[wihardjw]

Hi all,


I have a question that has been bugging me that maybe someone out there knows the answer to. Actually it is a two part question, that kind of interrelates.


I have a Sony 36" XBR400 (4:3 set). When fed an Anamorphic signal, it will "Squeeze" the scan lines into a smaller space -- to whatever the aspect ratio of the movie is. That way, it will not waste scan lines to draw the "Blank" lines at the top and bottom of the screen.

Question1:


When a move is "Enhanced for Widescreen" (I.e., Anamorphic), is it designed around 16:9, or is it truely "anamorphic" (without form). In other words, if I get a movie that is exactly 16:9, no data is wasted in drawing blank "Letterbox" Lines.


What happens with a 2.35:1 movie? Is data then lost to draw a "Letterbox" around the top and bottom to make the 2.35:1 to fit onto a 16:9 set? Or, is data on the DVD all picture, and the TV has to deal with "Squeezing" it onto the screen?


From the term "Anamorphic" I am guessing that they do NOT draw black letterbox to make a 2.35:1 signal fit on a 16:9 tv. That actually the data is pure picture, and the TV must "Squeeze" the image?

Question2:



Now, the GWII is a 16x9 set. Therefore, if we feed it a 16:9 anamorphic signal -- it will not need to "Squeeze" anything. (I guess actually, it will need to upsample the 480P signal to 768P -- I hope it has a good scaler, that does not seem like an nice, easy, round number...)


Now, what does the GWII set do with a 2.35:1 signal? I am guessing my 36" would simply realign the scan lines to fit the 2.35:1 just like 16:9. Since the GWII has a "Fixed" native resolution and cannot realign anything -- it will be forced to draw "Blank" lines on the top and bottom of the screen.


Therefore, will this be some type of "Lost resolution" as compared to a 36" Directview XBR? (BTW, how many vertical lines are present in a 2.35:1 signal. Still the same 480p ? Of which case I guess there may not be any real "Lost" resolution since the GWII can do 768P, but instead a tricky scaling needs to be done.)


Thanks,

James

 

[eweiss]

(FYI -- "ana" in Greek means "up", not "without" -- so "ana-morphic" would mean ~ "forming something upward" -- i.e., upping its resolution or size -- unsqueezing it. I've read that the term "anamorphic" is not correct in a technical sense, but it's now common parlance. "a-morphic" would/could mean "without form" -- see "ana" p. 57, A GREEK-ENGLISH LEXICON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT AND OTHER EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE, THIRD EDITION (BDAG))


My guess is that all anamorphic/16:9-Enhanced DVDs fill the full height of a 16:9 screen, with 480(?) lines of information. If it's a 1.78:1 - 1.85:1, it will all appear to be picture information. If it's 2.35:1, about 20% or so of the picture/image information is in the black letterboxing at the top and bottom.


I don't think there is any way a DVD can "squeeze" all the picture information into just the 2.35:1 picture part of the movie. That would require every single "size" DVD to use a different compression mode depending on its size: i.e., 2.35:1, 2.20:1, 1,85:1, 1.78:1, 2.40:1 (FIGHT CLUB), etc., DVDs would each need a different compression mode, and each TV would need to have a different uncompression mode to unsqueeze just the picture information.