AV Guru's, I need your help. [Archive]

View Full Version : AV Guru's, I need your help.

SW-Shooter

02-28-10, 23:49

I'm frustrated! Here I am entering the new AV age with an LG 120hz Widescreen and PS3 as the Blu-ray. I have everything hooked up via HDMI and optical cables.

My problem is that I thought the movies would be displayed without the annoying black bars on the top and bottom. Is this not the case? Am I doing something wrong? Almost every movie has the annoying borders. I find movies almost unwatchable with that. It's not like that at the movie theater. Will getting the full screen DVD's cure this issue with scaling?

Help is appreciated, feel free to treat me like the noob I am.

ETA: All of the games play without borders.

bobvila

02-28-10, 23:57

I dont have a ps3, but I know on the ps2 you have to change a setting for widescreen, the default setting is for regular tvs.

Volucris

03-01-10, 00:02

It's because the filmed aspect ratio of the movie differs from that of your display. Only way to remove those borders is by cropping the picture to fill or stretching. Both which detract from the quality of the picture and the media itself.

Looks like this probably:
http://i48.tinypic.com/2uduwyd.jpg

and it's supposed to.

also I wish I could slap every person who buys full screen copies of movies. you're buying half of the movie basically

chadbag

03-01-10, 00:08

also I wish I could slap every person who buys full screen copies of movies. you're buying half of the movie basically

I only buy them when they are $2 at Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving

Volucris

03-01-10, 00:13

ok slap them when they buy full screen when regular version is available for the same price

bobvila

03-01-10, 00:26

If the aspect ratio of the movie is 1.85:1 it should not have the bars. If it is like 2.40:1 it will have the bars.

I personally dont mind the bars, I would rather have the whole picture instead of a cropped one.

Preferred User

03-01-10, 08:24

If you remember clear back to the olden days of 4:3 format TV, there was the disclaimer at the beginning of movies that stated something to the effect, "This movie has been changed: edited for content, edited for time and edited to fit your screen." Then when the first 16:9 sets started arriving on the market, movies were released in cropped and widescreen formats.

There are a couple of methods to crop movies to fit a 4:3 screen, Pan and Scan (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan_and_scan) or Letterbox (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letterbox).

If the movies you are playing are formatted 4:3, they will not fill the screen of a 16:9 display without some distortion or cropping.

To fill the screen of a 16:9 monitor your source material must be 16:9 and your playback device must be set to output 16:9. Just because you have the toys it does not mean your programming will automagically match.

Honu

03-01-10, 15:57

ditto others

you have a nice TV and are now seeing movies how they were meant to be seen

once you do some comparison its amazing sometimes what you do miss in other versions

pilotguyo540

03-01-10, 18:38

militarymoron

03-01-10, 18:44

My problem is that I thought the movies would be displayed without the annoying black bars on the top and bottom.

treat the black bars like the matting or border around a picture, in a picture frame, except that they don't crop any of the picture. i doubt that photos or pictures hung in your house fill the frame exactly, and they probably don't annoy you.

dmanflynn

03-02-10, 22:06

I dont like the bars either. But I thought the 16:9 on flat panels like your LG was the same widescreen that the movie films are formated in?:confused: Maybe Im wrong

1911-A1

03-02-10, 22:56

I never understood why people got so pissed about the letterboxes, but had no problem watching a widescreen film that had been chopped to 4:3 to fit the standard "old" TV screen.

The term "widescreen" encompasses a lot of different formats. The new widescreen TV is shaped to accommodate all of them, but the wider format movies will still have the letterboxes. It's a good thing. You're seeing the WHOLE movie this way, and not just a chunk in the middle that some pan n' scan butcher/editor thought you should.

Left Sig

03-03-10, 00:27

I dont like the bars either. But I thought the 16:9 on flat panels like your LG was the same widescreen that the movie films are formated in?:confused: Maybe Im wrong

Nope. Movies modern movies are 2.39:1 or 1.85:1.

The 16:9 (1.78:1) HDTV format was chosen because it was a compromise between 4:3 (1.33:1) and the wider movie formats. You can blow up the movie aspect to fill the whole 16:9 screen without cutting off too much of the sides, and you can stretch a 4:3 image without too much distortion.

I prefer to watch all material in it's native aspect with the correct geometry. If that means bars on the top and bottom or bars on the side so be it.

Obsessing about black bars at the top and bottom not being like the movie is missing the whole point. You are seeing the WHOLE movie image without the left and right sides cut off. If you don't like it buy an Oppo Blu-ray player and use the multi-step Zoom function to get rid of the bars.

On a side note, I think the reason so many actresses today are getting super thin is because of how they look when a 4:3 image is stretched to fit on a 16:9 HDTV.

Alex V

03-03-10, 08:23

On a side note, I think the reason so many actresses today are getting super thin is because of how they look when a 4:3 image is stretched to fit on a 16:9 HDTV.

I think its because you start to see more imperfections in HD. Watching the news in HD now-a-days is just plain scary!

But Blu-Ray has the advantage of being able to see things you were not able to see before ;-) Someone did not cover up as well as they thought ;)

MrSkin was on Howard Stern this morning saying how Blu-Ray is making him watch all the old movies all over again. lol

As said before, many movies today come out in cinema scope, so with epic movies you will always get the bars on top and bottom even with a 16:9 TV.