Widescreen movies still show black bars?

No this is normal. Movies come in many different aspect ratios. So there will always be bars unless you have a TV that can change size.

There are many many movies in ARs that are wider than 16:9, so they will of course still have bars unless you zoom in or stretch them which I do not advocate, but it is a free country.

is there any way to "fill" the screen with any aspect ratio?

Yes... my post said:


You can also do this properly by using a variable masking system, which maintains the proper AR, unlike the juvenile zooming/stretching solutions which fulfills the strange desire to eliminate the black bars by abusing the content. Obviously, variable masking systems are not particularly commonplace for most systems.

I really don't get the problem with black bars. When I watch a movie, I intend to see the same image I'd see in a theater, or at least the closest one. So I don't mind having two small black bars on top and bottom of my screen, as long as I see the correct image. The most important thing is to get the ORIGINAL aspect ratio. Why would one want to crop the movie picture just because it supposedly has to fill the entire screen is beyond me.

Greetings

Because people never seem to notice that movies don't fill the whole screen in the theater all the time either. It's just the curtains that move around and "matte" the screen.

Regards

Traditional Movie Theaters here in the USA run 1.85 and 2.35.

Certainly 4:3 and 16x9 don't match these.... and because movies aren't made for TV (they are made to show in theaters) you get "black bars"...

Maybe they should just stop making movies for theaters.... That should solve your problem.

I never did hear what reason the HDTV developers had for choosing 16:9. Anyone know?

Greetings

Reason ... an average of all the formats. Take all the formats ... equalize for area ... center them on a sheet of paper. Draw a box around them ... and that box is oddly enough about 16:9.

Also a format that started when we had CRT technology only. Very hard to make a 2.35:1 aspect ratio vacuum tube that won't implode on itself.

Regards

An average of which formats? From my math, a screen that meets halfway between a 2.35:1 and a 4:3 (aka 1.33:1) should be around 1.84:1, which is still somewhat wider than a 16:9 (aka 1.78:1)

1.85:1 is actually what DVD widescreen is - HD widescreen is 1.78:1. But you are down to pixels of black bars difference. The idea was 16:9 HDTV gave about equal black bars for film vs. TV - it was always a compromise that favored neither format over the other.

I don't find the bars distracting either and I'm also very much a purist when it comes to things like aspect ratio but the bars in question aren't exactly small. When displaying a 2:35 image on a 16:9 display roughly one quater of the available screen real estate will be devoted to those 'small' bars. That's hardly a minor hit.

And again, that's a price I'm more than willing to pay but I don't really find it all that baffling that other people are willing to sacrifice some image purity in exchange for a significantly larger picture. I mean, it's not all that baffling when people are willing to sacrifice hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars for a larger picture, is it?

A 2.35 image on a 16:9 screen takes about 80% of the screen (395 lines IIRC).

Another issue could be that the particular movies you are referring to are letterboxed instead of anamorphic (or 'enhanced for 16x9 televisions'). Without looking at the black bars, is the image distorted in any fashion (like short and fat)? If the answer is "yes" then you have a letterboxed dvd-

Ok,, after reading this thread, I get a lot of info,, my question then, would be,, to get the best picture on a 50" 16x9 screen,, what type of dvd would you buy?? full screen,, widescreen,, letterbox,,1.85:1,,2.35:1,, ??? my kid's love the "bigscreen" but that's where I get lost
Thanks

You want to buy whatever the OAR version of the film is. Usually this is the widescreen version, as opposed to the fullscreen version which is usually pan-and-scanned down to 4:3. If the AR of the film is 16:9, it will fill your display. If it is wider than that you will have small bars depending on how much wider than 16:9 it is.

Thanks for my answer,, I always buy widescreen anyway and now I know that 2.35:1 gives a little larger line than 1.85:1 but why do they say "enhanced for 16x9" if the lines are still there and does it really make a difference.

"enhanced for 16:9" usually just indicates that the DVD is anamorphically encoded. Widescreen DVDs can be non-anamorphic, though that's really uncommon nowadays because you can get higher active resolution on the disc with anamorphic encoding for widescreen titles.

Thanks Chris,, there's alot you can learn here,, I started here with some questions about my Samsung dvd recorder and since learned tons about everything else,,keep up the good work and have a great New Year,,I'll be back for more reading,,
thanks again,,,Mike

Would a non-anamorphic 16:9 DVD show black bars on the sides, bottom and top. I have one DVD that is in 16:9 format, but when it plays it has wide black bars on top, bottom and both sides. Other DVD's are fine, but this one in particular has bars on all sides.

antand - yeah, I think you're on to something with the non-anamorphic (letterboxed?) DVDs showing all sorts of bars. I have an old DVD of Goodfellas that does this.

It looks OK at 480p and when using the right TV setting, but if I try to upconvert, it turns into a barfest. Oh well, it was time for the Special Edition anyway.

With a 16x9 TV, anamorphic widescreen DVDs are the way to go. Too bad some of the first gen DVDs were letterboxed though.

The DVD I had it happen on is an old Mortal Kombat DVD, output from an Oppo 970 @480i then fed through a VP30 and scaled to 1366x768. I get bars all around, yet it's in 16x9 or maybe 1.85:1 format. I can overscan and/or zoom and fill the screen proportionally, but this is the only DVD in my collection (so far) that exibits this "shrunk down aspect".

Yes it could do that depending on what the player/display is doing. There should be a combination of output/zoom settings that should make it look like anamorphic 16:9 DVDs though. You shouldn't have to live with it letterboxed AND pillarboxed!