DVD question

[wingfan]

when buying DVDs, what is the ratio you should look for if you have a widescreen tv so that the movie fills the whole screen? and I dont mean buying the full screen dvd version, i want the widescreen version of movies, yet some take up the full screen yet others will letterbox (show black bars top and bottom). i just noticed that some will say in fineprint 2.35:1 or 1.85:1 .. are there more?

thanks

[manono]

when buying DVDs, what is the ratio you should look for if you have a widescreen tv so that the movie fills the whole screen?

The only ratio you should look for is the original one - making sure it hasn't been modified. To choose your DVDs based on them filling the screen is silly. Not to mention the fact that probably 3/4 of the DVDs available will be off limits to you.

To answer the question, though, you want to make sure they've been encoded for 16:9 (sometimes called "anamorphic", or "enhanced for widescreen televisions"), and the 1.78:1 (common for TV DVDs, uncommon for movies), and 1.85:1 ratios (if 16:9) will fill your screen.

are there more?

Yes, there are many more.

[thecoalman]

Just to add to waht manono said here's an explanation to anamorphic. 16:9 and 4:3 both have the same resolution of 720x480(ntsc). Here's a 16:9 sample but displayed at the resolution, note the circle on the banner is egg shaped:




For display on 4:3 TV the DVD player will letterbox the video giving you the correct aspect, note the circles are now round.:


Confused? It gets worse. :P Where the real confusion starts is where the aspect of the film cannot fit into a 16:9 box. Note that a DVD video file can only have an aspect of 4:3 or 16:9. To get the correct aspect where it won't fit into a 16:9 box the black bars are added to the video file itself. So if you play one of these videos on 4:3 TV you have the letterboxing added to the video file in addition to the ones added by the DVD player.

All said and done round objects stay round as they should. Use the remote to zoom if you don't like it.