Formatting WideScreen (1 Viewer)

[BobHaymond]

My Sony 36XBR450 is listed as "widescreen enhanced". Do any of yawl know what happens, in practice, to the various screen formats? One sees 1:33, 1:66, 1:85, 2:35. Also, what does "anamorphic" mean?

My HT is still in construction; men are painting as we speak; drapes are being made. The room is being painted with a gray to match the Sony. TV recessed into wall using HotSpot so that ALL one will see is screen, and CSW Newton 7.1 at appropriate places. I am particularly pleased with the mounting for L/R: a 3/4" steel tube cantilevers directly out of the front wall with speaker on thin steel plate. NO wires or components visible anywhere.

I have DirecTV DSL which has web space; if I every figger out how, I'll post pitchers.

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Bob,
1) To understand the function of the TV, it is real important to first understand what anamorphic means in terms of DVD. A good source for that information is here:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...c/welcome.html
2) Read the entire above article about anamorphic.
In a nutshell anamorphic DVD is a process by which widescreen material can use more lines of resolution available for video, without wasting valuable video info on black bars... By doing so, the picture is stored on the DVD somewhat skewed (stretched vertically) and widescreen TVs are able to use that, reformat it properly, and thus get a proper aspect picture with the best possible resolution.
Some 4:3 TV sets come with a widescreen mode (sometimes called the anamorphic squeeze). What this does is allows you to tell your DVD player that you have a 16x9 TV, so it supplies the added resolution to your 4:3 TV, and the 4:3 TV squeezes the picture down to maintain the proper aspect ratio.
You end up with the right picture aspect and get the added resolution Anamorphic DVD can provide!
Again- this might be confusing right now- but read that Digitalbits article, and if you're still confused, post a note and I'll do my best to clarify!
-V

 

[Allan Jayne]

Currently, anamorphic as it applies to DVD's means intended to be played upon a 16:9 shaped space. The term most folks are promoting nowadays is 16:9 enhanced. There could be but currently there are no other standardized enhanced formats for 2:1, 2.35:1, etc. aspect ratios.
Both regular (optimized for 4:3) and 16:9 enhanced DVD's are made using all standard film aspect ratios with varying amounts of black bar material added (letterboxing) or varying amounts of cropping the sides done (pan and scan) as needed.
The 16:9 enhanced format gives a better picture for all aspect ratios 1.78:1 (16:9) and greater because more of the scan lines will be inside the picture and fewer wasted as black bar material.
Video hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm

 

[Marc Rochkind]

Here's a link to part of chapter from my book that explains anamorphic and vertical compression, and more:
http://www.htexplained.com/abridged/Chap%202.htm