Film Not Filling Screen (1 Viewer)

[smithbrad]

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

Looks to me like you are confused about his confusion. As has been stated several times now, this was nothing more than about the behavior of a non-anamorphic DVD on a widescreen setup.

 

[YANG]

i'm not confused. instead, i see and point out a common confusion from some folks, for example like John, who might have forgotten when and where we initially started and come into this 16x9 age, would burst a balloon of question, "why does the image looks odd on my display?"

we should not feel odd, but rather take a little time and patience to explain in full... rather than short cutting, leaving crucial parts out.

 

[John Sparks]

I take back about what I said about getting rid of my nons. there is one I didn't that I treasure and that is KRONOS. Why it hasn’t been released in its correct OR, is beyond me...oh wait, it's a Wade Williams film.

 

[Kaskade1309]

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.

View attachment 183030

Indeed, John -- as has been suggested, this appears to be a non-anamorphic DVD. I feel your pain because I have a TON of them in my library and, with the advent of 4K and using Panasonic UHD Blu-ray players, I have hit a wall of operational ability that I will describe in a moment...

What you're seeing is the image being "windowboxed" in the center of your screen because the DVD, while widescreen, was encoded for the square 4:3 TVs (this is why I ALWAYS bought a full screen edition of a DVD when I had my small Sony 4:3 tube TV, if one was available, so it would fill the screen as intended). As I mentioned, I have a ton of these kinds of discs in my collection, and it wasn't a problem on 16:9 screens until I switched to a Panasonic UHD 4K Blu-ray player.

Let me explain.

I was using an Oppo BDP-83 1080p Blu-ray player during the 1080p era, and it had a "zoom" functionality on the remote which would allow you to adjust the screen for "issues" like non-anamorphic DVDs (it also had a way, in the setup menu, to set the player for widescreen output but to also automatically stretch 4:3 DVD content instead of watching it with side pillarboxing, which is how I prefer to watch full screen stuff). The Panasonic DMP-BD10A I was using before the Oppo had the setting in its menu to auto-stretch the 4:3 content but DIDN'T have the "zoom" button on the remote -- it did, however, detect certain non-anamorphic DVDs that were "flagged" a certain way and automatically zoomed in on them, which was nice.

Enter the 4K era, when I wanted an Oppo UDP-203 but couldn't get one, so I settled on a Cambridge Audio CXUHD, which was basically the 203 without the analog outputs. THAT player had all the features of my old Oppo AND of the 203, including the zoom button on the remote (again, which, with the press of one button, would "blow" the non-anamorphic image up to where it approximately should be in terms of aspect ratio) and the auto-stretch thing. Unfortunately, that player developed a weird ticking noise when playing ONLY DVDs, ironically, and even after sending it back three times to Cambridge's repair center under warranty, they couldn't fix it.

I ended up getting a Panasonic DP-UB9000 after that, and even though I knew it had a LOT of quirks that weren't going to work for me, I put it on our Best Buy/Magnolia card anyway because I wanted a premium, all-aluminum player (and no others were available on the market at the time). This player, because of its shortcomings which I'll get into in a second, has cost us a LOT of money because we've had to rebuy many of our favorite titles we already owned on non-anamorphic or full screen DVD.

Why?

Well, the Panasonics do not have any way of zooming in on the non-anamorphic disc to compensate for the non-enhanced image, nor do they have a way to automatically have 4:3 content stretch to fill the screen horizontally. All Panasonic UHD Blu-ray players are locked in a 16:9/widescreen output, so when you watch something that may be in full screen/4:3, it plays back with side pillarboxing (which is actually the proper way of watching this older content on a 16:9 screen, but I don't prefer it). What's worse, in order to play a non-anamorphic DVD, I'd need to use my TV's picture ratio controls to manipulate the image into something resembling the proper aspect ratio -- which is a TOTAL pain in the ass on a Samsung LCD. You have to maneuver these series of arrows in order to "guess" at where the proper ratio is for that film, and then go back and forth every time you return to a standard widescreen disc. It is SO much easier to press a button on a PLAYER'S remote -- as I did on the Oppo and Cambridge -- to do this.

Here's what the screen size menu looks like on the Samsungs:

As such, we have been forced to replace a lot of our favorite titles that were either on full screen DVD or non-anamorphic DVD with their Blu-ray (or sometimes UHD Blu-ray) counterparts, and this has, as you can imagine, become VERY expensive. Sure, I am trying to look at it like it was an "excuse" to upgrade to the Blu-ray (or especially the 4K version), but it still rubs me the wrong way that, for MY situation, the Panasonic "forced" me to have to rebuy these discs. I absolutely HATE it and haven't come to grips with it yet.

Further, we have at least one instance of where a DVD isn't available in any other form than its non-anamorphic release, and this is a holiday-time favorite of ours called The Ref with Denis Leary and Kevin Spacey; this title was never reissued as a Blu-ray or even an ANAMORPHIC DVD, and it looks like it never will. When we watch this disc, I have no choice but to go into my TV's screen control and blow it up using the arrows there to get rid of the windowboxing (like you see with your DVD in your post). It just sucks, and I am not the only one who has argued that Panasonic should be ashamed of themselves for not including some kind of zoom function on the remote to deal with old DVDs (and for not including a way to auto-stretch 4:3 content for those of us that still value that).

Some of the titles we've replaced over the years include:

Escape From Alcatraz (replaced the non-anamorphic Paramount DVD with the Kino Lorber 4K)
John Carpenter's Escape From LA (replaced the non-anamorphic Paramount DVD with Scream Factory's Blu-ray)
The Day After Tomorrow (replaced the full screen Fox DVD with the Blu-ray)
Daredevil (replaced the full screen Fox DVD with the Blu-ray; this was a mistake, because the BD is ONLY available as the far inferior, IMO, Director's Cut)
8 Mile (replaced the full screen Universal DVD with the 4K Blu-ray)
From Dusk Till Dawn (replaced the non-anamorphic DVD with the Paramount reissued Blu-ray)
John Carpenter's The Thing (replaced the non-anamorphic Universal DVD with Scream Factory's Blu-ray)
Do The Right Thing (replaced the non-anamorphic Universal DVD with the 4K Blu-ray)
Office Space (replaced the full screen Fox DVD with the Blu-ray)

That's just a sample of what we've replaced; in the plus column, there have been some titles that showed a distinct improvement in terms of color, artifacting or even side-to-side picture information -- for example, when we replaced Escape From LA, I was able to immediately pick up on some added picture data on the sides of the Scream Factory Blu-ray that was apparently cut off when I was blowing up the non-anamorphic DVD. Also, the nasty aliasing and other issues were gone going from the DVD to the Blu-ray.

In getting back to your issue -- yes, what you are seeing is windowboxing because the DVD is non-anamorphic and was coded to play back on a non-widescreen display (as odd as that seems being that the transfer is IN widescreen). You need to zoom in on it either via a player or display/projector or replace it to see it correctly.

 

[Kaskade1309]

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

There are some that simply aren't available in any other format -- we have at least one in our collection called The Ref, a comedy with Denis Leary and Kevin Spacey.

 

[John Dirk]

Sure, I am trying to look at it like it was an "excuse" to upgrade to the Blu-ray (or especially the 4K version), but it still rubs me the wrong way that, for MY situation, the Panasonic "forced" me to have to rebuy these discs. I absolutely HATE it and haven't come to grips with it yet.

Yea, that really does suck. In my case, as stated, I can use Kodi to stretch the disc but chose to upgrade anyway since I consider both of the 48 Hours films to be classics. Have you considered using a HTPC? It gives you complete flexibility over this sort of thing.

 

[YANG]

...All Panasonic UHD Blu-ray players are locked in a 16:9/widescreen output, so when you watch something that may be in full screen/4:3, it plays back with side pillarboxing (which is actually the proper way of watching this older content on a 16:9 screen, but I don't prefer it)...

i agree with u on this... partially.
non anamorphic WS2.35:1 image will look disturbingly small in window boxing. however, WS1.85:1, with bigger image, will have close/consistent height of black bars top and bottom as with anamorphic WS2.35:1 image, where the latter have the sides filled up.

my preference is on the picture height consistency, that mirrors what cinematic/theatrical screen should be, not the other way where modern cinemas and home screen displays forced us to accept as it is... "small aspect ratio, but big image" as reflected in the number we see.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Yea, that really does suck. In my case, as stated, I can use Kodi to stretch the disc but chose to upgrade anyway since I consider both of the 48 Hours films to be classics. Have you considered using a HTPC? It gives you complete flexibility over this sort of thing.

Yeah, I'm not using an HTPC to watch films in my HT area....it's a dedicated player or bust, LOL.

 

[Kaskade1309]

i agree with u on this... partially.
non anamorphic WS2.35:1 image will look disturbingly small in window boxing. however, WS1.85:1, with bigger image, will have close/consistent height of black bars top and bottom as with anamorphic WS2.35:1 image, where the latter have the sides filled up.

my preference is on the picture height consistency, that mirrors what cinematic/theatrical screen should be, not the other way where modern cinemas and home screen displays forced us to accept as it is... "small aspect ratio, but big image" as reflected in the number we see.

I have to check again in terms of what happens when I throw The Ref on without zooming in on it via my TV -- because it's 1.85, yes, you may be right in that it wouldn't display as a tiny windowboxed image, though I could SWEAR that's what happened when I first tried playing it on the Panasonic.

 

[John Dirk]

Yeah, I'm not using an HTPC to watch films in my HT area....it's a dedicated player or bust, LOL.

Just trying to offer a possible solution to a problem you seemed annoyed by.

 

[Kaskade1309]

Just trying to offer a possible solution to a problem you seemed annoyed by.

I understand; was just trying to offer you assistance, as well, with my initial heartfelt response. Glad you had figured it out, at any rate.

 

[YANG]

I have to check again in terms of what happens when I throw The Ref on without zooming in on it via my TV -- because it's 1.85, yes, you may be right in that it wouldn't display as a tiny windowboxed image, though I could SWEAR that's what happened when I first tried playing it on the Panasonic.

if ur vision is "controlled" by the edge of the display, u'll feel the approximate 60% image in the center of the display is small because of the additional in-activity on the left and right sides of the image.
however, should u put ur focus on the thickness the black bar top and bottom of the display when u're outputting The REF thru 4:3 letterbox, compare to the the black bars top and bottom of anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 image, u'll find that the thickness measures roughly same.

that is the right way to get the close same picture height in either presentations... in conclusion, the right way to experience HORIZONTAL panoramic view, is thru sacrifices.

 

[JohnRice]

I don't believe I've ever seen such an extensive discussion of such an astoundingly simple topic.

 

[YANG]

...but I am not understanding why the original image doesn't fill the screen in a standard letterbox as it should...

this is where... majority of the new age consumers don't understand. because their mentality, had been kidnapped by the 4 corners of their displays, rather than understanding, what basic fundamentals of theatrical presentation should be.

 

[Kaskade1309]

if ur vision is "controlled" by the edge of the display, u'll feel the approximate 60% image in the center of the display is small because of the additional in-activity on the left and right sides of the image.
however, should u put ur focus on the thickness the black bar top and bottom of the display when u're outputting The REF thru 4:3 letterbox, compare to the the black bars top and bottom of anamorphic widescreen 2.35:1 image, u'll find that the thickness measures roughly same.

that is the right way to get the close same picture height in either presentations... in conclusion, the right way to experience HORIZONTAL panoramic view, is thru sacrifices.

All I know is that I'm NOT going through that nightmare of having to manipulate all those arrows on my display every time I watch and re-adjust for certain non-anamorphic discs. Not going to happen.

I'll be glad when I eventually get my Cambridge Audio UHD Blu-ray player back into the system so I have the zoom feature back at my disposal. One touch of a button and the non-enhanced image is blown up to around where it should be.

 

[BobO'Link]

I don't believe I've ever seen such an extensive discussion of such an astoundingly simple topic.

And just *how* long have you been a member here?