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Will 1080p be the next misnomer (wrong labels)? Are 2.35/2.4:1 films REALLY 1080p? (1 Viewer)

JediFonger

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YiFeng You
just curious. if you goto www.quicktime.com you can d/l a lot of 1080p/720p HD trailers. for films in 16:9, 1920x1080 pixels are fully fired. but for wider scope films like the recent superman returns trailer w/2.35 or 2.4:1, it is more like 816p and NOT 1080p.

do/will HD-DVD/BR movies be using an aspect ratio tag like SD-DVD for 1.33, 1.78, 2.4, etc?

can people will HD-DVD's check on that? i think that's an issue that might've slipped through our collective cracks (that didn't come out sounding right =)?
 

ChristopherDAC

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For wide aspect ratio films, only a portion of the 1080 lines of vertical resolution will be used. For narrow aspect ratio films, only a portion of the 1920 lines of horizontal resolution will be used. The pixel matrix, however, will remain fixed at 1080×1920 — just as it remains fixed at 480 [or 576] ×720 on standard DVD — and the aspect ratio will remain fixed at 16:9 — unlike standard DVD, which can be flagged for 4:3 or 16:9. In any case, the "black bands" will probably be stored as data structures using very little space, as they are with DVD. The practice of encoding computer video files at resolutions which just fit the image does not carry over to consumer video players in any way : the latter use fixed pixel matrices.
 

JediFonger

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YiFeng You
hm...

this is interesting, though the signal is 1080p, a 2.35 pic will only use 816 or so of that. =). i thought i read somewhere that HD discs will have flags. can anyone link to confirmations of this?

i think if these wider scope films were to scale to utilize ALL of 1080p, then the vertical resolution would have to break spec (~2541x1080p instead of 1920x816p).

no one else is noticing this?
 

Aaron_Brez

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I'm not sure what you think we're not noticing. That 2.35:1 films will be letterboxed?

According to sources, there will be data on the disk which specifies the pixel area used, though not the ratio. In other words, there's supposedly an "xheight" and "yheight" measurement which will, in the case of 2.35:1 films, say something like "816" and "1920".
 

Lew Crippen

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I’ve read your posts several times and I’m not really sure of the point, YiFeng.

After all widescreen TVs have a width to height ratio of 16:9. This of course works out to 1.78:1—not a ratio commonly used in movies.

It follows that movies made at 1.33:1, 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 will not fit exactly on a 1.78:1 screen (assuming no overscan).

This means that there are almost no movies that will use all of the available pixels on a 16:9 display.
 

Ed St. Clair

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Lew,
I would like to rewrite your, correct, statement to;
This means that only 1.78:1 movies will use all of the available pixels on a 16:9 display.
Mostly a few new modern animation films.
If the 16:9 widescreen display has no overscan, luckily you, then you can achieve prefect pixel to pixel reproduction with a 1.78:1 source!
 

ChristopherDAC

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There are 16:10 computer monitors on the market, for some obscure reason. Pioneer used to make semi-widescreen CRT rear-projectors with an aspect ratio of 3:2. A few older Japanese HDTV sets have a 5:3 aspect ratio. In general, however, high-definition televisions have an aspect ratio of 16:9, which is the standard — the exceptions are rare enough now as to make no difference.
 

JediFonger

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YiFeng You
aaron+lew,

the point i'm trying to make is that "1080p" is NOT truly 1080p. that most epic-wide films post 50s/60s will be more like 816p. that's my main point.
 

Ed St. Clair

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I agree Christopher, that it is rare. However, if you bought one of the 15:9 LCD panels that were sold as 16:9, would you say it makes no difference?
 

ChristopherDAC

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There is, if you will permit me, a difference between "no difference to the individual affected" and "no difference to the accuracy of a general statement". The fact that there are 15:9 and 16:10 and 5:3 and 3:2 displays does not invalidate the statement that "the widescreen TV ratio is 16:9" — that is what the standard defines it to be, that is what the software is made for, and that is what the vast majority of the existing displays are.
 

Aaron_Brez

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And I guess my response is that, yes, we're all aware of that. 1080p will only truly have 1080 lines of resolution on film material with an aspect ratio of 1.78:1 or lower. We call it "1080p" because that's the encoding scheme, not because we necessarily expect every pixel line to be filled.
 

JediFonger

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YiFeng You
but for SD-DVD's, because you can set aspect ratio flag, you're able to truly utilize all 480p, right? why not so do in this case with HD content?
 

ChristopherDAC

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No. You're not. A 2.35:1 movie on "anamorphic" SD-DVD takes up the same proportion of the scan lines that the same movie takes up on a High Definition format, because both of them have a 16:9 aspect ratio. With a 4:3 movie, SD-DVD allows you to use all the HORIZONTAL pixels, which the HD format will not. I don't know what you're thinking of. SD-DVD does not go wider than 16:9.

Really, by your criterion, a 2.35 movie on SD-DVD would be "360i".
 

RobertR

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YiFeng, HD is no more misleading than 16x9 DVDs in this regard. There has been some discussion that it's unfortunate that a different "squeeze ratio" isn't available for 2.35 movies, but it's just as much true for SD-DVD as for HD.
 

Tiago_J

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On the other hand, if what Aaron_Brez says is true then HD discs are better in the sence that, unlike SD-DVD, the black bars that are used to fill the 16:9 frame won't be part of what is stored on the disc, so less space will be wasted.
 

ChristopherDAC

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No, a properly mastered DVD does the same thing. It's only poorly mastered DVDs which have the "black bars" actually in the video, either as a result of a full-frame transfer of a hard-matte film, or the use of an older video transfer with "burned-in" black bars and no compensation at the encoder. In any case, even then, the "approximate black" of the bars compresses to almost nothing.
 

JediFonger

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YiFeng You
i know it can't we can't catch ALL of the aspects ratios films have out there, but i thought SD-DVD included a flag for 2.11:1 flag. here check this out:

http://www.doom9.org/aspectratios.htm

it's not 2.35 but it's closer to 2.35 than 1.78. i've not seen any DVD films utilize that flag yet. all i've seen is 1.78:1, even on LOTR or somn.

so, are we certain that HD discs do NOT carry this flag feature unless it was MPEG2 like bluray?
 

ChristopherDAC

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I'm pretty sure that those flags you refer to do exist in the MPEG-II standard. The DVD Video standard incorporates a subset of the MPEG-II standard, and I am pretty sure that this subset does not include any aspect ratio flags except 4:3 and 16:9. This would be in accordance with the practice of the ATSC television standard, which also implements a subset of MPEG-II restricted to 4:3 or 16:9, the two aspect ratios which are defined in ITU-R.601, the fundamental document for digital television [as opposed to computer video] applications, and specifically for the 480×720 pixel matrix of DVD.

The subset of MPEG-II implemented on Blu-Ray would logically not implement any flag except 16:9.
 

JediFonger

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YiFeng You
ah... that answers the question.

but still, with many popular epic films in 2.35, why wasn't that included as part of the ATSC, HD consortiums?
 

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