I'm curious as to why some Blu-Ray titles are FS vs. WS? I haven't noticed it much or many titles, but two that come to mind are Hellboy (1) and Dark Knight goes between FS and WS?


Curious as a newb to most of this...


thanks :)

i'm not going to go into detail on aspect ratios, but "full screen" 16:9 is a TV standard, not a movie standard. movies tend to be framed wider (though 1.85:1 is close enough that some studios open the frame up to 16:9 as a matter of course)

Some scenes in TDK were shot on IMAX 70mm film, which has a 1.44:1 aspect ratio. They chose to crop this to 16:9 for the blu-ray. The rest is filmed on anamorphic 35mm.

i'm not going to go into detail on aspect ratios, but "full screen" 16:9 is a TV standard, not a movie standard. movies tend to be framed wider (though 1.85:1 is close enough that some studios open the frame up to 16:9 as a matter of course)

Some scenes in TDK were shot on IMAX 70mm film, which has a 1.44:1 aspect ratio. They chose to crop this to 16:9 for the blu-ray. The rest is filmed on anamorphic 35mm.

Thank you for the answer...wasn't looking for an indepth article, but was curious ;) So HellBoy in FS 16:9 was normal for the Blu-Ray release?

Why do some movies come out 16:9 and some anamorphic?

TWhy do some movies come out 16:9 and some anamorphic?
it's a creative choice on the part of the director/DP. in a movie theater an anamorphic print has a more epic, sweeping look to it, which unfortunately doesn't entirely translate to our TVs. others might not want that effect for their film, or have some technical reason for using one or the other.

Hellboy was shot for 1.85:1, so yes, that's how it's meant to look.

(though in most cases a larger frame actually gets shot in the camera, so on discs and TV broadcasts they often open up the frame for the "I HATE BLACKS BARS ON MY TV :mad:" crowd and show you stuff the cinematographers didn't really want to be seen, which is pretty much a non-issue on 1.85:1 movies which are nearly the same as your TV's 1.78:1 ratio, but a pretty significant one on scope movies)

Read:

Why Don't the Black Bars Go Away? (http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/764)

Abe: The link Josh provided will answer your questions.

The best way to search AVS is to use the advance search, title search only and limit search words to one or two tops. Plural version of the search words will bring up different results.