AVI to DVD 16:9 question

[Yansky]

Does it make any difference if I convert a 16:9 AVI to 4:3 MPEG-2 with black bars above and below the movie, rather than converting it to 4:3 MPEG-2 squeezed and letting the DVD player add the black bars when it's displayed on the TV?

(I hope that makes sense.) :P

Cheers.

[guns1inger]

It depends how you look at it.

You will still get the same image on your TV. However, if you have a widescreen TV, you will either get a balck frame all the way around, or your TV or DVD player will have to zoom in until the image touches both sides. If you encode it as 16:9, then it will fill (from side to side) a widescreen TV, and still play correctly on a 4:3 TV if your DVD player is set up correctly.

On the other hand, you do have to reize a little more to get the frame right for 16:9, but with appropriate filters, you can do it properly.

Personally, if it is widescreen, it goes 16:9 for me.

[TJohns]

Also, you'll be using some of your precious bitrate to encode the black bars, reducing what's available for the REAL video!

Trev