Getting rid of black side bars in TCM movies

[b1lanc]

OK, so I am watching The Adventures of Robin Hood on TCM and seeing bars on both sides. I put the TCM remastered DVD in and it fills the wide screen TV. Am I missing part of the top and bottom when watching the DVD? If so, guess I've just never noticed.

IMDb says the OAR of The Adventures of Robin Hood is 1.37:1, the Academy aspect ratio, as you stated in another post after this one. The remastered DVD sold by TCM is supposed to be Fullscreen (4:3) so if the movie fills a widescreen TV from top to bottom and from side to side, you have set up the TV or the DVD player to either stretch the movie to 16:9 or zoom the movie so a portion of the top and bottom of the picture are cropped away.

Watch however you want, although I don't understand how it doesn't bother you. I can't take watching a highly distorted picture, and it also bothers me if too many scenes are framed incorrectly, which is bound to happen if a movie is badly cropped.

I just can't see any distortion unless I set it to pillar box 4:3. ARH is the Warner Legends Collection version.

[usually_quiet]

OK, so I am watching The Adventures of Robin Hood on TCM and seeing bars on both sides. I put the TCM remastered DVD in and it fills the wide screen TV. Am I missing part of the top and bottom when watching the DVD? If so, guess I've just never noticed.

IMDb says the OAR of The Adventures of Robin Hood is 1.37:1, the Academy aspect ratio, as you stated in another post after this one. The remastered DVD sold by TCM is supposed to be Fullscreen (4:3) so if the movie fills a widescreen TV from top to bottom and from side to side, you have set up the TV or the DVD player to either stretch the movie to 16:9 or zoom the movie so a portion of the top and bottom of the picture are cropped away.

Watch however you want, although I don't understand how it doesn't bother you. I can't take watching a highly distorted picture, and it also bothers me if too many scenes are framed incorrectly, which is bound to happen if a movie is badly cropped.

I just can't see any distortion unless I set it to pillar box 4:3. ARH is the Warner Legends Collection version.

The Warner Legends Collection version DVDs are also 4:3 aspect ratio. ARH should look as intended when pillar boxed on a 16:9 TV unless something has gone terribly wrong.

[b1lanc]

Your comment 'fills the screen top to bottom' for a 4:3 disk baffles me since I would expect that. What is more important is left and right since if that is also filled then that is where the error lays.

If you have 16:9 output set then that could well be stretching the 4:3 disks. Does the player have an 'auto' setting so it, theoretically, reads the ifo.

Setting 4:3 under hdmi for a 16:9 disk will give the horizontal squashing since you are now not allowing the player to anamorphacally strecth the SAR.

Sorry, I meant to include fills screen top-bottom and left-right. I notice some cropping left and right if the HDMI setting is left in off. If it is set to super wide, the left and right are very fuzzy with horizontal lines. If set to pillar, I get a picture left to right that makes Basil Rathbone look like a 7' center in the NBA.

There is no Auto setting that I can find. Under video setup, there is TV display which has 3 options - 4:3 pan scan, 4:3 letterbox, 16:9 which is what I have it set to. Under HDMI, there is wide screen format section which has the three options mentioned above 4:3 pillar box, super wide, off (which is what I currently have it set to).

All of this piped into a Vizio 55" via HDMI cable. Vizio has Wide screen settings of wide, zoom, normal, stretch. I have it set to normal.

[smrpix]

Once you learn to see what is wrong it will bother you on every TV you watch for the rest of your life. You will be highly motivated to set it up correctly.

[yoda313]

Tell the truth, I don't think most viewers understand any of this. They only "see" a very small portion of what's up there. They watch Pirates Of The Caribbean, Bourne movies, Indiana Jones, etc., via DVD and BluRay on 16x9 TV's and never notice that they're letterboxed. They'll watch anything on the screen (most cable programming is proof of that). That pixels seem to be moving and making sounds seems to be quite enough for many people.

Don't get me started.

Sorry for going off topic but - how else are you supposed to watch a movie if its not on dvd or bluray? And it will be formatted the same if you stream instead.

I think it was mentioned elsewhere that unless you get a 2.35:1 tv you won't ever have it "exactly" as the producer envisioned without some black bars. And even then you'd have to have a tv for each format ever made to watch it without some borders.

The important thing for the home viewing is to not have it cropped. Any cropping drives me nuts. Thats why I buy my favorite movies on dvd or bluray and never try to preserve a cable showing of it.

More and more channels do show oar movies but the number of popup ads and the permanent big logos on screen never make it worth it to me.

Sorry for the offtopic.

And sanlyn I'm not trying to pick a fight or anything but in a home environment a studio dvd or bluray is the best possible presentation we can have at the moment. Until there is a 4k distribution pipeline this all we have. And even then 4k will still have the letterboxing issue.

What's most important to me is having it be widescreen and "enhanced for 16x9" tvs so that i don't have to use the zoom button on a FIXED letterboxed movie. Those are abominations and should be banned from the universe.

[smrpix]

And don't forget, even if you watch a movie in a decent theatre the screen is always masked to the proper AR.

[b1lanc]

Ah, but Olivia all stretched out? You calibrated your TV using ISF standard methods, of course, lest you miss out on all the fun. That issue of Robin Hood is one of the best transfers from classic-era Technicolor ever made, anywhere, anytime. But I would agree: It does lose something compared to a good print seen in a movie house. Unfortunately, digital video can't compare to film. The closest thing to original movie quality was a good, properly set up CRT. And that still wasn't as good as a decent movie house. Alas, LCD's are a poor third.

As suggested earlier, your DVD player isn't set up correctly. Or, let's say, it's set up to correctly distort images the way you like them. They're your videos; video and tech forums won't tell you what to do, but I don't know of any video or tech forum that would advise that you do what you're doing. But I think you're really "watching your TV", not watching movies. Enjoy,anyway.

First time I'd heard of calibrating the TV. I couldn't come up with the ISF standards for this model, but I pull a couple off of CNET, tweak tv, and lcd buying guide. I always felt that the colors were way to bright. That's now changed. Thanks Sanlyn

[sanlyn]

Admittedly the ISF method is complicated and the calibration kits are pricey. But tweaks have been published that work for many brand-name LCD's. Glad it made an improvement.

[lingyi]

Part of viewing movies as they were meant to be viewed is setting the right viewing environment. This includes darkening the room, sitting closer to the screen and properly calibrating your screen.

I "watch tv" with the lights on, but when I "watch a movie", the lights go off and the black bars melt into the darkness. Controlling the light during the day is usually difficult, but at least minimize the light directly behind and directly in front of the screen.

As children of the CRT era ("Don't sit too close, you'll ruin your eyes!"), we tend to sit too far away from the screen. Recommendations for a 55" screen vary from ~5.5' to 12'. If the actors in that CinemaScope movie are too small, sit closer or get a larger screen. When I first changed from a 40" to 55" screen, at first I thought it was too big for my ~9' viewing distance. Now I find moving 1-1 1/2" closer gives a better "movie" experience. My next purchase definitely be 65" or larger.

You've made a good step forward by tweaking your settings. Most HDTVs at their standard settings are overly bright and saturated to compensate for typically brightly light viewing environments. As sanlyn points out, true ISF calibration is very complex and not only requires specialized equipment, but a highly skilled professional. =$$$

The bottom line is that "watching movies" is far more complex than it ever was. Short of getting a 20' screen, dedicated viewing room, and 4K source, we have to make the best use of what's within our budget and viewing environment. If your goal is (as the majority of members of this forum are) to "view movies as they were meant to be viewed", that includes black bars side, top and bottom and tweaking your settings (environment and screen) to get the best out of what you have.

[smrpix]

Part of viewing movies as they were meant to be viewed is setting the right viewing environment.

That's why I always hire a group of teenagers to come over and talk, text, spill drinks and throw popcorn at the screen.