discussed, the player or projector can be set to zoom in the image to fill the screen horizontally, but the resolution is so low it looks pretty bad.

 

[John Dirk]

Thanks for all of the responses. My confusion was solely due to not understanding the origins and definition of the term, "anamorphic widescreen." I knew about the process of applying an "anamorphic stretch" in conjunction with a suitable lens to get rid of letterboxing on 2.35:1 screens. My projector includes this function although, since I use a 16:9 screen, I have no real use for it.

 

[John Dirk]

I sold off all my non-anamorphic DVDs years ago.

As I revisit my DVD collection I find certain titles stand the test of time better than others. This one definitely does not so I went hunting and found this. "Sold."

 

[YANG]

I seriously doubt he’s confused about that. Did you even look at the image he posted?

i saw that. and i've quoted his picture as well. just in case u've not noticed.