HDTV and DVD -- resolution/aspect ratio?

KD99

New Member
The more I read about this and go through my menu settings, the more confused I become. Perhaps someone can explain in plain English.

I bought a Samsung DLP 50" HD set and invested in an excellent surround system. I have a DirecTV HD dish/receiver, and the picture quality is superb on the HD channels, especially Discovery and Bravo. I just wish there were more of them.

I have found that viewing DVD's is really a mixed bag. Some, like the Alien box set look just excellent on a big screen. Many look quite awful. Woody Allen's Everyone Says I Love You and My Fair Lady were huge disappointments -- wavy lines, ghost type images, mosaic-y patterns. (Interestingly, My Fair Lady was on one of the HD satellite channels last month, and it looked superb -- so the problem is with the DVD transfer, period.)

But my real question is about resolution and aspect ratio when watching DVD's on an HD set. No combination of settings seems to give me a full screen. With both the DVD player and HD set in 16x9 mode, my image is letterboxed on the screen. Is this normal?

I understand that DVD's are 720 lines and HD is 1080 but if the aspect ratio on the DVD is truly 16x9 and so is my TV, shouldn't the picture fill the whole screen, like movies over HD satellite do?

I am using the Sony DVP-NS975V SACD/DVD player, which boasts 720p/1080i upconversion, with an HDMI cable. I don't understand why my picture is still letterboxed. Thanks in advance for any help.
 
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Seems like I stumped y'all with that one. The question was bothering me and after a lot of searching and reading, I found what appears to be the right answer. Here's an excerpt, followed by a link to the page...

"...Since most movies are wider than 1.78 (16:9), one of at least 3 methods must be used during transfer to make it fit the 1.78 rectangle: 1) add additional thin black bars to the top and bottom; 2) include a small amount of extra picture at the top and bottom from the soft matte area; 3) crop the sides, possibly with a small amount of pan & scan. With the first two methods, the difference between 1.85 and 1.78 is so small that the letterbox bars or extra picture are hidden in the overscan area of most televisions...."

http://www.tecs.com.au/info/DVD_Aspect.htm

P.S. Here's another good link. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Bay/2933/favaspectratio.html

I think I'm getting the picture -- HDTV does not mean the end of letterboxed movies, not at all. It seems that the quick and dirty verbiage about HDTV suggesting that finally the TV screen matches movie screen aspect ratio, and that we can now watch movies without compromise is not *quite* true.
 
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Even most "widescreen" movies will not fill a 16:9 screen (HDTV) Most movies will have the black bars top and bottom. For best picture quality always get widescreen movies and always watch them in 16:9 widescreen. Don't zoom, enlarge ect. Once is a while you will get ones that fill the screen not sure of the numbers but I think most widescreen movies are in 2.35:1 (screen size is 2.35 times more wide than tall) and 1.85:1 and they feature the black bars. A few are "enhanced for 16x9" and those will fill the screen. As far as picture quality, I too have found it to be a mixed bag and age of a movie is no matter, one of the best I have ever seen was "Once Upon A Time In The West" and just about the worst I have ever seen is "Days of Thunder" Most of the newest DVD's are pretty good but it's seems to be those ones back when DVD's were rare that there are pretty bad transfers. Also a lot of obscure titles and foreign films can have pretty poor picture quality.

HDTV signal is the standard 16x9 the shap of your TV.

Now it is not healthy for your TV for you to watch standard TV which is 4x3 on your TV in 4x3 which leaves black bars on the sides of the TV all the time so feel free to exand or zoom to fill the screen. Picture quality in normal TV is so bad anyway it won't matter.
 
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