Herein lies the embarrassing tale of a newbie discovering the benefits of anamorphic DVDs...
I started watching Star Wars TPM, and was shocked by the worst picture quality I've ever seen on my LT150. The words that scroll into space at the beginning were "swimming". Horizontal lines in letters like "e" were alternating from thick to thin. Scenes with people walking down stairs were full of moire and jaggies. The picture was soft and lacked detail. There were artifacts everywhere!
I was almost convinced I needed a progressive DVD player (currently using Toshiba SD2109, component out). But, for some reason, I decided to play with the aspect ratio. The DVD player output was 4:3, and the LT150 aspect was "normal".
I changed the DVD player output to 16:9, and the LT150 aspect to "cinema". BAM! All the artifacts were gone! The scrolling letters were rock steady. The picture was very sharp and 3-dimensional looking. If an HTPC is way better than this, I think seeing it would make my head explode!
I looked at other movies that I've watched before with everything set to 4:3, and there was some improvement. But nothing as dramatic as on TPM.
Now I "get" the benefit of anamorphic.
--Dan
I started watching Star Wars TPM, and was shocked by the worst picture quality I've ever seen on my LT150. The words that scroll into space at the beginning were "swimming". Horizontal lines in letters like "e" were alternating from thick to thin. Scenes with people walking down stairs were full of moire and jaggies. The picture was soft and lacked detail. There were artifacts everywhere!
I was almost convinced I needed a progressive DVD player (currently using Toshiba SD2109, component out). But, for some reason, I decided to play with the aspect ratio. The DVD player output was 4:3, and the LT150 aspect was "normal".
I changed the DVD player output to 16:9, and the LT150 aspect to "cinema". BAM! All the artifacts were gone! The scrolling letters were rock steady. The picture was very sharp and 3-dimensional looking. If an HTPC is way better than this, I think seeing it would make my head explode!
I looked at other movies that I've watched before with everything set to 4:3, and there was some improvement. But nothing as dramatic as on TPM.
Now I "get" the benefit of anamorphic.
--Dan