What are non-anamorphic widescreen dvds? (1 Viewer)

[Joseph_M]

I read that the JVC dvd players can scale non-anamorphic widescreed dvds. What does this mean? Is this an important feature?

 

[Rob Dawn]

I think that means that they will scale them if you are using a 16x9 TV. Without any scaling, you would have black bars on the top AND on the sides when watching a non-anamorphic DVD on a 16x9 TV.

If you have a 4x3 TV and don't plan on getting a 16x9 TV anytime soon, then this feature wouldn't be important to you.

Rob

 

[Vince Maskeeper]

Well, in order to understand non-anamorphic DVD, you should probably find out about anamorphic DVD. Anamorphic is probably the most important thing DVD added to home video- so It would be wise to do some quick reading to understand it all.
I would recommend:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/home/wsfaq.html
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/articl...c/welcome.html
http://www.widescreen.org/dvd_anamorphic.shtml
http://www.widescreen.org/widescreen_tv_qa.shtml
The player you mentioned will fake non-anamorphic dvds into anamorphic. This is really only an issue if you have a widescreen (16x9) monitor on which you watch your dvds...
If you do have a 16x9 set, This feature may/may not offer a significant improvement in picture- but will offer easier consistancy for TV modes.
Again- I would recommend that you read the two above articles and undersatdn widescreen and anamorphic-- this will serve you well as you get father into Home Theater.
-Vince

 

[Allan Jayne]

Non-anamorphic wide screen DVD's are your run of the mill letterbox movies. Including all of the black material above and below the picture, the video frame is properly shaped as 4:3.
"Scale non=anamorphic wide screen DVD" means, if truthful, that the player takes the inner 360 rows of pixels and reconstructs the video frame so that amount of picture material occupies all 480 scan lines. WHen used with a 16:9 TV, the result fills the screen using the TV's regular full or 16:9 mode without zooming. This gives a smoother although not necessarioy better picture than letting the TV zoom the picture by physically spacing out the inner 360 scan lines to fill a 16:9 screen.
This feature is not useful on a 4:3 TV.
To preserve the proportions the process always uses the 360 inner scan lines. If the movie has less than 16:9 aspect ratio, some picture material will be in the first and last 60 scan lines and thrown away. If the movie has greater than 16:9 aspect ratio, some of the black lines above and below will be within the 360 inner scan lines and will be kept and involved in the scaling process.
You should view the picture and check for unusual softening of the picture or more "jaggies" on diagonal lines and edges. Of those players which have this scaling, some do it better than others.
More:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/video.htm